The Wilderness Survival Handbook: A Practical, All-Season Guide To Short-Trip Preparation And Survival Techniques For Hikers, Skiers, Backpackers, Canoeists, Snowmobilers, Travellers In Light Aircraft-And Anyone Stranded In The Outdoors

by Alan Fry

Overview

Outdoor enthusiasts can easily be caught unaware by accidental injury, equipment failure, climate changes such as rain or snow, and other unexpected situations. In a clear, concise style Alan Fry covers what people need to know before starting out, including:

-Choosing the appropriate clothing and footwear
--Starting and managing fire
-Building emergency shelter
-Administering first aid
-Obtaining water and food
-Signaling for help
-Staying calm until help arrives

This revised edition of Wilderness Survival Handbook reflects the best of both modern information and native lore from Fry's decades of living and travelling in the outdoors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250104205
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/17/2015
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Alan Fry grew up on a bush ranch in central British Columbia and spent years in various northern outposts. While writing the original edition of this book, he lived year-round in a tepee outside Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. Now he divides his time between a house in Whitehorse and a log retreat that he built himself near Lake Laberge, where the tepee frame still stands.
Alan Fry grew up on a bush ranch in central British Columbia and spent years in various northern outposts. While writing the original edition of this book, he lived year-round in a tepee outside Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. Now he divides his time between a house in Whitehorse and a log retreat that he built himself near Lake Laberge, where the tepee frame still stands.

Read an Excerpt

The Wilderness Survival Handbook

A Practical, All-Season Guide to Short Trip Preparation and Survival Techniques for Hikers, Skiers, Backpackers, Canoeists, Snowmobilers, Travellers in Light Aircraft â" and Anyone Stranded in the Outdoors

---

By Alan Fry

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 1996 Alan Fry
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-10420-5

---

CHAPTER 1

Clothing

* PRINCIPLES OF HEAT LOSS AND RETENTION

The bush country is in many ways a nurturing mother. It provides you with wood which will burn readily in your fire and with abundant brush for your shelter and your bed at night. It provides you with food in the form of small and large game and, at some seasons of the year, it supplies edible plants. It can, of course, be capricious about food, offering little or even nothing in some regions and an abundance in others.

Yet there is one way in which the bush is decidedly a severe mother. The climate of the bush country, year-round, produces weather against which you must protect yourself; moreover, in high summer, when you just might be able to survive both days and nights outdoors for a short period without adequate clothing, it will produce a constant horde of mosquitoes. The bush is no place to go scantily clad.

Your clothing is your first line of defence against this harsher side of the bush; if you are well clothed, what would otherwise be the cause of misery and suffering becomes a source of invigoration and joy.

When I go out from my camp in the crisp mornings of January as the returning sun first spills its golden splendour over the frozen landscape, my heart sings.

I travel on snowshoes along the edge of a meadow and past a beaver dam to see what may have happened there in the night. At one place a moose crossed, not two hundred yards from my camp. Here a weasel popped into the snow and burrowed through to pop out just there, do you see? Doubtless he was hunting the abundant shrew, the tracks of which are all about.

There are no words to capture the joy of such a morning. The air, fresh from the high arctic, is crisp and invigorating. By the thermometer which hangs in a tree in my camp it is chilled to exactly –43° C (–45° F), and in my delight at how life thrives in this forest through these winter months I am pleased with the thought that tomorrow morning it may be colder yet.

Now what joy could there possibly be in this winter morning if I were chilled to the bone, if my fingers were numb with the cold, or if my feet were in pain at the onset of frostbite? Yet, for want of a few pounds of just the right clothing and footwear, misery and even danger would have replaced pleasure and delight.

Were I clad in rubber boots in place of these moccasins, in last summer's favoured denims in place of these wool trousers over wool underwear, in cotton or leather gloves in place of these moosehide mitts with woollen inners, in a tight-fitting, fashionable short jacket in place of this loose- fitting parka with its great fur ruff and its generous length which protects me down to my knees — if I were so clad, I could not be out here for the morning, much less the day, without being miserable in the cold.

