Now in third year, PNW Survival Games in Molalla has reality TV show ambitions

The third annual PNW Survival Games kick off this Friday at a campground in Molalla. Fifty people, organized into teams of two, will compete in a series of weekend-long challenges designed to test their outdoor survival skills, from building a fire and shelter to purifying water and building a raft from saplings and other foraged materials.

Participants who register for the $495 event are first taught the basics of those skills by survival instructors, some of whom have competed in reality TV shows such as “Naked and Afraid” and “Alone.” Each team then launches into a timed challenge to test their application of that skill, but with a twist – like trying to build a fire while shivering and cold after a plunge into the river. First, second and third-place teams win cash prizes and outdoor gear from sponsors.

PNW Survival Games’ co-founders Tony Peniche and Phil Robinson have aspirations to take their concept beyond its Oregon roots onto a much bigger stage by transforming it into a reality TV show picked up by Netflix or Amazon. They join us to share their vision and a preview of this weekend’s competition, along with Tom Ratts, a Vancouver resident who was part of a team that won first place in 2023 and who now volunteers at the games.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The third annual PNW Survival Games are this weekend at a campground in Molalla. Fifty people will compete in a series of challenges designed to test their outdoor survival skills, from building a fire and shelter to purifying water. But the aim’s co-founders Tony Peniche and Phil Robinson hope to eventually take this Oregon event to a much bigger stage by turning it into a reality TV show.

They join me now, along with Tom Ratts. He is a Vancouver resident who was on the winning team back in 2023. Welcome to all three of you.

All: Thank you.

Miller: Tony, first – why’d you want to start this?

Tony Peniche: I didn’t. It was an accident. [Laughter] Phil and I were out camping. We really like bushcraft. We’re really getting into survival. And then I was trying to organize a backyard barbecue where we would do some of these bushcraft competitions but more of like a friendly sport, maybe some ax throwing in there.

Miller: But you and some friends, that was the initial plan?

Peniche: That was the initial plan. And I couldn’t get my friends to commit to it. They kept bailing out at the last minute. I was expressing my frustrations to Phil, and we were out camping and having a really good time. We’re like, what if we just put it on Facebook and just make new friends. We’ll see if anybody in Portland wants to come hang out with us nerds for the weekend.

With my background in marketing, I made a logo and tried to make it look really cool, so at least some people would see it and be like, “That looks interesting, let’s go try that.” Then it went viral. We posted on Facebook, made it public and everyone just assumed it was like a Spartan race or a big production that had been around for years.

Miller: They thought it was a real thing?

Peniche: They thought it was a real thing. People were messaging us saying, “I wish I had heard about this years ago.” They were asking us when the TV show is coming out and we’re like, “What is happening right now? This is wild.” And then a few celebrity survivalists started reaching out saying they [wanted] to be a part of it. And we’re like, “Dude, these are heroes and they’re calling us right now. What’s happening?”

So we had 60 days to adapt. All right, we can’t do the backyard, we have to rent a big campground, buy a whole lot more gear. We need a team to help us produce this and turn it into what everyone thinks it could be. So when the momentum started, Phil and I just saw it happening, and we just grabbed a hold of it, adapted, worked our butts off for 60 days and pulled it off.

Miller: Phil, can you give us a sense for what you had the participants do that first year?

Phil Robinson: In the first year, as far as the challenges, we always want to include … There were six challenges over two days. And each challenge is based around a pillar of survival, something that you should definitely know if you find yourself in an emergency survival situation. So off the bat, one of the first things that you are always gonna need is shelter. So we have a lesson where they learn 30 minutes from a survival expert that you would see on “Alone” or “Naked and Afraid” and they teach you a specific type of emergency shelter. Then we take them from that lesson and we develop a challenge based around that skill that they just learned.

They have one hour to complete that challenge. We use very objective metrics to determine who the winner is because we don’t want it to be just someone’s opinion. We wanna test these things and make sure that they are actually effective if someone has to use them in the real world. That’s an example of one of the challenges that we did.

We do shelter building, fire making – primitive fire making specifically – water purification, primitive hunting techniques, trapping techniques, land navigation. We also like to do a water sport event where they basically have to build some sort of a raft and then navigate down a river, collect flags and then kind of do a relay on their way back.

Miller: Tom, I mentioned that you were the first place finisher, you and a teammate, a guy who you never even had met before. This was two years ago. When did you first start getting into survivalism?

Tom Ratts: It’s gonna be probably 12, maybe 15 years ago that I started just camping more primitively and practicing bushcraft, [like] primitive fire starting, shelter building, things like that. I started initially just out of high school in a group where we were practicing how you would survive if things went sideways. If you were in the desert, you became stranded and there was no way to communicate, what would you do? How would you get water? How would you know how to move around as far as land navigation, things like that. So I did that for years.

