But If You Do Get Lost – Emergency Shelters ©

 

You are “misplaced” in the woods and this is your bed tonight, picture by the author.

So, it happened!  It had to happen to you eventually, you know; it happens to everyone eventually.  Maybe you got turned around and now you are “misplaced”, and you have no idea on how to get back to where you were.  Maybe, you slipped and fell, and now you are too injured to get out of the woods by yourself.  Or, maybe the Sun is going down behind the trees and you have less than two of daylight left.  What do you do now?

You need to find shelter, of course!  But what should you look for?

 

Graphic by the author.

Summer or winter, it doesn’t matter, the elements are your worst enemy; humans can’t survive heat or cold, wet or wind for long without a shelter.  Because protecting yourself from the elements means different things in different climates and at different times of the year, the type of shelter that you build will depend on where and when you are building it.  It is true, that a lot could, and has, been written about how to build a shelter, however today, I am writing about things that you should think about before, and as, you build your shelter.

Location, location, location…and the 5 W’s

Whenever you set up a campsite in the wilderness, you should always consider the 5 W’s, wind, water, widow-makers, wood and wildlife, before you choose a location.

Wind

You must treat wind with respect and plan for it when you choose the location of your shelter, because in a survival situation wind can be your enemy and kill you fast if you let it.  Wind and wind-chill it can lower the “real-feel temperature” and bring on hypothermia; it can suck the moisture out of you and bring on dehydration, or it can blow down branches and trees on you and squash you flat.  On the other hand, wind can blow mosquitos and other bugs away from you and your campsite.  So, what type of winds are there?

 

Prevailing winds worldwide, from Moon Joon Kim

Prevailing winds are, according to the Oxford dictionary, “a wind from the direction that is predominant at a particular place or season”.  It is always important when you travel or camp in the wilderness to know the usual wind direction, when canoeing it can help you stay in the calm water on the sheltered lee side of the shore or if you put your camp on the windward shore, it can help blow the bugs away from your camp.  It is important to remember that prevailing winds are not constant all day long, as Alan Innes-Taylor noted on page 53, when he wrote of prevailing winds in the Arctic Survival Guide: “Fair weather winds usually decrease at night”.  In Algonquin Provincial Park and much of northeast Canada and the United States, fair weather winds usually blow from the northwest to the southeast during the day. 

 

Windward and leeward sides of hills or mountains, modified from Eliane Truccolo

 

Offshore, onshore and valley winds, modified from Eliane Truccolo

 

Onshore winds, from Fig. 2-10, Aviation Weather Student Guide

Offshore winds, from Fig. 2-11, Aviation Weather Student Guide

Offshore, onshore and valley winds are all very similar and are both generated by the daily warming and cooling of the land.  The differences in the specific heat of land and water causes the land to warm and cool more quickly than water, during the day this causes warming and rising air over the land and descending or cooling air over the water resulting in an onshore or sea breeze.  At night the process reverses with the land cooling quicker faster than the water, which cause descending cool air over the land and rising warm air over the water and creates an offshore of land breeze.  Onshore breezes seldom penetrate far inland, but they are usually stronger than offshore breezes. 

 

Mountain and valley winds, from Fig. 2-12, Aviation Weather Student Guide

In the daytime mountain slopes and hillsides are heated more quickly by the Sun than valley bottoms, and these slopes warm the surrounding air through conduction.  This warmed air rises and then later cools and sinks back down towards the valley floor, forcing the air from the valley floor up the mountain or hillside, completing the cycle of circulation and creating an upslope and up valley wind.  At night the air in contact with the mountain slope or hillside cools faster than the valley bottom because of outgoing terrestrial radiation and this denser cool air flows down slope and down valley and forces warmer valley bottom air upwards, creating a circulation pattern and downslope and down valley winds.

 

Excerpts from the Arctic Survival Guide, p. 53, by Alan Innes-Taylor

  

All of this is important, because you want to face your shelter so that the front is perpendicular to the general flow of the wind.

