A man who had been missing for a month was found alive. Mom Never Lost Hope (Exclusive)

• Robert Schock went missing on July 31 after he went for a run with his dog in Washington’s North Cascades National Park and then got lost.
• “I’m not a traveler,” he tells PEOPLE. — I don’t wear backpacks and don’t go on multi-day trips. I can’t fish. I want to finish the course as soon as possible and return home. So I had no shirt. I had shorts, I had Freddy and a frying pan dog”
• But, despite the difficulties, his mother did not lose hope that her son would be found alive — and a month later, just when he felt he “couldn’t stand the night,” he was finally rescued

When Robert Schock, 39, parked his car near Hannegan Pass in Washington state nearly three months ago, he had a day planned: He would run about 20 miles in North Cascades National Park with his dog, Freddie, before returning home. simple And for this reason he collected a very minimal stock.

“I’m an ultra runner,” Shock tells PEOPLE. “I am not a tourist. I don’t wear backpacks and don’t go on multi-day trips. I can’t fish. I want to finish the course as soon as possible and return home. So I didn’t have a shirt. I had shorts, I had Freddy and a dog bowl. Those were the only things in my little backpack.”

But what started as a one-day run for Shock turned into a terrifying month-long ordeal that left him stranded with no food, no phone and almost no clothes. With his backpack as his only shield from the elements, he was starving and on the brink of death when he was finally rescued on August 30.

“I would never have dreamed of what I was aiming for when I went out for a run,” he says now. “I never dreamed that such a survival was even possible.”

Blaine musician Schock says he’s been to the national park a few times, but not in several years.

On July 31, he left the road to begin his adventure. Referring to an old map, Schock headed for the Chilliwack River route, climbing near the Copper Ridge route and then using the cable car across the river. However, he quickly lost his way.

As reported in Cascadia Daily Newswildfires in the North Cascades in 2021 and 2022 closed the eastern portion of the trail and changed the terrain.

“When I got out there, there was no sign,” Schock says. “I was curious to find out what happened to this trail, and my curiosity got the better of me.”

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On the second day, his phone died, but it wasn’t until the third day that Shock realized that things had become serious. Completely lost, he told Freddy to find his way home. “I was sick,” he says.

As the days went by, he says, he sometimes lost track of time and thought to himself, “Please let this be over, I want it to be over.” ”

After all, Schock inherited old nesting sites created and subsequently abandoned by bears. One day he saw a large mushroom that became one of his few sources of food. “I’ve been eating it all day, and it tasted like regular mushrooms you’d eat on a pizza or something,” he says. “That was the only thing I had to eat the whole time besides the berries, they were pretty disgusting.”

During the time he was lost, Shock says he once spotted a helicopter.

“I started yelling, ‘Help,’ and they weren’t responding,” Schock says. Although he saw the helicopter twice and “waved” trying to get the pilot’s attention, help did not arrive that day.

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

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

Minutes after reporting her son missing on Aug. 5, Thompson says she “got a call from a deputy from the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office saying they knew where Rob’s car was. She has been standing at the exit since July 31.”

“The fact that Rob left his car window half-rolled down on the passenger side and his wallet in the car led the deputy to believe that Rob had gone into the desert with no intention of coming out. I knew it wasn’t like that,” she says. . “Honestly, I never felt like he died in the park against all odds.”

Back in the North Cascades, Shock’s strength was waning, as were his efforts to get help. “I wasn’t really screaming for help anymore,” he says. “I just did it every once in a while… I wasn’t very good at it.”

On Aug. 30, while he was on the banks of the Chilliwack River, Schock says he lost control of his bowels and “really felt like I was close to death.”

Shock made his mouth water as the sun set, a time of day he hated because the rays warmed him. “I was sitting there naked and I knew I wasn’t going to make it through the night,” he says. “So I thought, ‘I’m going to scream one last time.’ I said, “Help!” »

Fortunately, members of the Pacific Northwest Trail Association, who were returning to their campsite after carrying out maintenance work on the trail, heard Shock’s screams and found him. “One of the guys took off his shirt and gave it to me,” Schock recalls. “That guy who came dressed me and saved my life really well. It’s an understatement to say how grateful I really am to those people for being there that day because it was so close to the finish line.”

Shock was airlifted to the hospital, where he was finally able to sleep for the first time in a long time. He could only take food intravenously for three days. Later he contacted his mother.

“His voice was very weak, and I knew he was so 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 calls. Part of me doesn’t want to know because I can’t think about how he suffered.”

Schock spent about a month in the hospital, where Thompson and his stepfather came to visit him. “He looked remarkably good for what he had to go through,” Thompson says. “He’s obviously lost a lot of weight. It’s so hard to believe he came out of it relatively unscathed.”

When Schock was ready to be released from the hospital, his father and stepmother arrived to help him travel to Ohio, where he grew up. “Joint pain aside, I’m recovering pretty well,” he says, adding that he’s gained about 40 pounds.

Thompson is grateful to the many people who sought out and cared for her son during his ordeal and after his rescue. “From not knowing that Rob was even in the park, to finding out that he was, to realizing that he had already spent almost a week there without food before anyone knew he was missing, to his rescue and his recovery… it’s not really immersed in itself,” she says. “I’m extremely impressed and very grateful that it ended happily.”

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

“I hope I’ll get back to those years,” he says.

But one thing’s for sure: The Shock won’t be returning to the North Cascades anytime soon. He says, “I don’t want to go to that particular region long enough to forget about it.”