Miller: You would give yourself those challenges? So what’s an example of what you would do?

Ratts: We did winter survival. At the time, there were six of us. We drove up to Mount Hood up toward Timberline Lodge. So on the way up to Timberline, we pulled over and got out of the vehicle. You had your survival pack, which essentially was a JanSport backpack that had minimal gear in it, and what you were wearing. “Climb over the guard rail and go 500,000 yards that way. I’ll pick you up in the morning. Let’s see if you make it back to the road in the morning.” So we would practice those things.

Miller: Alone?

Ratts: Alone. Build your own shelter.

Miller: In the snow? No tent?

Ratts: In the snow. No tents. Survival blanket, candles, a primitive saw back then – it was before we would get Silky Saws and the real high-end saws now. So I had a cable saw. If you’re familiar with that, [it’s] two rings and a cable to cut bows down. And I ended up building my shelter in a tree well. So I was down at actually ground level, 4.5 feet of snow around me. And I built a partial bow shelter with snow walls and heated it with a candle.

Miller: What was that night like?

Ratts: Warm, very warm. With a survival blanket and a candle, you can stay pretty warm.

Miller: So that one sounds like a positive evening night. What’s the most miserable situation that you put yourself in on purpose?

Ratts: First time, I went with minimal gear. I went up into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and it was freezing rain, the day after Christmas, probably maybe 12 or 15 years ago. It was miserable. I had the wrong equipment. I was not prepared for what I was intending to do and everything was wet.

I prepared some firewood and thought, “Oh, this is not going to be enough.” It’s getting dark, my shelter’s not completely covering me from the freezing rain and it was absolutely miserable. But when I got back, got home, after one night out in that weather, I couldn’t wait to do it again. It was just a challenge.

Miller: Were you doing this in general because you want to learn these skills and you want to be prepared for a worst case scenario or because it’s fun in the moment? Or is it a combination?

Ratts: It’s a combination. It’s a ton of work. You’re putting in a lot of work. If you intend to create a shelter and survive in bad weather, there’s a lot of work involved. There’s no downtime. You’re working right up until you go to sleep. But a lot of it is just practice. I would say practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent. So whatever you’re practicing, that is how you’re going to do it in a real world situation, and I want to be prepared.

Miller: All right, so you had that background and then you heard about this new thing that Tony and Phil were doing?

Ratts: Yeah, well, kind of. Tony is friends with my oldest daughter and she had seen his Facebook post. She knew what I like to do, so she suggested I participate. So I looked at it on Facebook and I thought, “OK, this is interesting.” I clicked the little button that said, “I’m interested,” told my wife about it and I went to bed. My wife came in an hour later and she had changed me from “interested” to “going.”

Miller: So that’s it. You can’t change that back. [Laughs]

Ratts: Yeah, they said they started this by accident. My wife made me do it. [Laughter]

Miller: Clearly, you wouldn’t have gone through with it if you actually weren’t excited about it?

Ratts: No, I was. [I] met a little bit ahead of time with Tony and Phil and got more of a vision of what they were trying to do – and I was all in. So I wasn’t able to compete last year and I won’t be able to this year. But I do try to come and show up to volunteer, and help with whatever they need because I believe in it.

Miller: Tony, what are your memories of that first year?

Peniche: The first 60 days leading up to it, I just remember it being chaos around the clock, just high anxiety, stress, trying to figure out where we were going to do this because, again, it wouldn’t fit on our property anymore. But then when it actually happened, I think I was expecting the competitors to be a little bit more … like there to be more rivalry, maybe more smack talking or something.

Miller: More “I didn’t come here to make friends,” energy?

Peniche: Yeah, I think I was expecting a bit of that and it was the exact opposite. The amount of camaraderie and the supportive environment was really beautiful. I mean, it exploded, multiple times, where everybody could see it and feel it. We’re like, “What’s happening right now? This is beautiful. This is amazing.”

Miller: Tom, you’re nodding. What was the moment that you remember where instead of being cutthroat competitors, you were cheering each other on?

Ratts: Any team that finished the event quickly, you would see them go to other teams, coaching them, encouraging them. It was everywhere. I don’t think anybody did not participate in that. If you had time, you were finished with your event, and someone is still working on it, and they’re struggling with something, then people, teams would go over and help them, coach them. And you’re not doing the work for him, but you’re saying, “OK, look, if you do it this way, if you look at it this way, you’re gonna get a different product out.”

The fire starting challenge … what was the gentleman’s name?

Robinson: My friend, Gora. Yeah, he actually competed the first year by himself. We ended up having an odd number of contestants, so during the fire starting challenge – this is the last challenge on day one – the sun is setting and they’re trying to get their fire started with a bow drill. He was having trouble getting the fire started that way. Everyone else had finished, and basically you would expect them to just be done for the day and go over to where dinner was going to be served.

