When
you head to the hills for a weekend backpacking excursion, you are
not typically thinking about what you would do if you were in the
middle of nowhere and your pack accidentally sailed off a cliff.
This
happened to one poor student that took a survival course with an organization
I used to work for in Southern Utah. It was day one of a three-day
traveling solo in cloudless 90-degree heat. After navigating and scrambling
through the desert slick rock alone, the student took a picturesque
lunch break on the edge of a rocky cliff band. When it was time to
leave, he accidentally knocked his pack off the cliff, which was much
too high and treacherous to down climb, leaving him with nothing but
the clothes on his back. Because it was day one of a three-day traveling
solo, nobody would be looking for him for at least another 2.5 days.
Whether
you are in the desert or in the mountains, there are some crucial
survival rules that come into play. Some refer to it as the Survival
Rule of 3’s, which says that, in general, you can live three
minutes without oxygen three hours without shelter, three days without
water, and three weeks without food.
Knowing
your survival priorities can help save you precious time, energy,
and calories in a survival situation. Some people panic and immediately
start thinking of food. If you spend the first few hours of a survival
situation looking for food, you could neglect other more important
priorities like shelter and water and go down on the books as another
search and rescue statistic.
Whether
it is –20 in the mountains during the winter or 100+ in the
desert heat, shelter is #1. It is easy to see how you could freeze
to death in 3 hours in the winter without shelter and warmth, but
even in the summer heat, shelter is key. With water being your next
priority, you need shade to conserve your energy, slow the speed of
dehydration and conserve your fluids, and to stay out of the relentless
heat of the sun until a cooler part of the day to begin your search
for water. Look for a natural rock outcropping, build an impromptu
lean to with sticks or other debris, or weave a sun hat out of Yucca
leaves, but find shade as soon as you can.
The
mountains of Colorado can be much cooler in the summer depending on
your elevation, so you may not be seeking shade like you would in
the desert. Many people think of the classic debris shelter as the
perfect 3-season survival shelter, but this can be a very labor/calorie
intensive shelter to build if you don’t have adequate water
to stay hydrated and maintain your energy. The last thing you want
to do is “bonk” in a survival situation when your life
is on the line.
If you
are caught out in the mountains alone before dark with nothing but
the clothes on your back, you may consider making a pine needle bed
to make it through the night. You can then continue to improve your
shelter and convert it into a debris shelter if your survival situation
is prolonged over several days.
To make
a pine needle bed, scan the environment to find a good location, taking
the direction of the weather, the depth of pine needle duff on the
ground into account, the proximity to your water source, widow makers
towering above, and creepy crawlies into consideration. You don’t
want to spend a lot of energy on a shelter and realize you built it
over an underground hornet nest or on an ant pile or you will have
the most uncomfortable night of your life to say the least.
Begin
by piling up pine needles so you have at least 1 foot of insulation
between you and the ground. This is important so you don’t sleep
directly on the ground and lose heat through conduction. Then continue
to pile up pine needles on both sides so you make a bathtub the length
of your body. Crawl into your pine needle bathtub and start covering
your feet, legs, torso, and the rest of your body with the pine needles
you piled up on the sides. You want to have 1-2 feet of pine needles
on top of you because this is your insulation that will trap your
body heat the same way your cushy down sleeping bag works.
Pine
needles are not quite as comfy as down feathers, but they do the trick.
They will trap your body heat, keep you warm, will shed rain, sleet,
and snow, and will even keep you warm if it gets wet. If you get caught
in a survival situation, remember the Survival Rule of 3’s and
remember that shelter is key!
