Common sense survival
09/01/15 05:16
A couple of years ago the starter on our pickup failed while we were out in the hills looking for a Christmas Tree. We had stopped at a campground to use the pit toilet and when we got back in our truck it wouldn’t start. I tried what I was able to fix the situation, but I was unable to get it started. We knew it was about 8 miles to the nearest home and although we had warm clothes, I was uncertain about whether or not there were mountain lions in the area. We decided to spend the night in the truck. We would be warm and safe and we could have a fire in the campground and we would be able to walk out in the morning. By morning we had raised enough alarm by not answering our phones that our friends were looking for us. By the time we got to the phone they were on their way and would have found us even if we had stayed with the truck. We towed the pickup to a repair shop and even got a Christmas tree. All was well.
It taught me an important lesson. We are not invulnerable. Unplanned things can occur. We need to practice sound judgement and exercise caution. We become overly dependent upon the reliability of our vehicles. These days when we head out into the hills we make sure someone knows where we are going and when we expect to return. We carry a survival pack with a stove, food, coffee, tea, candle lanterns and other gear. We make sure we have sleeping bags with us. It just makes sense.
But not everyone is so careful. Not long ago I was in a line of traffic near one of our middle schools on a very cold morning and I watched as youth after youth hopped out of their parents’ cars and ran to the school without coats, hats or gloves. Some were wearing shorts. Were they to be stranded even for an hour outside there would be serious frostbite. They, of course, were not stranded. They went from a warm home to a warm car and from that car to a warm school. But things do go wrong. Cars do slide into the ditch. I heard a report that when school was cancelled due to bad weather recently in Sioux Falls, students were left at the school by parents who didn’t know of the cancellation.
We sometimes don’t think of the consequences of our behavior.
By every report Barry Sadler is an experienced snowmobiler. He has a good machine and has done a lot of riding. He considers himself to be an extreme snowmobiler, riding his machine places where no others go. That is what he was doing last weekend when he was side hilling. He was riding his machine along a ridge with one ski in the air and one in the snow in a very remote area of the Idaho-Montana border out of Mullen, Idaho. He was riding alone without any emergency supplies: no water, no avalanche beacon, no satellite locator. Snowmobiling alone in that area is definitely high risk behavior never a good idea. But Saddler had done it before - lots of times.
The snow under his machine gave way and he and the machine slid 3,000 feet to the frozen creek at the bottom of the slope. Saddler landed on the bottom, with the machine on top of him. He broke some of the bones in his hand, but otherwise survived quite well. But he had no way to get out of the creek bottom and now way to signal for help. He ran his snowmobile for heat until it ran out of fuel. Then he assessed his situation and realized that he was going to die. There was no way to get out and he was going to freeze to death. He wrote farewell notes to his children and wife on his phone. He put on his goggles so the birds couldn’t get at his eyes. And he prepared to die.
Saddler was lucky. He was rescued by friends who had been searching for 30 hours. They got lucky and found his tracks. After they found him and got him into warm clothes and wrapped him in blankets it was sill 5 hours to hike out of the ravine and an additional two miles to their snowmobiles. Then there was an additional 6 miles on the machines to safety.
They’ll have a story to tell for the rest of their lives. And they all know that Saddler came very close to losing his.
None of us will live forever. And the really important messages are best delivered face-to-face and in person instead of being entered into the memory of a cell phone hoping they might one day be delivered. So I’m trying to learn from Saddler and from the experiences of others. I still go out into the hills alone on occasion. And I still paddle alone on a very familiar lake. I’m just a person who likes to be alone and who enjoys being up when others are in bed. But I am very careful about my rescue plans. I make sure someone knows where I am going and when I expect to return. I have a dry suit that would give me an extra hour of survival were I to fall in the water - long enough to get out of the water where I paddle. I am cautious about the kind of paddling that I do when I am alone. I don’t paddle whitewater or even float down creeks without others along.
When I drive in the winter around here, I have plenty of warm clothes and survival gear in my car.
These things don’t mean I will live forever. They mean that I am aware that I am vulnerable and, like all humans, prone to accident and frail in severe conditions.
There are some experiences that I can live without. And some stories that I prefer not to have told with me as the central character.
It taught me an important lesson. We are not invulnerable. Unplanned things can occur. We need to practice sound judgement and exercise caution. We become overly dependent upon the reliability of our vehicles. These days when we head out into the hills we make sure someone knows where we are going and when we expect to return. We carry a survival pack with a stove, food, coffee, tea, candle lanterns and other gear. We make sure we have sleeping bags with us. It just makes sense.
But not everyone is so careful. Not long ago I was in a line of traffic near one of our middle schools on a very cold morning and I watched as youth after youth hopped out of their parents’ cars and ran to the school without coats, hats or gloves. Some were wearing shorts. Were they to be stranded even for an hour outside there would be serious frostbite. They, of course, were not stranded. They went from a warm home to a warm car and from that car to a warm school. But things do go wrong. Cars do slide into the ditch. I heard a report that when school was cancelled due to bad weather recently in Sioux Falls, students were left at the school by parents who didn’t know of the cancellation.
We sometimes don’t think of the consequences of our behavior.
By every report Barry Sadler is an experienced snowmobiler. He has a good machine and has done a lot of riding. He considers himself to be an extreme snowmobiler, riding his machine places where no others go. That is what he was doing last weekend when he was side hilling. He was riding his machine along a ridge with one ski in the air and one in the snow in a very remote area of the Idaho-Montana border out of Mullen, Idaho. He was riding alone without any emergency supplies: no water, no avalanche beacon, no satellite locator. Snowmobiling alone in that area is definitely high risk behavior never a good idea. But Saddler had done it before - lots of times.
The snow under his machine gave way and he and the machine slid 3,000 feet to the frozen creek at the bottom of the slope. Saddler landed on the bottom, with the machine on top of him. He broke some of the bones in his hand, but otherwise survived quite well. But he had no way to get out of the creek bottom and now way to signal for help. He ran his snowmobile for heat until it ran out of fuel. Then he assessed his situation and realized that he was going to die. There was no way to get out and he was going to freeze to death. He wrote farewell notes to his children and wife on his phone. He put on his goggles so the birds couldn’t get at his eyes. And he prepared to die.
Saddler was lucky. He was rescued by friends who had been searching for 30 hours. They got lucky and found his tracks. After they found him and got him into warm clothes and wrapped him in blankets it was sill 5 hours to hike out of the ravine and an additional two miles to their snowmobiles. Then there was an additional 6 miles on the machines to safety.
They’ll have a story to tell for the rest of their lives. And they all know that Saddler came very close to losing his.
None of us will live forever. And the really important messages are best delivered face-to-face and in person instead of being entered into the memory of a cell phone hoping they might one day be delivered. So I’m trying to learn from Saddler and from the experiences of others. I still go out into the hills alone on occasion. And I still paddle alone on a very familiar lake. I’m just a person who likes to be alone and who enjoys being up when others are in bed. But I am very careful about my rescue plans. I make sure someone knows where I am going and when I expect to return. I have a dry suit that would give me an extra hour of survival were I to fall in the water - long enough to get out of the water where I paddle. I am cautious about the kind of paddling that I do when I am alone. I don’t paddle whitewater or even float down creeks without others along.
When I drive in the winter around here, I have plenty of warm clothes and survival gear in my car.
These things don’t mean I will live forever. They mean that I am aware that I am vulnerable and, like all humans, prone to accident and frail in severe conditions.
There are some experiences that I can live without. And some stories that I prefer not to have told with me as the central character.