by Les Stroud
If you suffer from a chronic condition such as diabetes or high blood pressure, take this into account when planning your trip. And always carry enough medication to last you for longer than you expect.
Finally, if you’re planning to travel to an exotic or tropical location, make sure you receive any vaccinations you may need for diseases such as yellow fever, malaria, cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, smallpox, polio, diphtheria, and tuberculosis; an anti-tetanus injection is also a must. Failure to get the proper vaccines may leave you vulnerable to diseases prevalent in the area. Note that some vaccinations must be administered over the course of several months, so look into this well ahead of your departure.
Test Your Mental Fitness
THOUGH OFTEN OVERLOOKED, MENTAL PREPAREDNESS is an important part of the survival equation. And the best way to prepare yourself mentally for an outdoor adventure is to gain knowledge. Knowledge really is power, and it brings you the confidence you need to survive should disaster strike. Review the suggestions outlined in this chapter to help guide you through the research process. Before you leave, you should do the following:
gather as much information as possible from printed sources
contact a local expert who can inform you about the specifics of the destination: its flora and fauna, dangers, and any benefits or advantages (such as shelters, escape routes, or water sources) offered by the terrain
receive at least basic training in wilderness survival and navigation skills
gage your level of fitness and determine that you’re ready for your trip
prepare a region-specific survival kit
If you’ve completed all the above tasks, you’ll know that if you find yourself in an emergency, you are as prepared as you can possibly be.
The other thing you can do to prepare mentally for a trip—and for any survival situation in which you may find yourself—is to accept that the worst can happen. If you head into any outdoor adventure with the notion that “It can’t happen to me,” you’re deluding yourself.
You should think exactly the opposite: “It can happen to me. I could end up in the middle of this wilderness alone, even though I’m rafting in a group of 12,” or “I could get turned around and lost, even though it’s just a Sunday hike and there are 75 other people out here today.” Once you accept the fact that an emergency could happen to you, the next logical step is to prepare so that it’s less likely to happen and so that you’re ready to handle it if it does.
Choose the Right Gear
IT IS IMPORTANT THAT ANY EQUIPMENT YOU BRING on an outdoor adventure is up to the task: strong and versatile. Don’t ask yourself if it will function under the best conditions, but rather, will it do so under the worst conditions? If not, do you want to stake your life on it?
Your equipment preparation is almost entirely dependent on your destination. Again, I recommend that you speak with someone local or, alternatively, talk to another traveler who has done the same sort of activity in the same place. They will help you to determine what equipment you need.
You can also learn about equipment by meandering around local outdoor stores that are tailored to the activity you’ll be doing. These are great places to meet people, especially other customers, who may have experience that could help you. Also consider posting a notice on a board in stores like these, to get in touch with other adventurers who may have knowledge to share.
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Do not select your equipment based solely on what’s suggested in books and other print materials; these sources may contain too many errors and omissions, or may be out of date. It is important that you learn from other travelers’ personal experiences.
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Assuming that you now have all the right equipment for your excursion, the next step is to make sure you know how to use it. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you will have the chance to learn about your gear during your adventure. Your survival ordeal could take place within the first few hours of the trip, and you might panic because you don’t know, for example, how to set up your tent in a storm. So get yourself out in the backyard, on the deck, or even in the living room, and spend a few hours acquainting yourself with your gear. Practice setting it up and taking it down. Even more important, figure out how to fix it if it breaks; it may have to last you for a lot longer, or under more difficult circumstances, than you think!
Equipment planning and preparation pertains to clothing as well, yet another category in which a little local knowledge goes a long way. Don’t always trust the salespeople at your local outdoor store. I’ve seen many cases where a clerk has recommended the wrong item of clothing just because he’s been told to push a particular brand. Again, try to speak with other travelers who have been to where you’re going. Remember, poor clothing choices won’t make much of a difference if everything goes right, but they can sure go a long way toward making you miserable should things go wrong.
Wind, rain, cold, poisonous creepy crawlies, and extreme heat are some of the elements you may face. Your clothing should be able to withstand all of these. Make sure it fits well and is not too restrictive. You want clothes that will keep you dry and warm but that also offer enough ventilation to prevent overheating (see “Clothing,” Chapter 12).
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Think of your clothing as your first shelter. Proper clothing should enable you to withstand extreme elements without building a shelter. So whether you’re surviving in the bitter cold of the Arctic or in a torrential downpour in the jungle, you should be able to stand still in only your clothing and survive.
While in the Canadian Arctic, I was outfitted with a caribou parka and pants, traditional Inuit gear. In temperatures as low as–58°F (–50°C), these enable the wearer to stand in a blizzard, impervious to the cold. Now that’s a great shelter!
