• Robert Schock disappeared after going for a jog with his dog in North Cascades National Park in Washington on July 31.
• “I’m not a hiker,” he tells people. “I don’t wear my backpack and go on multi-day trips. I don’t know how to fish. I want to finish a course as quickly as possible and return home. That’s why I didn’t have a T-shirt. I had a pair of shorts, Freddy and a dog leash.”
• However, despite all the negativities, his mother never lost hope that her son would be found alive. — and a month later, just when he felt like he “couldn’t make it through the night”, he was finally rescued.

When Robert Schock, 39, parked at the Hannegan Pass Trailhead in Washington state about three months ago, he had his day planned: he would run about 20 miles through North Cascades National Park with his dog Freddy and then return home. Simple. Therefore, he prepared a very small amount of material.

“I am an ultrarunner,” Schock tells PEOPLE. “I am not a hiker. I don’t put on my backpack and go on multi-day trips. I don’t know how to fish. I want to finish a course as quickly as possible and return home. That’s why I didn’t have a t-shirt. I had a pair of shorts, Freddy, and a dog leash. These were the only items in my small backpack.”

But what started as a one-day run for Schock turned into a month-long ordeal when he became lost with no food, no phone and barely any clothes. Since his only shield against the elements was his backpack, he was starving and was about to die. When he was finally rescued on August 30th.

“I never imagined when I started running that I would be heading towards this experience,” she says now. “I never imagined this kind of survival was possible.”

Schock, a musician from Blaine, said he has been to the national park many times, if not more than a few years.

He left the trail on July 31 to begin his adventure. Referring to an old map, Schock headed up the Chilliwack River Trail by driving near the Copper Ridge Trail and then taking the cable car across the river. But he soon lost his way.

As reported by Cascadia Daily NewsWildfires in the North Cascades in 2021 and 2022 caused the closure of the eastern portion of the trail and altered the terrain.

“When I got up there, the trail wasn’t there anymore,” Schock says. “I was wondering what happened to this trail, and my curiosity kept me going.”

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His phone went dead on the second day, but Schock realized on the third day that things were getting serious. Completely lost, she told Freddy to find his way home. “I wasn’t well,” he says.

He explains that as the days went by, he sometimes lost track of time and thought to himself: “‘Please let this end, I want this to end.’ ”

Schock inherited former dens created by bears and later abandoned. One day, he saw a large mushroom that became one of its few food sources. “I ate that stuff all day and it tasted like a regular mushroom you’d eat on pizza or anywhere else,” he says. “That was the only thing I had to eat the whole time other than berries, they were so good naughty.”

Schock says he saw a helicopter around the time he disappeared.

“I started yelling, ‘Help,’ but they didn’t answer,” Schock says. Although he saw the helicopter twice and “waved” to get the pilot’s attention, no help came that day.

Meanwhile, on August 4, Schock’s mother, Jan Thompson, received a call from the Whatcom Humane Society in Washington state. They told her her son’s dog had been found on a road near the Chilliwack River the day before.

Thompson, who lives in North Carolina, told PEOPLE that she had no idea her son was planning to attend the North Cascades and that she actually tried to call him on July 31, the day he went missing, without success.

Moments after reporting her son missing on Aug. 5, Thompson said she “received a call from a deputy with the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office saying they knew where Rob’s car was. It had been on the road since July 31.”

“The fact that Rob left his car window half open on the passenger side and left his wallet in the car led the deputy to believe that Rob had driven into the wilderness with no intention of getting out. I knew that was not the case,” he says. “Honestly, despite all the negativity, I never felt like he died in the park.”

In the North Cascades, Schock’s power and his attempts to get help were weakening. “I wasn’t screaming for help so much anymore,” she says. “I only did it occasionally… I wasn’t very good.”

Schock said that while he was on the banks of the Chilliwack River on Aug. 30, he lost control of his bowels and “literally felt like I was on the verge of death.”

Schock was drooling as the sun set; He hated these hours because the sun’s rays provided him with heat. “I was sitting there naked and I knew I wasn’t going to make it through the night,” he says. “And I said, ‘I’m going to scream one last time.’ ‘Help me,’ I said. ”

Fortunately, members of the Pacific Northwest Trail Association returned to their camp after performing maintenance work on a trail. He heard Schock’s screams and found him.. “One of the guys took off his shirt and gave it to me,” Schock recalls. “That man who came and dressed me and saved my life in such a good way. “With the finish line so close, it would be an understatement to say how truly grateful I am to these people for being there that day.”

Schock was taken to the hospital by helicopter and was able to sleep for the first time in a long time. He was only able to receive food intravenously for three days. He then contacted his mother.

“His voice was very weak, and I knew he was very weak and tired, so I kept our conversation short,” Thompson recalls of their first phone conversation. “I learned the details of his story piecemeal, mostly through phone conversations. “Part of me doesn’t want to know because I can’t bear to think about how he’s suffering.”

Schock spent about a month in the hospital, where Thompson and his stepfather went to visit him. “He seemed pretty good for what he had been through,” Thompson says. “Obviously he had lost a lot of weight. It’s hard to believe he came out of this situation relatively unscathed.

When Schock was ready to be released from the hospital, his father and stepmother arrived to help him get to Ohio, where he grew up. “I’m healing pretty well, other than some underlying joint pain,” he says, adding that he’s regained about 40 lbs.

Thompson is grateful to the many people who searched for and cared for her son during the ordeal and following his rescue. “From not even knowing Rob was at the park to finding out he was, to realizing he had been there for almost a week with no supplies before anyone realized he was missing, to rescuing him and recovering… it really sunk in,” she says. “I was so surprised and so grateful that it had a happy ending.”

Schock says he’s looking forward to returning to the Northwest to continue playing music. He admits his ordeal “took a toll on me and I aged a few years because of it.”

“I hope I can go back to those years,” he says.

But one thing’s for sure: Schock won’t be returning to the North Cascades anytime soon. “I don’t want to go to that area for a long time until I forget,” he says.