Water and Widow-makers

The second and third of the 5 W’s are water and widow-makers.  While you want to be near drinking water, setting up your shelter near that babbling brook is often a bad idea, as a storm far upstream can quickly turn that tame stream into a raging torrent and wash you away.  Also, you should look for a level area half-way between the summit of the hill and the valley bottom, as the cold night air  collects in low spots and valleys and the summits of hills are always cold.  It is often significantly warmer half-way up a hillside, between the crest of the hill and the valley bottom and far safer from flooding.  Always look up and around your planned campsite and make sure there a no dead trees, snags or widow-makers stuck in the branches above you, just waiting for the right wind to come crashing down on you.  And lastly, don’t shelter under the tallest tree in the forest, it is a lightening rod!  If possible, shelter in a grove of equal sized trees.  Also avoid hill-tops and exposed cliff faces can also attract lightening, so don’t shelter at the base of the tallest cliff in the area or on the top of the hill.

Wood

  

An excerpt from “How Not To Get Lost”, by Charles Elliott

The fourth of the 5 W’s is wood, the area that you choose for your campsite should have plenty of firewood and building materials, such as leaves, boughs, bark, branches, etc.

Wildlife

The last of the 5 W’s is wildlife, be careful of setting up your shelter on game trails, near swampy areas that breed mosquitos or in a rock shelter that is already called home by one of the locals.

And now that you have some ideas on where to build your shelter, the first and most basic shelter you need, is the one that will insulate you from the cold, cold ground.  If you have ever slept directly on the ground, when the night-time temperatures drop close to freezing, as I have once upon a time, you will know how painful it is as the ground sucks the heat out of your kidneys!  I can tell you from personal experience that, insulation between you and the ground is your friend.  You should always build a shelter bed before you build any other shelter.   Mors Kochanski, a well-known survival expert, wrote that shelter beds or emergency bough beds should have a compressed thickness of at least 4 fingers or about 3-1/2 inches of dead air space between you and the ground or snow as insulation.  Earlier in 2019, I experimented with making a bough bed and discovered that a 28 inch (72 cm) high pile of boughs compressed down to 18 inches (46 cm) of insulation when I sat down on it.  Shelter beds insulate your sleeping body from the cold ground and make you more comfortable and allow you to sleep better.  For more on shelter beds, read “Making an Emergency Bough Bed”, HERE and watch “Building An Emergency Bough Bed”, HERE.

There are two types of shelters, found shelters and built shelters, and of most are reflector shelters.  Found shelters are exactly as they sound, shelters that you find in the wilderness and they can be a rock shelter, cliffside or big boulder, a blown down log or an uprooted tree; or simply a large tree that you can lean against during the night.  Built shelters are lean-to’s, debris beds or double trench fires, these last two are the only two that are not reflector shelters.  Reflector shelters are any open or roofed shelter where you are between the reflector and your fire.  Lean-to’s or debris shelters take more time and energy to build but, are the most weatherproof of shelters.  Below are some examples of shelters that you could find or build in an emergency.

 

An illustration of a found, reflector type of shelter from “But If You Do Get Lost”, Kenneth Cole, p. 90 

A blown down tree and upturned root ball, a found, reflector type of shelter, photo by the author

 

Looking out from underneath a rock shelter, an example of a found reflector type of shelter, photo by the author

 

An illustration of a built reflector type of shelter from Arctic Survival Guide, by Alan Innes-Taylor, p. 54

An illustration of a built reflector type of shelter from Arctic Survival Guide, by Alan Innes-Taylor, p. 54

An illustration of a built reflector type of shelter from Arctic Survival Guide, by Alan Innes-Taylor, p. 55

 

An illustration of a built shelter which may or may not be a reflector type of shelter from “But If You Do Get Lost”, by Kenneth Cole, p. 90

 

An illustration of a built non-reflector type of debris shelter, from Outdoor Survival Training For Alaska’s Youth, by Dolly Garza

 

An illustration of a built non-reflector type of shelter from “But If You Do Get Lost”, by Kenneth Cole, p. 90

  

This is a thumbnail sketch of building or finding a shelter in a survival emergency.  Hopefully you will never have to build or find one in a real emergency, however they are a lot of fun to find or build for practice.