Miller: And this is where you’re basically trying to start a fire with friction?

Robinson: Friction fire, yes. So everyone had finished the next event and the next thing happening in the evening is dinner. But everyone stuck around and they were rooting him on. As the clock is ticking down, he’s struggling to get it going.

Everyone’s cheering him on. And then as the clock hits zero, he sparks it, gets the fire going. The whole crowd erupts and it was just a really beautiful moment of camaraderie. Everyone was clapping and cheering, and it was just a great way to cap off that first day.

Miller: Tony, what is interest like this year? How do you get new competitors to come?

Peniche: We actually have a 65% return rate from the first year and then last year. So people want more after they experience it, which is pretty awesome.

Miller: And then you said you can come back if you want to?

Peniche: Yeah, you totally come back if you want to. Last year’s winner’s coming back, Ian Anderson. So we’ll see if he can do it again. If he does, if he wins again, he’s gonna become an instructor. There’s no way around it. He’s amazing. Interest has been very broad and wide. Our social media channels are growing like crazy. There’s been a lot of press about this lately.

But I think the biggest thing is there’s a bit of confusion out there. I think we might have marketed it too much on the competition side. We have a ton of people messaging us saying that they want to do it, but they don’t have enough experience to do it. We’re saying, “No, no, no, no, this is educational. You don’t need experience. You can come as a complete amateur and possibly even podium like Joel did last year.” Joel was a complete amateur and he ended up taking second place.

Miller: Tom, what do you remember about winning?

Ratts: Well, I felt, going in, that I had most of these skills under my belt, which was funny because the things I thought I was going to do really well at, I didn’t. The things I thought I was weak at, I ended up being phenomenal. But I’m gonna say that’s because of my partner. Jake Burns was my partner and he and I had never met, but we meshed … just division of labor with projects that we’re trying to do. He coached me shooting archery. I actually had the highest score in archery and I’m not an archer. He does know that so he coached me through it and it was phenomenal. So winning was huge to me.

I would say I’m a hypercompetitive person, so that matters, but participating is more valuable I think. And like Tony said, this may look, on the surface, like this is a competition and that the winning is the objective. I think this is best suited for the person who wants these skills, because the instruction and the practice plays into that.

Miller: I want to play part of a promo that you all put together for the upcoming games. Let’s have a listen.

Announcer [recording from PNW Survival Games promo]: This is not just a show. It’s a call to the wild. It’s a journey to the edge of survival itself. The wild doesn’t wait and the clock never stops. This is “The Survival Games.”

Miller: Phil, where do your TV plans stand right now?

Robinson: We are in the process of making connections with production companies and talent agencies to get letters of intent signed so that we can start scheduling meetings with networks, specifically to get production in motion. We’ve got the entire first season sketched out. We just need to have those professional backings to get those things moving forward.

Peniche: I’m gonna be blunt and add to that. We actually were really deep with a big agency just until two weeks ago. And this is our first time dealing with this industry. We didn’t realize the door could close so quickly, with zero explanation. We have no idea why all of a sudden like communication stopped and that was two weeks ago. We were like, “What just happened?” So now we’re starting the process over again of trying to talk, trying to find other agencies or production companies to work with.

Miller: A number of you were emphasizing how this is less about competition and more about the experience, education or survival itself. But reality TV, the industry, traffics in intrigue and interpersonal drama – things that you’re deemphasizing here. How much do you think the experience would have to change in order for this to work on TV?

Peniche: We’re planning to incorporate … One would be 10 days long, not just two days long, or longer. And then also just a storyline that it can follow through. So you can have two strangers that have never met before, just like Tom and Jake, when they were competing together.

You simulate a small Cessna plane crash in the Pacific Northwest. And now, they have basically 10 days to get to civilization. Along the way, there’s going to be a series of survival challenges that coincide with the timelines of a real world emergency like that.

Miller: Could it be a D.B. Cooper style story as well, where you have money you’ve stolen from the plane?

Peniche: Sure, why not.

Miller: Tom, as the winner here and as somebody who has just done this on your own, what is one bit of survival advice you’d give to folks who like to go out into the woods?

Ratts: Wow, one piece? “Don’t panic.” I think that’s what this game is about, practicing things and knowing what you’re gonna do. Don’t panic. Panic is gonna be your biggest enemy when you’re in any type of situation where survival’s on the hook.

Miller: Tony Peniche, Phil Robinson and Tom Ratts, thanks so much.

All: Thank you for having us.

Miller: Tony Peniche and Phil Robinson are the co-founders of the PNW Survival Games. Tom Ratts was the first-place finisher in the very first games – that was in 2023.

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