Surviving the Wild

There is a tv cable program that I have started to watch once in a while(we haven't reinstalled cable tv for one year because we just got so tired of 20 minutes of commercials an hour and I couldn't talk my wife into Tivo and I got tired of taping everything before I watched it. Also, my daughter had never experienced life without Cable tv which is a very good thing for every child to experience at one point or another to better understand who they are and how they fit into the universe as well as getting along with their family.

The programs I've seen of "man vs. wild" on the Discovery cable channel have all been pretty accurate as to what one needs to do to survive the situations he "encounters". Even though the situations are obviously "set up" he does basically what one has to with minimal or no equipment to survive in these situations. If you find yourself vacillating on whether to do something or not to survive then likely you won't survive. You simply either do what it takes to survive in that moment or maybe you won't survive. Spending even 10 minutes thinking about what to do might cost you your life in many situations. So knowing when to simply act and when to (after you create some kind of food and shelter) when to take time to make a better plan is very important to your survival.

The first url following is the movie "Man vs Wild"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0883772/

If you want to stream tv episodes if your modem is fast enough from your computer
go to:

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/manvswild/episode/episode.html

One time my then wife in about 1986 and I were off in our van 15 miles from the nearest paved road and driving up into the snow on a dirt road. Even though I had chains I didn't have 4 wheel drive on this vehicle and when I tried to turn around I got stuck and trying to get out I got very wet and so did my wife. The temperature was very unfortunate. It was about 35 to 37 degrees farenheit. I would say from experience that some of the very worst temperatures to be out in above zero degrees are 32 degrees to about 50 degrees if you don't have a good shelter, good clothes and something to stop the nearly freezing rain whether that be a car, truck, roof or plastic poncho or something like that. We did not have those things. We were prepared for snow but not freezing rain and so we got into trouble. We both realized that we couldn't get the vehicle unstuck because of the position without the vehicle turning over and possibly killing one of us.

So we realized that about 5 miles from us was a friends cabin. We knew we might have to break into it but it had a wood stove if he wasn't there with wood we could light and not get so hypothermic that we would both get delerious and pass out. Another option would have been to stay with the vehicle but we both realized we had gotten too cold to be able to warm up without a fire and no fire could be built easily in this driving freezing rain. So we decided to jog the 5 miles to our friends cabin and break in if he wasn't there and build a fire so we didn't die. To this day I don't know if we made the right decision leaving our vehicle but the end result was we survived when many others wouldn't have. So by running the 5 miles we did get more hypothermic but not enough to begin serious halucinations even though by the time we reached the cabin there was not a dry place on either of us so soaked by heavy freezing rain were we.
After we broke into our friends cabin I had difficulty making my hands and fingers work. I had to light several matches and broke them in frustration because my hands were so cold they wouldn't work. So I was shivering shaking and swearing while my wife started to go into halucinations from hypothermia(being too cold too long). However, within 1 hour after reaching the cabin and building a fire we started to feel normal again. Within 3 hours our friend returned and was a little frightened until he saw who it was and was very grateful we had survived the ordeal. Before dark since he had a hefty 4wheel drive chevy pickup truck and a winch, he pulled our vehicle out of the snow and everything was okay.

So it is important to make a useful decision to survive. I still don't know today if I made the right decision because it was very close that we almost didn't make it that day. If I had gotten so cold that I began to halucinate from hypothermia neither of us might have made it and if we had stayed with our vehicle it might have been curtains for us. There were no cellphones then and we didn't have a walkie talkie or anything like that in our vehicle and there were no people at all within 10 miles of us where we got stuck. We survived. That's all.

I think the time I came closest to buying the farm though was on San Gorgonio mountain which is the highest mountain in southern California. I was 21 and it was Winter 1970.
I had driven to younger guys one 18 and one 17 up to climb the mountain with them. I had already climbed Half Dome with the 18 year old so I felt fairly comfortable climbing with him. However, I didn't know the younger guy so I wasn't sure if he would be safe to climb a mountain with. Anyway, we started off and I had snowshoes tied to my back to make it to the top of San Gorgonio Mountain 11,000 plus feet high. However, the cords I had tied the snowshoes on with were cutting into my shoulder so I said I'd stop and adjust them. They asked me if I knew the route to the top. I said, "yes." However, what I didn't know was that there were 2 trails to the top. These boys knew one trail and I only knew of the other. So needless to say I never found them even though I hiked all the way to the summit. However, when I summited at 4 pm I knew I was in trouble. I probably wouldn't have summited if I had known there were two trails because as the oldest I would have stayed with them to watch out for them because I was more mature in my thinking than they were. So I was on the summit and the sun was getting ready to set and I knew I was in trouble. However, I did have one secret weapon a large sheet of plastic like used on some greenhouses. I folded it up and made a sled out of it and slid down about 1000 to 2000 feet in elevation on the snow into the valley toward my car. However, after I stopped sledding down the mountain I put on my snowshoes and started walking but I was cold and tired and it was starting to get dark the sunset was beautiful but I knew this wasn't good as I was still 5 miles from my car. The round trip from car to summit to car was 20 miles so I had already walked 15 miles and was pretty tired and it was starting to get dark. Then something really bad happened. I walked over an invisible because of the snow 10 foot high manzanita bush. My weight broke through the 6 inches of snow on top of it and I was hung by my feet inside the bush called "ironwood" and impaled in many places. At least I didn't have blood coming out of my eyes. Because of my clothing most of the wounds weren't that bad just very painful. As I hung upside down by my snowshoes inside the bush my head didn't touch the ground. I was still several feet from the ground from my head.
I had snow and leaves in my eyes and up my nose and had to be very careful not to put my eyes out on the many twigs and branches surrounding my face. I was so tired and in pain at this point that I felt I needed to cry. I hung upside down for about 30 seconds before I realized that no matter how much it hurt I had to take off my snowshoes, fall further into the bush and then no matter how much it hurt climb out of the manzanita "ironwood" back up onto the snow "about 10 feet deep and put my snowshoes back on so I didn't fall through again. I knew I wouldn't do well if I fell through again. So I scrambled up and out after falling when I released my snowshoes. The hardest part was disentangling my snowshoes without falling back into the hole I had made in the top of 10 feet of snow.

Though there were many other problems in the dark like falling on ice on the trail many times in the dark I survived by walking to the car at about 10pm or 11 pm that night. By this time my father had driven there and contacted a forest ranger and were considering a search party for me the next day. All were incredibly happy to see me. I was really mad at the 18 year old and 17 year old for being as irresponsible as they were and jeapordizing my life.