 

An upturned root ball reflector shelter, nighty-night, photo by the author.

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and my videos at BandanaMan Productions and don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube, and 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.

Sources

Cole, Kenneth M., Jr.; “But If You Do Get Lost”, Outdoor USA: 1967 Yearbook of Agriculture [United States Department of Agriculture, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1967] p. 89-91, https://archive.org/stream/yoa1967/yoa1967_djvu.txt, accessed 6/16/14

Elliott, Charles; “How Not To Get Lost”, Outdoor USA: 1967 Yearbook of Agriculture [United States Department of Agriculture, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1967] p. 87-89, https://archive.org/stream/yoa1967/yoa1967_djvu.txt, accessed 6/16/14

Garza, Dolly; Outdoor Survival Training For Alaska’s Youth: Student Manual, [Alaska Sea Grant College Program, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1998], p. 13, https://www.nwarctic.org/cms/lib/AK01001584/Centricity/Domain/507/OutdoorSurvivalTraining-StudentManual.pdf , accessed 12/4/2017

Kim, Moon Joon; “Essays on Long-Range Transport of Air Pollution and Its Health Outcomes”, [Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, 2017], p. 4, https://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/bitstream/handle/1840.20/34686/etd.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y, accessed 9/28/19

Kochanski Mors L.; Bush Craft, [Partners Publishing, Edmonton, AB., 2014] p.174

Aviation Weather Student Guide, “Atmospheric Mechanics of Winds, Clouds and Moisture, and Atmospheric Stability”, http://navyflightmanuals.tpub.com/P-303/Sea-And-Land-Breezes-43.htm, [Integrated Publishing, Inc.], p. 2-11 to 2-13, accessed 9/28/19

Truccolo, Eliane; “Assessment of the wind behavior in the northern coast of Santa Catarina”, Revista Brasileira de Meteorologia, Vol 26, 3, September 2011, p. 451-460, http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-77862011000300011, accessed 9/28/19

Vliet, Russ; A Manual of Woodslore Survival, [Philmont Scout Ranch, Cimarron, New Mexico, 1950], p. 7-8

The Trinity of Trouble ©

Arctic Survival Guide, 1964, edited and compiled by Alan Innes-Taylor

  

Recently I have been reading the Arctic Survival Guide, a rather hard to find survival guide; by Alan Innes-Taylor¹, an early expert in northern survival.

“…survival is terribly unforgiving of excessive optimism, carelessness, and neglect.  Remember these three – they are the trinity of trouble…”, Alan Innes-Taylor, Arctic Survival Guide, p. 46

This guide was written in 1964, for the aircrews of the Scandinavian Airlines Systems (SAS), and on page 46 the author wrote about the “trinity of trouble”; which he explained was excessive optimism, carelessness and neglect.

The trinity of trouble seemed to me to be an easy to remember survival rule and so today I am going to write about the things you should not do, if you want to survive an emergency in the wilderness.

Unfortunately, Mr. Innes-Taylor, on page 46 in the Arctic Survival Guide, never fully explained what he meant by the statement “…excessive optimism, carelessness, and neglect…”.

However, in the Arctic Survival Guide, he did include two statements that provide some insight into his thinking.

