Friday, January 26, 2007

Wilderness Survival - Basics For Your Backpack

This is the beginning of a survival series we are working on. Since this is just the first post in an up coming series of posts, I'll stick to the very basics with a few tips, and get into some of the more detailed survival techniques in the posts to come. With the recent deaths in the Oregon wilderness, survival education seems an important part of winter travel. But survival techniques are an essential for any outdoor trip, as any time you are away from direct contact with other people - you should be well prepared for the possibility of emergency situations. Anytime you leave civilization to venture out in to the wilderness, you should keep a few tools to ensure survival, even if you're only planning a short trip.

So let's start off with a few things you should always keep in your backpack - actually, that's the first thing you need, even for a short trip - a backpack. There are a few things that you'll actually never want to be without. They can make a huge difference in an emergency, and could be the difference between survival and a deadly situation. Sharp pocket knife

  • Water proof matches or a lighter
  • Small but durable flashlight and extra batteries
  • Local area map and compass
  • Protien rich snack foods
  • First aid kit
  • Plentiful supply of fresh drinking water

We'll explore the backpack one would pack for an extended stay in the wilderness in a later post, but for now we've just covered a few basics for packing up for a very short trip, such as a hike or day trip. This is just a small basic list, and there are many other things a person could carry with them to ensure safety either in bad weather or if one gets lost. We'll cover those in a later post as well. I'm sure there are some of you that would have much to say about items that are necessary in a day hiker's backpack - so take advantage of the comments and tell us what you would want in your backpack.


Technorati tags:
, , , , ,

1 comment:

  1. Since this is a post about wilderness survival, we deleted the irrelevent spam comment. Not only was the comment purely spam, but it was promoting a splog, and it just urked me to think that some of you might unwittingly support splogging. We thank our readers for commenting, but we don't support spam-comments, and will remove them out of courtesy to our readers.

    ReplyDelete

Blogging the local Mt Hood area of Oregon. With skiing, snowboarding, hiking, shopping, wind surfing, live bands, resorts, movies, and much more to do, you'll never be bored in the Mount Hood area.