Frozen Fifteen Feet from Safety: How Jean Hilliard Survived 6 Hours at -22°F | E170

On December 20th, 1980, 19-year-old Jean Hilliard experienced what doctors call medically impossible. After her car slid off an icy road in rural Minnesota during a blizzard with temperatures at -22°F, Jean made the difficult decision to walk two miles through whiteout conditions to reach her friend Wally Nelson's farmhouse. Dressed only in cowboy boots and a winter coat, she battled brutal winds and life-threatening cold for over an hour.

In a cruel twist of fate, Jean collapsed just 15 feet from Wally's front door, where she lay face-down in the snow for six hours. When Wally found her the next morning, she was frozen solid - literally crystallized, with her body rigid as a board and her skin hard as stone. Hospital staff initially thought he was bringing them a corpse, as her body temperature was too low to register on their thermometers and they couldn't find a pulse or blood pressure.

Yet incredibly, Jean not only survived but made a complete recovery with no amputations or permanent damage. After 49 days of observation, she walked out of the hospital completely healthy, leaving medical professionals baffled. This episode explores the science behind her miraculous survival, featuring insights from hypothermia expert Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht (aka "Professor Popsicle"), and examines how Jean returned to a normal life after becoming briefly famous as "The Miracle Girl from Lengby, Minnesota."

0:00 Introduction to Case Knives
00:32 Welcome to the Crux True Survival Story Podcast
00:53 Introducing Jean Hilliard's Incredible Survival Story
01:39 The Fateful Night Begins
03:47 Jean's Struggle Through the Blizzard
10:05 The Collapse and Discovery
15:12 The Medical Miracle
18:25 Wally Nelson's Dilemma
21:39 Arrival at the Hospital
23:38 The Fight for Survival
24:54 Ruff Greens
26:47 Primitive Rewarming Methods in the 1980s
28:22 Jean's Miraculous Recovery Begins
31:10 Jean's Unbelievable Survival
33:26 The Science Behind Hypothermia Survival
41:35 Jean's Life After the Incident
45:55 Professor Popsicle and Hypothermia Research
50:36 Final Thoughts on Human Resilience

Email us! [e-mail]

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thecruxpodcast/

Get schooled by Julie in outdoor wilderness medicine! https://www.headwatersfieldmedicine.com/

References for Jean Hilliard's Story

1. Montreal Gazette - "Frozen Solid Teen Girl on Way to Full Recovery" (December 30, 1980)
2. The New York Times - "Dakota Teen-Ager Recovers After Being 'Frozen Stiff'" (January 2, 1981)
3. Thirteen Towns newspaper, Fosston - Local coverage with headline "Woman, 19, baffles doctors: Terrible frozen ordeal has happy ending"
4. MPR News (Minnesota Public Radio) - "Frozen. Thawed. Not dead: Jean Hilliard's amazing Minnesota story" (January 25, 2018)
5. All That's Interesting - "Jean Hilliard: The Woman Who Froze Solid And Thawed Back To Life" (May 25, 2021)
6. ScienceAlert - "Amazing True Story: The Woman Who Survived Being 'Frozen Solid'" (October 23, 2023)
7. Snopes.com - "Jean Hilliard: Miracle on Ice" (February 18, 2015) - Fact-checking article confirming the story's authenticity
8. Almanac.com - "Frozen Stiff: A True Story of Winter Survival"
9. Bushcraft Buddy