“To date, reviews of polar crashes continue to reveal avoidable hardships due to overestimation of personal capabilities.  In too many instances deaths may be attributed to lack of appreciation for the physical demands of the conditions as actually found”, Alan Innes-Taylor, Arctic Survival Guide, p. 46

“Finally, the infrequency of crash landings can lull the participants on long flights over the polar regions into a false sense of security resulting in non-survival when all have landed safely”, Alan Innes-Taylor, Arctic Survival Guide, p. 48

Another source which offered some insight into Mr. Innes-Taylor’s thoughts on the trinity of trouble, is the book Northern Survival, which was originally compiled in 1967.  Mr. G. D. Cromb, who wrote the foreword, credited a number of unnamed contributors; however he only mentioned one contributor by name, “Mr. Innes Taylor of Whitehorse who had first-hand knowledge and experience in northern Canadian living”.

I believe that the following quotes from Northern Survival, if not directly from the mind of Alan Innes-Taylor, are certainly derived from his thoughts.

“The mental attitude that ‘it can’t happen to me’ is dangerous in that the individual will not accept the situation as it exists and is blind to reality”, Northern Survival, page 5

“Most people are inclined to over-estimate their physical abilities.  Be very careful when trying to estimate your physical stamina…”, Northern Survival, page 5

I believe that what Mr. Innes-Taylor was trying to communicate with the phrase, the trinity of trouble, is that “excessive optimism”² and the “it can’t happen to me”³ mental attitude, leads a person to have a “false sense of security”⁴; which leads a person to have an “overestimation of personal capabilities”⁵, their “physical abilities”⁶ and “physical stamina”⁷; and finally to have a “lack of appreciation for the physical demands of the conditions as actually found”⁸; all of which contributes to “non-survival”⁹.  Additionally, I further believe that he intended it to be understood, that excessive optimism, leaps directly to carelessness and to neglect.

“But to expect is not enough; you must anticipate and prepare for the unexpected” Survival: Training Edition, AF Manual 64-3, page 1-4

So, if excessive optimism leads directly to carelessness, then what are some examples of carelessness?  Carelessness following an emergency in the wilderness usually involves not anticipating and preparing for the unexpected.  Some careless errors that you might slip into include; wasting resources, supplies or opportunities by not preparing in advance, perhaps by not building a shelter before the storm arrives, or signals, before you hear the rescue plane; by delaying setting up camp or not turning back on the trail until it is too close to dusk; or by not sleeping and resting when you have the chance or it is in your best interest to be out of the elements.

“…it pays to prepare for any eventuality by carrying on your person a personal survival kit”, Survival: Training Edition, AF Manual 64-3, page 1-4

Examples of neglect, which follow carelessness, generally involve neglecting to prepare for any eventuality in some way or the other.  Perhaps you have failed to leave a detailed travel plan with someone.  You should always leave detailed travel plans with someone at your base of operations, these plans should include who is traveling, where you are traveling, when you are leaving and when you plan on being back.  Another example of neglect would be failing to prepare for emergencies by neglecting to carry a personal survival kit, first aid kit or other emergency supplies.

“…no matter how well prepared you are, you probably will never completely convince yourself that ‘it can happen to you’…”, Survival: Training Edition, AF Manual 64-3, page 1-6

However, as Survival: Training Edition mentions, you will probably never be able to fully convince yourself that it can happen to you and if you are not careful you can unconsciously slip into the “it can’t happen to me” attitude and from there into “excessive optimism, carelessness, and neglect”.  So do your best to remind yourself that it can happen to you, prepare and anticipate for any emergencies and finally don’t neglect to file a travel plan or to bring a survival kit and emergency supplies along with you.

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and my videos at BandanaMan Productions and don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube, and 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.

Notes

¹ So who was Alan Innes-Taylor

Charles Alan Kenneth Innes-Taylor, from the obituary by Philip S. Marshall, which was published in Arctic, Volume 37, No. 1, March 1984.

