One man from Idaho is a tough-in-the-buff legend, Jeff Zausch, a seven-time “Naked”

One man from Idaho is a tough-in-the-buff legend, Jeff Zausch, a seven-time “Naked”

 player. “There’s no trust. I went into this challenge fully committed to winning this thing for myself, to win this thing for my fellow Idahoans, and to prove that I am the greatest survivalist ever to take on ‘Naked and Afraid,’” said Jeff Zausch in an exclusive interview with The Idaho Press.

He walks the talk. Pocatello native Zausch is a seven-time contestant on the “Naked and Afraid,” “Naked and Afraid: Savage” and “Naked and Afraid XL,” and even NBC/USA’s “Snake in the Grass” reality competition. He’s even produced a survival show for Discovery called “Dual Survival.” But, according to him, he was born (naked, of course) to do it. He said: “Growing up in Idaho? My number one love in life was the outdoors, above all else. When most kids run around with their friends, they think about everything social. I didn’t care about friends growing up, or birthdays or Christmas presents. Every year my parents would ask, ‘What do you want for your birthday?’ And every year, my answer was the same. ‘I want you to take me camping.’ Every year I sacrificed birthday presents just for a trip to the mountains. And that defined the type of kid I was. All I wanted was any opportunity to spend time in the wilderness. I was building shelters from a young age.”

The years progressed as Zausch focused on mastering the wild, telling the Idaho Press he dreamed of climbing Mount Everest in the Himalayas at an age when most kids dream of a bike or a video game. He had just returned from his bucket list destination the day we spoke to him. He said: “I’m recuperating in Texas right now, then heading home to Idaho next week. But I’ve wanted to go to Everest since I was 5, so it was a dream come true.”

The adolescent years never made him change course. Zausch was planning trips and challenges before he was a teenager, thanks to his father’s urging to grab every moment in life. He said: “By age 12, I was asking my parents to survive in one of the harshest blizzards to hit East Idaho in decades. And I remember begging my parents to allow me to go up into the mountain behind our house to spend the night in the blizzard, but of course, my mom was incredibly against it. Somehow my dad talked her into the idea, and at 12 years old, I trekked off on my own into a whiteout blizzard up into the mountains with a backpack and a tent. And that moment was what set me on this trajectory. I fell in love with extreme environments. I was now not only searching for the outdoors, but I was searching for the extreme outdoors. Then I climbed mountains and summited some of the highest peaks in the northwest United States. And that only increased my desire to continue pushing the limits of survival and impossible locations.”

The all-new series pits 12 past champs like Jeff, called the “Naked and Afraid Legends,” against each other for a complex set of challenges paced at an insane rate in South Africa’s Oribi Gorge. Joining Zausch in the all-star cast of “Last One Standing” is record-holder Matt Wright, with 215 days on “Naked and Afraid” under his invisible belt. Sarah Bartell, a three-time “Naked and Afraid” survivalist, veteran Amber Hargrove who aced 148 days on “Naked and Afraid,” the only woman on the show previously to have completed a 60-day “Naked and Afraid XL” challenge, plus former professional rugby player and veteran Waz Addy; six-time survivalist Steven Lee Hall Jr., survival, evasion, resistance and escape (SERE) specialist Cheeny Plante, and Dan Link, one of two survivalists to go from a 14-day fan challenge to finishing the 60-day legends challenge. Also in the cast are Gary Golding, Gwen Grimes, Stacey Osorio and Wes HarperBut, of course, with these legends comes baggage and history, something Jeff was entirely at peace with talking about and being portrayed as the “heel” in the cast. But he was to the point. “I’m a controversial figure on ‘Naked And Afraid’ because I’m so unwilling to help weaker competitors necessarily. I always want to show myself in my best light.”

For those who are new to the show or unsure what the differences are in the “Naked” competition universe, Zausch laid it out. “The first show I did, [regular] ‘Naked and Afraid,’ is 21 days — more like a sprint to the finish line. I’ve done 21-day versions. I’ve done 40-day [Naked and Afraid] XL versions and two 60-day XL versions, and I am one of only two people ever to do two 60-day challenges. The 60-day challenges are more of a marathon, but this new ‘Naked and Afraid, Last One Standing’ is exceptionally different from any other ‘Naked and Afraid’ ever done. This new ‘The Last One Standing’ is a true battle to the finish. Typically during a 60-day or 40-day challenge, some of the longer ones, you see people partner up or team up in a larger group. Because they know their chances of making it to the finish line are higher if they partner with an entire group.”

This format bothered Jeff immensely. He said: “One of the things that I disliked about the [Naked and Afraid] XL formats — you see weaker survivalists ride the coattails of stronger survivalists to make it to the finish line. And for me, I’ve always been against that. I’ve always believed that you should have pulled your weight if you deserve to make it to the finish line. Prove yourself as a survivalist to make it to the end. So I’ve always hated seeing the coattail riders cross the same finish line as those I view as elite [survivalists]. This fact has not sat well with me. So we finally had a competition when they came out with this ‘Last One Standing.’ This format change is the best thing that could have presented itself for me. I viewed it through a competitive lens. I wanted to prove that I was the best — that I was better than anyone else. And now, I finally get that opportunity 10 years later from my first ‘Naked and Afraid.’ And I expect other survivalists to feel fear, anxiety, and nervousness, knowing they can no longer rely on others. I’ve never relied on anybody else.”Of course, reality television editing always shapes the raw footage from these competitions into this dramatic story. But the other survivalists do not hold back their not-so-fuzzy feelings about Jeff from Idaho in the premiere.

When we mentioned this after viewing the premiere episode, Zausch laughed. “Speaking truthfully, I thrive off of that [chatter]. So in the last few seasons of ‘Naked and Afraid,’ people have seen me succeed in environments where I’m the controversial figure. But I look at it as if everyone else is talking about me, and every other survivalist is looking at me and wondering what I will do next. I’m already in their head. They’re thinking about me, and they’re not thinking about the environment. And that’s their first failure. So I went into this challenge fully committed to winning this thing for myself, to win this thing for my fellow Idahoans, to prove that I am the greatest survivalist ever to take on ‘Naked and Afraid.’ And, for me, I did look at this as a very cutthroat competition. I wasn’t going to make friends or have a reunion with people that I had done previous challenges with. My sole purpose for doing this was to win.”