One of the most extreme reality shows on television is Alaska: The Last Frontier, which follows the lives of a frontier family named the Kilchers. Among the more memorable characters is Otto Kilcher, who suffered a pretty bad accident and was hospitalized. Here’s what happened.
What is Alaska: The Last Frontier?
Alaska: The Last Frontier’s Kilcher family lives off the grid on more than 600 acres at their homestead. They’re long-time residents who settled in the 1940s, and they’re pretty much completely self sufficient.
They hunt, fish and garden to survive, and the show illustrates just how they manage to do that. The Kilcher family includes Atz Kilcher, Otto Kilcher, Charlotte Kilcher, Eivin Kilcher, Eve Kilcher, Atz Lee Kilcher, Jane Kilcher and various other characters.
One of those is Grady, an outdoorsman who helps with building. There’s also nurse Katie Rigelman. The patriarch of the family is Atz Kilcher, who’s in his late 70s and used to work in the oil industry.
The Homestead is outside of the city of Homer, near the Kachemak Bay on the Kenai Peninsula.
Who is Otto Kilcher in Alaska: The Last Frontier?
Otto was born in 1952 in Alaska to Yule and Ruth Kilcher. He and all of his Kilcher siblings grew up in Alaska, where Otto would play in the forests and assist on the farm. He handles the cows and he’s a self-taught mechanic.
What happened to Otto Kilcher?
Otto was traveling through a snowstorm in the winter when he was trampled by a cow. The cow punctured his lungs, broke his ribs and arm, fractured his shoulder, and left him with more miscellaneous injuries, his overall condition so critical that his wife couldn’t even visit him in the hospital. Even after numerous surgeries and operations, Otto still had to deal with a blood clots due to complications from the accident.
In the hospital, Otto tried his best to remain optimistic about his recovery, but it was slow and painful path back to normal.
Fortunately, Otto is recovering nicely. He still has some residual injury damage, and there are parts of him that will never be the same, but he’s alive and thriving. In fact, he shared a video on Instagram on Aug. 24 of himself driving a tractor and doing some farming, with the caption “Ahhh, harvest season.”