Charles Alan Kenneth Innes-Taylor, who went by the name of Alan Innes-Taylor, experienced the switch from riverine roads travelled by canoes, steamboats and dogsleds to asphalt roads and airplanes and he witnessed the change from the heroic age to the modern age of exploration.  He was born in 1900, in London, England, and his family moved to Toronto, Canada when he was eight.  During World War I, when he was 17, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Flying Corps (RCFC) where he learned to fly: beginning his association flying and aircraft that continues until his death.  Following World War I; he began to move north, working first with the Canadian Mounties, where he learned dog-mushing; after that as a miner at the Treadwell Yukon Mine in Keno Hill and after that as a purser on the steamer the SS Whitehorse.

It was his northern Canadian and Arctic experience that uniquely qualified him in 1929 to bring replacement sled-dogs to Admiral Byrd’s BAE I Antarctic expedition.  He returned to the Antarctic with Admiral Byrd in 1933 as the chief of field operations for the BAE II Antarctic expedition.

At the start of World War II, he was commissioned, by a special act of the American Congress, as a Captain in the U.S. Army Air Force.  He first helped rescue down air crews from the ice sheets of southeastern Greenland.  Later from mid-1942 to the end of the war, he trained arctic and mountain troops on how to survive and operate in these frozen environments. 

In 1950, with the start of the Korean Conflict, he helped to make possible the first commercial air flights over the North Pole from Stockholm to Tokyo, by the way of Anchorage; which was pioneered by Scandinavian Airline Systems (SAS) in 1957.  He wrote two survival guides for the SAS aircrews; This is the Arctic: Arctic Survival Guide, a 54-page guide in 1957 and finally, The Arctic Survival Guide, a 137-page survival guide in 1964.  He also invented specialty Arctic survival gear for them, such as exposure suits and 4-person sleeping bags.

 

Picture from the SAS Museum of the 4-person sleeping bag, by Tormund Burn

For more from his obituary by Philip S. Marshall, click HERE

² Innes-Taylor, Alan; Arctic Survival Guide, p. 46

³ Minister of Supply and Services, Northern Survival, p. 5

⁴ Innes-Taylor, Alan; Arctic Survival Guide, p. 48

⁵ Innes-Taylor, Alan; Arctic Survival Guide, p. 46

⁶ Minister of Supply and Services, Northern Survival, p. 5

⁷ Ibid

⁸ Innes-Taylor, Alan; Arctic Survival Guide, p. 46

⁹ Innes-Taylor, Alan; Arctic Survival Guide, p. 48

Sources

Burn, Tormund; “In the beginning, SAS flew over the North Pole with polar bear rifle and four-man sleeping bag in the cockpit”, 10/ 28/2018, [Dagbladet, 2019], https://www.dagbladet.no/tema/i-begynnelsen-floy-sas-over-nordpolen-med-isbjorn-rifle-og-firemanns-sovepose-i-cockpiten/70334263, accessed 9/18/2019

Department Of The Air Force, Survival: Training Edition, AF Manual 64-3, [Headquarters, US Air Force, Washington, DC, August 15, 1969], https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5Qaea-Z580phmhBGIWOpEb9sVNVKFl2eMbPyfv7ki4p2Zoy6cs7h1CmdXQI0ydjG07PWu6RRNYLtLVCYuecTw2NN4WTAEhAOzNk4TNnzUHc7kP7tsTOrDJ3VK9NEK-NneCrLSICyuWFBMNPcX5ktcJp_VvkWOiUDKjo0k-2FChV7srDVmZ9PH_OOSrcXbuyb5IIy2fCYgUQoVWwECShqfJU9zjSSbvFyxx_xE8Rtx_HUmvwls2pzM2AWkIUgXEGChXtpZx3Mo, accessed 12/12/2018

Innes-Taylor, Alan; Arctic Survival Guide, [Scandinavian Airline Systems, Stockholm, Sweden, 1964]

Marshall, Philip S., Arctic, Volume 37, No. 1, March 1984, http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic37-1-84.pdf, accessed 9/13/2019

Minister of Supply and Services, Northern Survival, [Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada, 1979]

Algonquin Portaging 101 ©

 

An outtake from the July 17, 2017, Kioshkowi Lake and Little Mink Lake portage video, part one, photo by the author.