If by chance I had to spend the night outdoors in such an outfit, I would probably perish, and in my misery in the daytime and my perishing at night I would illustrate the two most important functions which clothing, in all seasons, must fulfil: first, it must give you protection with convenience in the daytime, and second, should the need arise, it must help substantially to conserve your body heat through the night.

That's important to remember, so let's state it again: your clothing must give protection with convenience in the daytime and help substantially to conserve body heat through the night.

Another cardinal fact about clothing is that, in order to fulfil the twofold function we have just identified, it must allow the continuous free escape of body moisture. Even when at rest and just warm enough to be comfortable, you are losing moisture through your skin. If moisture cannot escape through your clothing, it must then accumulate in your clothing. Your clothing then loses its ability to insulate, and in severe temperatures the result could be fatal.

The only time when there is an argument to be made for clothing which prevents the outward movement of body moisture is during heavy rain when there is much more moisture trying to get in than needs to find a way out. Nevertheless, many people of long experience in the bush (remember, I am not speaking of rainforest) find so little need of waterproof rain gear that they simply do not keep any in their outfit. More on that later.

For now, let's repeat this second cardinal fact about clothing: it must allow the free escape of body moisture.

Finally, functional clothing for the bush must be adjustable to an increase or decrease in the body heat you generate and to changes in air temperature.

A friend said to me recently that it is important in the bush not to keep comfortably warm but to keep comfortably cool. I thought about that for a while and decided that it hits the nail on the head very precisely indeed.

While I enjoy a good sweat, it is only a good idea in the hot days of summer, when it serves a good purpose, or, in other seasons, if you have fresh clothing on hand.

In all the seasons when it is extremely important to conserve body warmth it is distinctly counterproductive to overdo the job and get up a sweat. At best, in cool weather the result is discomfort, both from the prickly dampness of moist clothing against your skin and, after the period of overheating is over, from a sense of tiredness and chill.

In cold weather, the result of getting up a thorough sweat can be sheer disaster. When you stop feeling too warm, severe chill sets in and it is impossible to feel warm again unless you have the time and opportunity to light a fire and stay in the warmth beside it until your clothing is dry and once more can provide efficient insulation.

You cannot avoid the fact that your level of activity varies during the day and that, therefore, the amount of body heat you generate also varies. In easy going in the morning you are comfortably cool with everything on. Climbing steadily up a long gentle incline toward noon with your snowshoes sinking into the soft snow at every step, you can only be comfortably cool with your parka off and strapped to your pack and your shirt open all the way down. Occasionally you may even hold your undershirt out from your body to let cooling air come in to ventilate your skin.

Coming down the slope in the afternoon on your broken trail, you may have your parka back on but open down the front. Perhaps on the last mile into camp, as the sun goes down and the temperature drops, you will be done up snugly, and very glad of it.

What you have done illustrates this third principle about functional clothing in the bush: that it must be adjustable to changes in the body heat you generate and to changes in the air temperature so that notwithstanding these changes you can remain comfortably cool.

Wear layers of clothing so that you can take layers off as you warm up, and then put layers back on as you cool down. This technique is known as layering, and it is the most practical way of adjusting your clothing to the changes in your body temperature which are inevitable in response to your activity level and to air temperatures.

So now we've identified three main criteria for clothing that is suitable in the bush: first, it must give you protection with convenience in the daytime and help substantially to conserve body heat during the night, should that need arise; second, it must allow the continuous free escape of body moisture; third, it must be adjustable to changes in the amount of body heat generated and in air temperature.

