A Winter Survival Primer

Dec. 12, 2007

The country was gripped last year by the story of a California family of four that took a wrong turn in the middle of the night on the road to the Oregon coast, got stuck in the snow, and were trapped. Nine days later the mother and her two children, one four, the other a few months old, were rescued in good shape because they had done the right things to survive. The father, however, made the fatal mistake of leaving the shelter of their car and going on foot in search of rescue only to die of hypothermia. Being as that winter is almost upon us once again, this is a good time to revisit rules for cold weather survival.
That’s also the title of a little pamphlet by Frank Heyl, world-known expert on survival, with me, Harley Sachs, as the tech writer. Though not for sale, the pamphlet can be downloaded as a pdf file free from the Gerber Legendary Blades knife company web site.
The deal Frank and I made was to split the royalties fifty-fifty, and we were paid in kind, which means I got a box of hundreds of copies of the pamphlet which are almost all given away in the hopes that they will save someone’s life.
No payment could be worth more.
If you or any relative engages in cold weather outdoor activity, whether it be skiing, hiking, camping, snowmobiling, snow boarding, or travel in a remote place, you’d do well to equip yourself with the basics which the now-dead Californian lacked when he set off after being stuck for almost a week in the Oregon coastal mountains.
You can live three weeks without food and three days without water; but you can die in only three hours from hypothermia.
Make this your shopping list:
- A compass. People tend to wander in circles, and after mushing through snow for many miles, the victim of the aforementioned situation died only about a mile from his family.
- A space blanket. The cheap ones are simply a sheet of reflective plastic, silver on one side to reflect heat back to your body if used as a blanket and orange as a distress signal on the other. A space blanket can be turned into a tarp against the rain, a tent, a rain catcher for drinking water, etc.
- A good knife such as a Swiss army knife.
- Matches or a lighter. SAS pilots used to be advised to buy an American box of strike-anywhere matches and pour melted candle wax into the box to make the matches better fire starters.
- A plastic, wide mouth bottle to be worn on a string under your clothes. Dehydration is a killer. Filled with snow, the bottle will provide drinking water. To eat snow chills the body’s core, bringing on hypothermia.
- Sun protection in the form of sunglasses is important as well, for the sun does come out in winter and snow blindness is a real danger. At high altitudes in particular, sunscreen is important to prevent sunburn.
- You can make effective fire starters by tearing cotton rags into four inch squares, soaking them in melted paraffin, and cooling them on waxed paper to be included in your survival kit.
- A coffee can with a couple of long burning votive or plumber’s candles will keep you from freezing while trapped in your car.
- A signal mirror. You can alert an airplane pilot of your distress. Do not practice against airplanes, please, for that’s against the law. Try it first on a distant tail light of a parked car.
The mother of the trapped California family was able to nurse both of her children and they had a bit of food in their stuck car. She tramped out “SOS” and “OUT OF GAS” in the snow. Before her husband left, they took the tires off the car and burned them for heat and a signal. There’s a danger in this if the tires aren’t pierced first, for they can explode.
As Frank Heyl points out in his introduction to Cold Weather Survival, you must first admit that you are lost and carefully evaluate your prospects before trying to walk out. If you are not prepared, the safest thing is to stay in your stuck vehicle. A car is easier to spot from the air than a person. Wait to be rescued.
There’s more to cold weather survival than these few tips. You can read more of the story in Frank’s manual, downloadable online at http://www.gerbergear.com/fendforyourself.php.
That little book may help you survive in the cold. When I lived in Sweden, the cross country skiers in the Arctic mountains were well prepared for a whiteout or for damaged equipment. There are remarkable stories of survival and too many tragic one of people who got stuck and didn’t know what to do.

Visit the web site www.hu.mtu.edu/~hlsachs where you can listen to Harley Sachs’ stories, read reviews, and find links to the publishers of his books.