Have you ever wondered what it is like to portage a canoe or a pack, between two lakes, anywhere in the northern wilderness?  If you have, watch the video that my cameraman shot on July 17, 2017 on a 635 meter portage between Kioshkowi Lake and Little Mink Lake, in Algonquin Provincial Park, HERE or HERE.

The portage in the video was a successful portage, in that it was a “one-trip” portage, meaning we travelled between the lakes just once and therefore, we spent the least amount of time and travelled the least amount of distance possible, on that portage.

What are the secrets to having a successful one trip portage?

First you have to match the number of people in the canoe to the number of things being carried across the portage.  For example, if there are three people in the canoe and you have two packs, plus the canoe, then everyone has one thing to carry.  Providing that they can physically carry their item, then you should be able cross the portage in one trip. 

An illustration of a “one-trip” portage, drawing by the author

However what if your canoe has two people and two packs, not to mention the canoe?  Well, in that case, you are going to be forced to make a “two-trip” portage.  The problem with a “two-trip” portage is that you actually have to spend three times as long and cover three times as much distance as you would on a “one-trip” portage.

An illustration of a “two-trip” portage, showing you crossing the portage three times, drawing by the author

Why “three times” you ask?  Simple, there are three items and two of you; one the first trip across the portage you each carry one item, then you walk back across the portage to the starting point and get the last item: you have walked the portage three times and have taken three times as long as you would on a “one-trip” portage. 

What if you have enough people to carry everything, but the packs are too heavy for one of the people to carry, or maybe you are trekking in the wilderness with a child or young adult?  What is the ideal weight of a pack and when is the canoe too heavy for someone to carry?

You should always try to match, whenever possible, the weight of the packs and the weight of the canoe to the people who will be carrying them.  REI, Inc. recommends that the ideal pack weight should be 20% of your body weight and other experts recommend 25%; Stephen J. Townsend, in his thesis that used S.L.A. Marshall’s data from The Soldier’s Load and the Mobility of the Nation, suggested that a sustainable, comfortable load to carry is about 30% of your body weight; further he cautioned that you run the risk of injury, if you repeatedly and frequently carry more than 45% of your body weight.  Additionally he wrote that, occasionally overloading someone to between 65% and 90% of their body weight for up to twenty kilometers, or twelve and a half miles, for several days is possible, however the person carrying the overload has an elevated risk of an injury and it will travel slower.

How much can be carried by your body weight, by the author.

                                                Percentages of body weight

                                                and weight to be carried

                Body Weight          25%         30%         45%

                        180 lbs            45 lbs      54 lbs      81 lbs

                        150 lbs            38 lbs      45 lbs      68 lbs

                        120 lbs            30 lbs      36 lbs      54 lbs

                          90 lbs            23 lbs      27 lbs      41 lbs

                          60 lbs            15 lbs      18 lbs      27 lbs

So have fun and I hope that you enjoy your “one-trip” portages.

 

An outtake from the July 17, 2017, Kioshkowi Lake and Little Mink Lake portage video, part one, photo by the author.

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and my videos at BandanaMan Productions and don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube, and if you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles and videos on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

Sources

Townsend, Stephen J., Major, USA, “The Factors Of Soldier’s Load”, [Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1994], p 15-16, https://usacac.army.mil/cac2/CSI/docs/Gorman/06_Retired/03_Retired_2000_11/22_09_SoldierFuture_Jun.pdf, accessed 8/6/2019

Pasteris, Joe, “How Much Should Your Pack Weigh?”, [Recreational Equipment, Inc., 2019], https://www.rei.com/blog/camp/how-much-should-your-pack-weigh, accessed 8/6/19