So,
you have wandered off the trail, while looking at wildflowers, and you have
just realized that you have only 30 minutes, before the Sun goes down behind
the mountains. You don’t know where the
path back is. You are carrying a
backpack with matches, a light jacket, a first aid kit, a snack, and a
canteen. So now what do you do?!
When Does the Sun Go Down?
Estimating the time till local sunset, graphic by the Author.
Do
you know how to tell how much daylight there is left before the Sun drops down
behind the trees and mountains? It is important to be able to estimate how
many minutes of daylight are remaining, before the Sun goes down behind the
local or apparent horizon, because the amount of remaining daylight you have
depends on the terrain that you are in, wooded, hilly or flat and the time of year,
as the time of sunset varies throughout the year.
To calculate the amount of daylight remaining until sunset, hold your
hands at arm’s length away from your body, and count how many fingers fit
between the bottom of the Sun and the edge of the local horizon, be it a hill,
ridge, or the top edge of a forest1.
Most survival experts calculate approximately 15 minutes per finger.
This is a well-known hack and is a must know for anyone who spends any
time in the woods, and I have used it often over the years.
An Excerpt from Spokane Daily Chronicle, May 2, 1978, “Could You Survive”
So, you have only about two fingers, or 30 minutes of daylight left,
that isn’t much time! So, what would you
do? Would you choose A, B, C or D? And which one is the correct answer?
When caught in the woods by sundown, S.T.O.P.! Photograph by the Author.
Master
Sergeant John Dzedzy, a United States Air Force survival
expert, and the author of this “Could You Survive” article, chose B, build a
camp and a fire, and get comfortable for the night.
Don’t travel after dark and find yourself in a Dead End! Photograph by the Author.
Thirty minutes, or about
two fingers of daylight, isn’t much time and as Master Sergeant Dzedzy
explained, choice A, keep looking for the trail, choice C, walk uphill to try
to find landmarks, or choice D, walk downhill to find a stream and follow it to
civilization, all imply nighttime travel, which is inherently dangerous.
It
is very easy to trip in the dark and twist your ankle, poke yourself in the eye
with an unseen branch, get more hopelessly lost, blunder into a swamp getting
wet and chilling yourself, or even falling down a cliff or steep hillside,
injuring or possibly, even killing yourself.
Also, as things go from bad to worse, you run the risk of panicking, and
then you are truly lost! If you insist
on traveling after dark, through an area that you are unfamiliar with, you just
might find yourself in a dead end!
So, instead of keeping
moving and trying to walk out, spend the remaining 30 minutes of daylight,
finding or building a windbreak and gathering plenty of firewood. Ideally, and here is a pro-tip, you should always try to setup camp
when there are still at least two hours, or eight fingers of daylight, remaining
in the day.2 So, with only 30
minutes of daylight remaining you are going to have to work fast!
An excerpt from Handbook For Boys, by the Boy Scouts of America, June 1953, page 157.
You
lose body heat to the wind, so always try to find a windbreak, and get out of
the wind. This will reduce the effects
of wind chill and at the same time protects you from any wind-blown rain,
sleet, and snow. The lee side of the
windbreak, the side downwind, or behind the windbreak, will offer you
protection from the wind. Oh, and
remember you must sit between the fire and the windbreak3.
 |
An excerpt and illustrations from “But If You Do Get
Lost”, Outdoors USA: 1967, by Kenneth M. Cole, page 90 to 91. |
You
can either find windbreaks, like large rocks, fallen trees, or thickets and
groves of trees, or you can build them yourself from the materials at hand in
the wilderness. There are two types of
windbreaks, solid ones like rocks, walls and logs, and permeable ones like
groves of trees and thickets, which are also called shelterbelts.
The biggest difference between tinder, kindling and fuel wood is size and how much you need. An excerpt of “How To Build A Campfire”, from Scoutmastercg.com, HERE.
Remember
wood always burns faster than you think it will, so to keep your fire going all
through the night and into the morning, you are going to need a lot! Craig White, a Canadian survival expert,
teaches that you will burn through a generous armload of wrist sized sticks
each hour. And the colder it is out, the
more you will need to burn to stay warm.
