Backcountry Safety And Survival

The following are pointers for preventing hypothermia, which dulls the brain--the most important key to survival.

Seek and create shelter from cold, wind, snow, and rain.

If possible, retreat to timbered areas for shelter construction and fire.

Use natural shelters: the windless side of ridges, rock croppings, slope depressions, snow blocks, a snow hole at base of standing trees, dense stands of trees, or under downed trees.

Improvise a windbreak or shelter from: stacked rocks or snow blocks, tree trunks, limbs, bark slabs and evergreen boughs, or dig a snow cave or snow trench with a cover.

Use equipment in the emergency equipment list.

Conserve, share, and create warmth.

Conserve body heat by putting on extra clothing. Replace damp undershirt and socks. Place damp wool clothing over dry wool clothing. Loosen boot laces to increase circulation. Place feet with boots on in a pack. Use ensolite pad or evergreen boughs to insulate body from ground. Place hands in armpits or crotch.

Share body heat.

Sit or lie front to back or back to back. Warm hands and feet of injured person or companions.

Create body heat.

Nibble high energy goods--candy, nuts, granola bar. Sip water kept warm with body heat. Use solid fuel hand warmer, igniting both ends of fuel stick, which is good for four hours of heat. Do isometric exercises to stir up body's circulation system.

Build a fire.

Find dry wood--dead lower branches and bark from underside of trees. Look under downed trees and inside dead logs for dry kindling. Wet wood will burn as it dries in a strong fire.

Select a sheltered area, protected from strong winds, as the site for an emergency campfire. Under snow conditions build a fire base first, with large, four-inch diameter or larger pieces of wood (use your wire saw from your Emergency Equipment package). Put fire starter on the base, surround a fire starter with branches to hold kindling above the fire starter, then place a hatchwork of kindling and slightly larger wood on the branches. Light fire starter and blow lightly to help its flame ignite kindling. Add progressively larger wood to the flame area.

Prevent heat loss.

Remember the body loses heat by respiration, evaporation, conduction, radiation, and convection.

To prevent loss by respiration, cover the mouth and nose with loosely woven or knit wool.

To reduce evaporation through excessive perspiration, wear clothes that breathe and are in layers.

To avoid loss by conduction, use the ensolite pad-and/or other cover between the body and a cold, wet surface. This insulation is particularly important if you're already wet.

To prevent loss by radiation, keep the head, hands, and feet covered.

To prevent loss by convection, protect the body from the wind.

Look for hypothermia symptoms.

In stage one, the victim begins shivering, has poor coordination, slurs speech, and shows poor judgment. By stage two, when the body temperature is below 95 degrees, muscular rigidity replaces shivering, and the victim becomes more irrational and needs warmth immediately from external sources and protection from further heat loss. Know that the victim is the LAST to realize s/he's in danger.

Send for help.

If you need to send for help, review the situation and evaluate the facts as you outline information for a rescue group. If possible, send two who will mark the route on the way out and note the terrain, distance, and time from the accident site to the road.

Once the two reach a telephone, they should call either a park ranger, if in a national park, or the local county sheriff, who, in turn, will alert Rescue Groups. Be sure the Rescue Group gets the number of the calling telephone and a definite place to meet the callers who will lead them back to the accident site.

Prepare for the worst and plan for the best.

Our hope is that you will not have to use this information, but with it and the regular hiking and emergency equipment and the minimum first aid kit, you will be prepared to survive.

From the Summer Activity Schedule Trail and Timberline, No. 904, April 1995.

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