Survival

This page is all about how to survive when you get caught out unprepared in the wilderness.

Shelter

Snow Shelters

In winter, conditions, snow shelters become a viable option. They are very warm and windproof compared to other kinds of shelters. A well executed snow shelter is superior to a tent in many ways. There are many kinds of snow shelters including snow caves, quinzhees and igloos.

Fire

Tinder is the smallest stuff that catches immediately with a flame.

Home-made options:

Cottons balls saturated with Vaseline (waterproof, catches with a spark, each burn 2-3 minutes)

Ranger bands (1 cm wide cuts bike inner tube; waterproof, burn 2-3 minutes each)

Commercial options:

Coghlans emergency tinder (sort of like the cotton balls above, but not as messy; http://www.coghlans.com/images/productBig/392.jpg)

Coghlans fire sticks (basically wax and saw dust; http://www.coghlans.com/images/productBig/164.jpg)

Other options:

strips of foam seeping mat or padding in pack shoulder straps or back panel

insect repellant saturated bits of cotton

Suggestions for packing Vaseline saturated cotton balls:

Stuff a whole bunch into a film canister

Cut a section of drinking-straw a couple inches long. MacDonald’s straws are good because they are wide. Using a q-tip or toothpick, push the Vaseline cotton ball into the straw, and then carefully melt the ends shut. When it is time to light, cut off a tip, pull out a bit of the cotton and it will light with spark and burn for a few minutes.

• An experiment has shown that cotton balls combined with either rubbing alcohol (an antiseptic; a must for a first aid kit) or petroleum jelly make good fire starters. Further studies need to be done to determine which is better, but a possibly biased observation is that the petroleum jelly burns longer.