Someone Rescued Tells Of Ordeal

https://www.kpax.com/news/ravalli-c...-wilderness-for-5-days-shares-emotional-story


Good afternoon all,

Per ...

IMPORTANT NOTE: When lost, stop moving ! The SAR teams function best and fastest dealing with the stationary and not the moving.

A phone but no strobe light or signaling mirror ?

Berries can be healthy.

 

Are there other points to note in this story?
In the mountains...horses...
They know at sundown it gets chilly or COLD or snows.
Don't people go in on a hike a little more prepared? What's the other rule? Mostly, don't split up.
I'm not mocking him. Happy ending. Maybe next time he'll be better prepared.

 

Good morning Radar,

Real good points.

I was only addressing the SAR and ill-equipped aspects (no strobe light!).

Understand you're not using mockery in post. We are really a research org. It's implied in our Forum's masthead.

There just might not be another next time for him. His foundation shows he never learned about solo travel but he was articulate enough to become a defacto leader and do what he wanted to do.

 

One way to sum up his problem is, "What we've got here is failure to communicate.". Search and Rescue team and volunteers, and at least one helicopter, are looking for him but he can't communicate with them or anyone else.

There's very few places in the US that you wouldn't be able to reach either an amateur or public safety radio repeater, and in most rural areas the public safety ones are still using the old standard FM mode which is compatible with just about any dual band transceiver on the market, and they start at $27:
https://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-65-108-Dual-Band-Radio/dp/B008IYCQSO

There are four amateur radio repeaters in Ravalli County Montana alone: https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?ctid=1634&tab=ham

And about a dozen police, fire, EMS, public works, and school (for the school buses) repeaters:
https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?inputs=1&ctid=1634#cats

Repeater antennas are on tall towers, usually atop mountains or hills, and 30 or more miles from a handheld transceiver to one is usually doable.

Not to suggest this is the best solution but just another tool for the survival toolbox. How much time, trouble, and money would have been saved had he just keyed up on one of them with, "Hi, sorry to bother you guys but I seem to be very lost. My name is X, would you please call the police and tell them I'm on this frequency?". Much easier to find someone when you can communicate with them.

Now if you want to take it a step further, and going a little off-topic here, post-SHTF you may need to be the SAR team to find a lost team member, or want to know where an 'unfriendly' person is transmitting from, in which case you'll need a directional antenna (and a little practice). This is a VHF band one I built using tape measure segments as the antenna elements, flexible being better when moving through the brush.



Search on "tape measure yagi" and you'll find lots of plans and instructions to make one. Then all you need is a radio with a real signal strength meter, the Baofeng mentioned above doesn't have one (just FYI). I can usually get a direction/bearing on someone transmitting (in the 140 to 170 MHz range) in about 10 seconds if I'm already listening on their frequency, else about 1-2 minutes if I need to find their frequency with the scanner first and then program the radio to it.

 

Good afternoon Gate Crasher,

Real good info.

We've got to highlight - with neon sign ! - your quote:

"post-SHTF you may need to be the SAR team".

 

Intriguing info for some little po-dunk like me.
Plus, even I take snacks and water on day hikes.

 

OK, this story is a great example of things NOT to do if you are going into a forest that is big enough to get seriously lost in. First off he evidently didn't have a compass or GPS loaded on his phone. If he did and knew how to use it he wouldn't have been lost. A small survival kit that will offer shelter, water, and fire with a few extras is no bigger than a wallet. Have ONE with you!

If you get lost to find a clearing preferably near but not right on the water and stay there. Being right beside the water at night means lots of bugs and a possibility of snake, gator or predators. During the day the water will help you be cool and you can drink if you must. If you make a fire in a clearing you will be found in a short period of time. Even without a fire, you can spread out a space blanket during day and it will be easy to spot from the air.

People need to understand that you WILL NOT DIE if you miss a meal or two. If you eat something that you are not used to and it gives you diarrhea it may kill you. A few berries if you KNOW what kind they are will be OK but if you try and make a full meal off of them they will make you sick as a dog! I wouldn't worry about food as a serious thing for a week at least unless I had health issues that demanded that I eat or die. I carry a tiny fishing kit and some snare wire in all my pocket kits. Sitting and fishing while you wait for rescue is good mental medicine and gives you something to do that isn't using up any energy. You can do the same thing snaring little critters like lizards and such. If you have a fire you can eat a little bit. You don't need much and shouldn't ever eat very much at a time no matter what.

If you have the knowledge and a plan along with a very little in the way of tools being lost can be an adventure rather than a terrifying nightmare. I honestly never go in the woods without a plan that might include a night roughing it. My wife knows that I will be fine and am not going to hurt myself stumbling around in the dark.

 

Good morning GC, Radar and TexDan,

Ref: "The knowledge"; "a plan";

As soon as I read "horses" and "lost", I knew knowledge was absent in this group. Plans come prior to mounting horses.

Results were predictable.

