I'm a bit of a junky for survival and adventure stories. I love hearing those tales about people who miraculously survived in the desert on just a half a bottle of water, or the explorers who crossed Antarctica for the first time. Recently, I've been getting into this show on the Discovery Channel called "Survivorman," about a guy who goes out into the wilderness with only a few basic tools and films himself trying to survive for seven days. It's fascinating, perhaps because I am mildly entertained by watching the guy suffer, but also because he's doing things that I probably could never do.

One of my favorite stories, which I read about in a book last month, is about a mountain climber named Jean-Christophe LaFaille. In 1992, the diminutive LaFaille and fellow climber Pierre Beghin were climbing Annapurna, one of the most challenging peaks in the Himalayas. Beghin tragically fell to his death off a ledge high on the mountain, taking nearly all of their equipment with him. LaFaille, who had broken his arm on a falling rock, was forced to climb down without a rope on a steep ice face at an altitude of 23,000 feet. It is widely regarded as perhaps the most remarkable self-rescue in mountaineering history.

My fascination with survival was piqued this week when ESPN sent out release about this weekend's episode of "Outside the Lines." The network plans to air a documentary commemorating the 35th Anniversary of the so called "Andes Flight Disaster," which forced 16 members of Uruguayan rugby team to live for 72 days high in the mountain range, battling freezing temperatures, starvation and dehydration. The survivors were forced to eat the flesh of the dead passengers in order to avoid dying of hunger.

"In the face of society's greatest taboo, they sliced strips from the bodies," Connelly said in the documentary to air this Sunday. "And those strips would be eaten."

I recall as a kid reading about this story in a book called "Alive" written by Piers Paul Read, and it's still my favorite survival story. The book was later made into a movie by the same name, and survivor Nando Parrado recently wrote his own account, "Miracle in the Andes."

For "Outside the Lines," ESPN correspondent Chris Connelly and producer Danny Aruda interviewed several survivors and revisited the site of the plane crash, high in the Chilean section of the Andes mountains. They also interviewed Sergio Catalan, the simple farmer who found two of the survivors that had made a remarkable trek to the Andes foothills. The documentary explains how several of the survivors last year helped him obtain a much-needed hip replacement.

"He's a part of the team," survivor Roberto Cannssa said. "If we're not helping him. We're not helping ourselves."

-- Tim Lemke