An Excerpt from Spokane Daily Chronicle, May 2, 1978, “Could You Survive”
Hopefully,
Master Sergeant Dzedzy’s advice will help you if you ever find yourself caught
out in the woods by nightfall. Remember
to S.T.O.P and don’t panic!
S.T.O.P., photograph by the Author.
Don’t forget to come back next week and read “The Navigator’s Triangle
©”, where we will talk about another way to use the stars to find your
directions in the wilderness.
I
hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me
on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE. Don’t forget to follow me on both The
Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE,
and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube. If you have questions, as always, feel free
to leave a comment on either site. I
announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at
bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.
That
is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!
Notes
1 For more information on the science behind this read “Estimating The
Time Till Sunset©”, HERE, or become a Patreon sponsor and read “Could
You Survive? There is 30 Minutes of
Daylight Remaining – Out Take©
2 You
should always set up or start back to camp, or if you are misplaced, start
building a shelter and a fire, before what woodsmen call the “big dark”,
when there are eight fingers, or about two hours, of daylight remaining. This is like Emerson Hough’s First Strict
Camp Rule for hunters (from Out Of Doors, 1915) who were out hunting during
the late fall or winter, which states, “…start
home at half past two or three in the afternoon”, which is a couple of
hours before the Sun goes down in the late fall and winter. By returning to, or building you camp, while
you still have two hours of daylight remaining, you will reduce your chance of
having an accidental overnight adventure or injuring yourself as you make an
overnight trek through the wilderness.
3 For
more information on windbreaks read “...Seeking Shelter
Against the Wind©” HERE and “But If You Do
Get Lost”, Outdoors USA: 1967©”, HERE.
Sources
Boy
Scouts of America, Handbook For Boys, [Boy Scouts of America, New York,
New York, June 1953], page 157
“Calculating Sunset
Time With Your Fingers”, http://awesci.com/calculating-sunset-time-with-your-fingers/,
(accessed 11/27/18)
Green, Clarke; “How to Build a Campfire”,
November 7, 2012, [Dynamik-Gen, 2019] https://scoutmastercg.com/how-to-build-a-campfire/
Hough, Emerson; Out Of Doors, (D.
Appleton and Company, New York, New York [1915]) p. 269 - 282, reprinted in https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5QadnZNQ1xrsbkS3T4VJlC_uZQ8t4yj2UNH5POGbNio-1SDyFM8TAqUfl7ciDY5CuNZxvnnE0Pcxf1j6Thu_zOs5kz8rgR9MOtsbTxVgRVa3bwaKo0-D5YX2T4JaBO_z6G8vgwFNgLiJ9XCfBVnn9K4qR7ZFa0faNe3zmvfWDfmEo049sqXQlw697XIHDWNblRJj9niiabZoBB7aQHl82tf4y03cpU2hMdLVADF-7P2pvJKsZbLDnJN8ncLZ9IftMudapmn8E,
(accessed 11/8/18)
Newquist, Susan; “Let Your Fingers Tell Time”,
July 31, 2000, https://www.backpacker.com/skills/let-your-fingers-tell-time,
(accessed 11/27/18)
Oelslager, Dr. Robert W.; Bushcraft,
Scouting & Woodlore: Notes, Vol. I, [Privately Published]
Spokane
Daily Chronicle, May 2, 1978, “Could You Survive”, Master Sergeant John Dzedzy,
page 19, https://books.google.com/books?id=KPtLAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA10&dq=%22spokane+daily+chronicle%22+%22could+you+survive%22&article_id=6794,367919&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwioruKYj9v4AhVhD1kFHUluDXMQ6AF6BAgKEAI#v=onepage&q=%22spokane%20daily%20chronicle%22%20%22could%20you%20survive%22&f=false, accessed July 2, 2022
United States Department of Agriculture, Outdoors
USA: 1967 Yearbook of Agriculture, [United States Government Printing
Office, Washington, DC, 1967], p 87-89, https://archive.org/details/yoa1967/page/n3,
accessed November 2, 2019
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