 

STOP! is a great tip, stop, sit yourself down, have a brew if you can and think, get your mind straight.

A big yes for carrying a radio, the little Baofeng radios are super value for money, if your not a radio ham make sure you know how to use it, make sure its programmed to the frequencies you need but their range in heavy woodland is limited so don't rely on gaining access to repeaters with one; they do have a built in LED light which you can set to 'strobe'

GPS these days is vital, I'm in Norway this winter and we will have a Spot Beacon with us, not expensive certainly as a group purchase.

There is a British Bushcraft instructor who has a great reputation, knows his stuff and its worth looking at him on Youtube, Ray Mears. NO BS, no gung ho shite, just good clear knowledge.

 

I have never developed an interest in a GPS for in the woods. If I have a compass I'm good to go. It is simply a matter of making plans BEFORE you go in. I always have looked at a map and at least in Texas, there are very few places that don't have roads of some sort running through them. If I know where I'm going in I always have the knowledge of where the roads, creeks, and rivers are and if worse comes to worst I'll use the compass to go to a road and then out. When people get lost it is because they don't know the basics of the area that they are in and don' have a compass or plan.

I use to take long walks in the woods at night. I would take a nephew and when he was lost I would let him try to lead us out. LOL, when I got tired I could always look at a compass and just walk out. There was a huge ranch on one side of the forest. I could walk due east until I got to the fence and then follow that fence to the road. just to mess with my Nephew I would turn when I could see the clearing where the fence line was and he never saw the fence. eventually, he learned the ways and got good at finding his way.

List of the wallet-sized survival kit...

Small disposable poncho in a plastic bag that is hand sized.
Space blanket folded to same size as poncho
Large piece of heavy duty foil
Large garbage bag
Small ferrocerium rod
Folding credit card knife
Bundle of jute twine
Matches sealed inside plastic straw
Small button compass
Hooks, line and sinkers I wrap the line around the hooks with split-shot inside the wrap and put it in a tiny ziplock bag
A little snare wire
A small plastic mirror
A fresnel lens
An unlubricated condom
6 water purification tablets
Bleach in sealed plastic straws.
Tiny led light

I can get all of this inside the little bag that the poncho came in. I then like to seal that in a seal a meal vacume bag. When trimmed it is wallet sized. If I have room I add tea bags and sugar. The foild makes a pot to boil in and I can make a cup out of foil or plastic. I have considered wrapping it in paracord.

 

The following would fit in a subsection of a backpack. I swear, if you put your mind to it, you can get a bunch of survival gear inside something the size of a lunch pail.

hurricane matches with high burn temperature fire starters
compass & plastic-laminated map
first aid kit w/suturing w/antibiotic cream, not large, duct tape for splint-making
put stuff inside small spool of duct tape
big knife with saw, but keep the weight down
space blankets, plural (if room, sheet of plastic, or wrap everything in a sheet of plastic)
military grade paracord
small bottle of close to 100% deet for insects
water filter
trail mix
signalling flashlight water-protected
soap or powder detergent to clean wounds

Inside your boots: have real pair (spare pair in backpack) of the best-you-can-buy hiking socks. Tear-up your feet and see what hell that buys you.

 

No medicine / ointment loadout ? One RX Tylenol 4, when in GOOD or INCH mode can be determining if even preparing soup du jour pine neddles.

A whistle.

 

Using maps in heavy woodland is the same as using maps in a jungle...very difficult to get an accurate fix on your position and this is where GPS comes out on top. You won't always get a signal without finding a clearing but they are still a very valid item to carry.

The UK is a very small island so on a day to day basis my 'emergency' carry on my person is cash, card and smartphone. A basic car carry for winter is a box in the back of my Discovery,
Army 'Softie' cold weather jacket and trousers (compress very small), wool socks, wool balaclava hat, gloves.
British army 24 hour ration pack (forget US MRES, go for these, much better) and two litres of water
Spare smart phone and power bank
Trangia model 27 cook set and 500 mls of Ethanol
Army Goretex jacket and pair of army Matterhorn boots.
Army Goretex bivy bag.
Spare Baofeng hand held.

More than enough for the majority of the UK.

 

Good morning Duke in Wales,

If you can find a clearing to get a GPS signal, it's realistic enough to believe a map might have some utility in this same located clearing. Hopefully you can sight a couple of landmarks and with some intersections and resections, soon enough enroute to Waffle House.

Ref the better quality British Army ration packs; ...... so the story goes, ... during Hurricane Isabella, the New Orleans situation got bleak. The British Consulate General arranged to have delivered 280,000 English breakfast emergency meals. They would enter the US duty-free under the US Tariff Schedule section "GIFT" only requiring the consignee to be an official allowing for the import. Here it was the FEMA Director at the disaster scene and he was asked to sign the Customs House documents. He said "No ...... no ... these people have suffered enough already.

The UK is not that small ! That waterway between the big island and Northern Ireland has similar attributes and hazards to other waterways.