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Inform Others of Your Plans
TELLING PEOPLE WHEN AND WHERE YOU’RE GOING is a vital aspect of trip preparation. Unfortunately, people sometimes get lazy in this regard. Don’t. If you do, you may find yourself in the same situation as Jennifer and James Stolpa, a young couple who, along with their five-month-old son Clayton, got lost in a blizzard in northern Nevada in the early 1990s.
While driving to a family funeral in Idaho, they found their planned route closed by a snowstorm. They decided to take a detour but didn’t tell anybody about the change. Their truck later became stuck in the snow, and they found themselves stranded 40 miles (64 km) from civilization.
The Stolpas spent the first four days of their ordeal in their truck’s camper-shell. When nobody came along to rescue them (nobody knew where they were), they decided to attempt walking to safety, towing Clayton in a makeshift sled. When Jennifer could no longer walk, James found a cave for her and Clayton to stay in, while he continued on in search of help. Over the next 60 hours, James slogged almost 50 miles (80 km) in his sneakers before stumbling, incoherent, into the view of a passing motorist, who then helped rescue his wife and son.
Could this emergency situation have been avoided? I believe so. First of all, the Stolpas didn’t execute the best judgment in traveling against weather advisories and taking a back route to Idaho. But where they really went astray was in failing to inform anyone of their plan, a mistake that cost them their toes (lost to frostbite) and nearly their lives.
So anytime you’re undertaking a backcountry adventure—or any journey that takes you into remote areas—make sure that at least two different people (including local authorities) know, when appropriate:
the nature of your activity
when you’re starting out
when you’re scheduled to finish
your route
how they can communicate with you
how they can find you if there’s a problem
Fortunately, technology has come a long way in making wilderness travel safer. Websites such as SendAnSOS.com will allow you to enter your own personal
travel plan. If you don’t sign in to the site after your return date, it will automatically send an SOS message to your contacts. Devices such as the SPOT satellite messenger not only allow others to keep track of your progress but also send an SOS message to your contacts when you push the Help button.
If you take advantage of all the planning resources and fail-safes available to today’s outdoor enthusiasts, you will radically increase your chances of making it through any survival situation.
Chapter Two
SURVIVAL KITS
Preparation and planning arm you with the tools you need to make it through a crisis alive and well, not to mention that they strengthen your psychological state. And among pre-trip tasks, none is as crucial as putting together your personal survival kit.
Most people take the time before heading into the backcountry to obtain the necessary basic equipment such as proper clothing, a tent, and a stove. But you may not realize that your basic survival kit could be the single most important thing you carry with you on any expedition. At various times, I’ve ventured into the world’s most remote areas with different sorts of survival gear: fully stocked survival kits, basic “whatever I can carry” survival kits, and sometimes even no kit at all. Survival items have dangled from my belt or hung around my neck. Sometimes they’ve been in fanny packs I barely noticed and other times in fanny packs so heavy I would have preferred not to carry them at all (but did anyway).
How you set up your kit is limited only by your imagination. Why not fill the hollow end of your fishing rod with a lighter and some kind of ignitable tinder such as cotton balls? Or if you’re a mountain biker, pop off your handlebar grips and fill your handlebars with a few items, such as fire starter, some cord or rope, or a multi-tool. Once I even had a kit that was drilled into the stock of a rifle.
Take Responsibility for Your Own Survival
WHILE TEACHING SURVIVAL COURSES, early in the week I would announce to my students that we were going for a wilderness hike the next morning. When they asked me what they should take along, I would casually tell them, “Whatever you think you need for a hike in the bush.”
The next day, midway through the hike, I would stop and ask everyone to show me what they had brought. There was always one person armed to the teeth with survival gear. A few more would be carrying a few basic survival items, and others would be carrying almost nothing.
I was often struck by how many people would go out not expecting the unexpected. Here they were, hiking into the bush, and most were carrying very little to help them if disaster struck. When you’re in the wilderness, you never know when or where or how an emergency may occur. Disaster often strikes in mysterious ways. And you may be separated from your travel companions at any time. Just as you shouldn’t rely completely on your guide, you shouldn’t rely completely on your partner or partners.
This kind of wrong-thinking was never more obvious than when couples took my course. They were usually proud to show off their one very well-equipped pack, invariably carried by the husband. In those instances, I would pull the wife aside and say, “So, now…what do you have?” Only then would it occur to her that she had nothing that would help her in a survival situation. She was relying on her husband, not on herself.
Creating a survival kit is a personal undertaking and one that should never be left to someone else, no matter how close you are to them. To be left alone without a few basic survival items is to court death.
Make It Yourself
WHEN IT COMES TO SURVIVAL KITS, most of us are faced with two options: buy a prefab kit at our local outdoors store, or make it ourselves. To my mind, there is no question which route to go: Make your own.
