# Have you ever had to survive in the wilderness? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 11, 2016, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-survive-in-the-wilderness/742801 "2016-01-11T11:13:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2016, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-survive-in-the-wilderness/742801/41 "2016-01-17T09:48:22Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Thats also why they design their survival packs with everything one would need in terms of food, water filtering, protection from elements, etc… Survival kits [content check](http://playit.pk/watch?v=vPwW7RaPO_g) ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2016, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-survive-in-the-wilderness/742801/42 "2016-01-18T00:32:09Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > Spent a week canoeing on the The Boundary Waters, which straddles the Ontario-Minnesota border. Summer of 1991, I believe. There were four of us: me, my friend, his father, and his grandfather. > > I guess it was fun, but I wasn’t an outdoorsy guy, and certainly missed the creature comforts of home. Like, uh, _showers_. Portaging the canoes for a mile was rather grueling, and the mosquitoes were so thick that we each wore a net over or head the entire week. The fishing sucked, and we didn’t bring enough food. Was very happy when it was over. 🆒 I was there in May 1991 for the week immediately following a semester from hell. It was before the mosquitoes came out in droves; however, we did experience a heatwave and I believed it when my parents saw on the Weather Channel (yes, Virginia, it did exist then) that it was 89 degrees one day in International Falls. I had always wanted to do it and had a great time, but I have no desire to do anything like that again. I really don’t have the stamina for either any more either. Our group leader had done this more than 20 times before, so he knew what he was doing. We had NO contact with the outside world and only saw outsiders IIRC twice. When we came out of the woods, we asked if Bush was still POTUS! ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2016, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-survive-in-the-wilderness/742801/43 "2016-01-18T14:51:40Z")
> [@Ibanez](#): > > Mine is not being able to walk out due to injury where I would have to activate my PLB. I really don’t want a ride home in the orange helicopter. My stories are about when I was a kid - sadly, many years ago now. No such thing as PLBs then. If we were injured, we’d have to set a pair of smudge fires and wait for someone to spot them. 😃 Our safety was in having a set return date - presumably if we missed it, there would eventually be a search, and others knew the route we were taking. But it would be a very anxious wait. Fortunately, that never happened. ---
**Author:** ![Disheavel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@Disheavel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Disheavel)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2016, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-survive-in-the-wilderness/742801/44 "2016-01-18T17:50:38Z")
I have spent 100s of nights backpacking, canoeing, biking touring, camping, or otherwise outdoors for extended periods of time (Went through Boy Scouts with 10+ eventual Eagles of my age so we were got out there and I’ve continued on similarly). The longest I was ever “out in the woods” was 17 days. But in all of that time only once did I get into a “survival” situation was once hiking in Wyoming at 10,000+ feet. We’d (eight 18-19 year old Eagle scouts) started the morning in sun and 60˚ and were going to go through a pass, we crossed a stream and had hiked about a mile when the rain started and half mile later when the snow started and another half mile before there was 4" on the ground and it was a complete white out (well under 30˚ by this point). We turned around and started heading back down to our previous campsite (we hadn’t found anything on the way up). The stream was now four feet deep and rushing. I carried all 8 packs across the stream one at a time (stripped down and roped up) and everyone else scurried across a tree about 100 yards upstream. The snow changed to pea-sized hail as we made the last dash back to the protecting forest where no snow made it to the ground at our campsite. And as we dropped our packs and scrambled to put up tents, a deluge with lightning and thunder drenched everything and melted all the snow within minutes. We were all soaked and freezing (shivering is putting it mildly) and huddled into a handful of sleeping bags. The hail started back up 10 minutes later and lasted 30 minutes at least. The sun came out by noon (~4 hours since the start of the initial rain), hail was piled at least 6" deep beside the tent. The afternoon was spectacular and warm and allowed us to get almost totally dried out. However, two guys were blue/purple from cold by the time we got into sleeping bags in the tents and three guys didn’t come out until the next day in order to try and stay warm. It makes a great story now about the changing weather at high altitude but it scared the bejezus out of us at the time- Every item of clothing soaked, sleeping bags were wet, 20 miles from the trailhead, no dry wood capable of being lit (we had fuel stoves). We were making calculations about what to bring with us if we had to bug out and at what time (1.pm) we had to make that call by. The stream/river really messed us up, but I learned a lot from the experience- NEVER cross a stream that you don’t have a clear way of getting back across if the water rises dramatically. Also, keep track of any available retreat location and stick to your turn-around times. My 3rd camping trip with young kids ended like this as a result: 8:30pm already in tent post smores, we can hear a couple of campfires around us and someone playing music too loudly (i.e. I could understand the words). It starts raining, I turn to my wife and say, “you get the kids; I’ll get the rest”. I literally rolled up the tent with everything in it and threw it in the car. Everything else went into the cooler, and we were on the road in less than 5 minutes. We got the camping experience without the mud or sore backs! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-survive-in-the-wilderness/742801.md?page=2)