There are a few reasons I feel this way. First, the primary motivation for the company that makes the prefab kit is profit, not necessarily your survival. They’re going to try to cut costs wherever possible. This means the kit may not contain the best of everything. Something in there is going to be cheap or unnecessary, and take up precious room and weight. It might be the flimsy plastic whistle that cracks the first time you drop it, or matches that snap when you try to strike them. With a prefab kit, something is bound to let you down when you need it most.
Second, most people who buy a prefab kit never become acquainted with the proper use of its contents. Some never even open the kit before setting off on their adventure. Why? Because they trust it. They just throw it into their day-pack and forget about it, feeling sure they have done the right thing just by bringing it. I’ve seen people walk around with a flint striker on their belt or a compass in their pocket that they’ve never tried and haven’t a clue how to use.
Third, I have yet to see a prefab kit that contains all the necessities from top to bottom.
Your personal survival kit should be based on the suggestions I make in this chapter, but even more important, it should be your own creation—one that takes into account the region you’ll be traveling in, the season, the weather, and your anticipated activities. If you are leading others, the kit’s contents should also reflect the fact that you may have to help others in the group survive.
My recommendation is that you purchase your kit items individually so that you know what you’ve bought will stand up to the rigors of a survival situation. The mere fact that you take the time to select the items increases the chances that you’re going to check them out, make sure they work, and get to know how to use them.
Your Personal Survival Kit
A personal survival kit isn’t a separate pack that you carry in addition to the everyday gear on a wilderness expedition. In fact, your personal survival kit is not really a “kit” at all but the most important survival gear you should carry with you at all times—on your belt, in your pockets, or around your neck. Why? The answer is simple: You may leave a fanny pack behind on a portage or when you stop for a snack. It happens all the time. But you’ll never leave a pocket behind.
Your personal survival kit starts with a sturdy belt knife, which has a multitude of uses. Consider it a survival kit unto itself. The biggest benefit of a belt knife is its strength, which allows it to be used to pry and twist objects you might not otherwise be able to manipulate. Used properly, a belt knife will split wood. It will easily whittle and shape wood components for traps, snares, and shelters.
Don’t underestimate the importance of keeping your knife sharp. If you’re not overloaded in terms of weight, carry a sharpening stone in your complete survival kit (which we discuss later in this chapter). In a pinch, however, you can sharpen your belt knife on just about any smooth stone you find in the bush. Sandstone is quite effective, and quartz and granite also work well.
Here is a list of the personal survival kit items that you should carry at all times, whether you stash them in your pockets or wear them clipped to your belt or around your neck. Each member of a group should have his or her own
bandana
compass
flashlight (small, LED)
garbage bags (2, preferably orange, large)
lighter (my preference is a butane lighter that works like a little blowtorch)
matches (strike-anywhere type) in a waterproof metal case (with a striker, just in case) magnesium flint striker (hey, I like fires!)
metal cup (folding; for boiling water)
multi-tool or Swiss Army–style knife (make sure it has a small saw blade)
painkillers (a few)
parachute cord or similar rope (about 25 feet [7.5 m] of 1/4-inch [0.6-cm] cord)
protein bar (e.g., PowerBar)
sharp belt knife
solar, or “space,” blanket (small)
whistle
Ziploc bag (medium or large)
This may sound like a weighty list, but remember that you can also carry a couple of these items, such as the whistle and magnesium flint striker, on a piece of rope or parachute cord around your neck. Remember, too, that when everything is spread out on your belt or among your various pockets (obviously, wearin
g clothes with lots of pockets is helpful) you’ll hardly notice them at all.
Your Complete Survival Kit
Now that you’ve ensured your survival by strategically stowing a few basic—yet supremely helpful—items on yourself, it’s time to build your complete survival kit. Just because you’re carrying the same thing on your body (a lighter in your pocket, for example) doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put one in your complete survival kit. The items in your pockets are your fail-safes; always double up on these items between your personal and complete survival kits. When building your complete survival kit, keep in mind that the heavier and bulkier you make it, the more likely it’s going to be a hindrance rather than a benefit. And as soon as your kit becomes a burden, you increase the chances that you won’t take some of the items with you in the first place or that you’ll leave them behind during a trip. If it’s a screaming hot day and I’m climbing a mountain, do I want to be carrying around 20 pounds (9 kg) of extra gear? You have to strike the balance: the kit needs to be large enough to carry certain essential items, but small enough that it doesn’t become a nuisance. Leave the gear hording to the gear geeks; your job is not to impress your partners but to enjoy your trip or adventure…and to survive if you need to.
You can choose any sort of carrying case into which your survival gear will fit, but you want the container to be large enough to hold items of various sizes, easy to stow and carry, durable, and, if possible, waterproof. I like using a coffee can with a lid as my survival kit because it holds almost all the items I need and can also be used to boil liquid or cook food. Assuming the lid fits snugly, I can even use it to carry water or hot coals.