Then there is one further quality which we must look for in bush clothing, and we have had to worry about this mainly since the arrival of the synthetic fibres. Bush clothing must be resistant to fire, at least to the extent that it burns only by smouldering or, on going to flame, burns moderately. You cannot escape the fact that sometimes you must use fire to cook, to dry clothing, and to keep you warm while you are sleeping. You cannot avoid momentary contact of clothing with flame or the occasional landing of a burning ember. Cloth which bursts into flame on the first contact is lethal. We will discuss this in more detail later in this chapter.

We can now have a look at the sorts of material from which clothing is constructed, and the kinds of garments which are genuinely useful in the bush — a true first line of safety and protection.

* CLOTHING MATERIALS AND THEIR PROPERTIES

There is such a profusion of materials now about for the manufacture of cloth of every kind that one hardly remembers the time, brief years ago, when if you understood the uses of cotton and wool and to a minor extent of leather and fur, you knew all there was to know on the subject. Now with the addition (to name the commonest) of rayon, nylon, and polyester, together with the variety of blends of these not only with each other but with wool and cotton as well, you may be forgiven if it seems impossible for you to make knowledgeable choices.

I have in front of me at this moment samples of material ranging in weight from a light broadcloth to a heavy woollen type of trouser cloth. The mix is various to say the least. There are four different light cloths of pure nylon. There is an extra-light shell cloth of polyester, cotton, and nylon in proportions of 55-25-20. There are two cloths, each different from the other, of polyester and cotton in a 65-35 and a 67- 33 mix respectively. Then we have a cloth in cotton and nylon in a proportion of 66-34 and, finally, two weights of a wool-like cloth, one a mix of wool, rayon, and nylon in proportions of 60-25-15 and the other of wool, nylon, and polyester in proportions of 75-15-10.

What does a body make of all that?

Let's consider some of the clothing materials available to us and the properties which they offer, starting with the basics.

WOOL

Wool must rank among the most useful materials which the white man brought in trade days to the North American bush. While it is undeniably true that clothing made from animal skins by the Indian people was often the finest possible for the purpose, wool proved to be immediately useful; and, as supplies of skins decreased because of changes imposed by European occupation, wool became a vitally important material in both clothing and bedding.

The Hudson's Bay Company blanket, bearing its point marks to signify relative weight of cloth, was both a standard of quality and a staple item in trade. Indians valued these blankets for daily use and commonly used one as a burial shroud on the death of a tribe member. I saw the remains of a three-point blanket come out of a grave accidentally disturbed during road construction in the Skeena River country in the early sixties. The skeleton and the blanket, its point marks still in evidence, were carefully re-interred by the occupants of the present-day village located not far from the old burial site.

I have a pair of three-and-a-half-point blankets in my camp outfit, and they are in everyday use in the lounging area at the back of my lodge, where a visitor may throw one about his shoulders should the evening turn cold and I pay insufficient attention to the fire.

The Hudson's Bay Company also trades a product known as duffle cloth, available, in substantial width, by the yard. It is a thick wool blanket-cloth of exceptionally resilient quality. If you press it between thumb and forefinger it will compress somewhat under the pressure, but as you release it you feel it return to its full, durable thickness. It is used extensively in the northern bush as an inner liner in moosehide moccasins and — in combination with an outer shell of a tightly woven windbreaking cloth — in the construction of parkas.

Wool has excellent insulating qualities and has the enormous advantage of retaining much of its insulating quality while damp or wet. In this regard it is out in front of any other natural material by a country mile, and many people in bush conditions prefer a wool jacket to rain gear in wet weather. It is slow to let the water through. You may feel it growing heavier and heavier, but it's a rare rain that lasts long enough finally to wet you to the skin. Even then you aren't miserably chilled by the experience.

For the same reason, a leading quality of wool is that it resists becoming seriously wet from constant contact with wet snow. I have on occasion worked my way for hours through thickets of young conifers laden with wet snow, and have become a walking snowman from the wet snow constantly brushing onto my clothing. Yet, at the end of such a journey I have been fairly dry and certainly comfortable inside my clothing, the wet snow having for the most part not managed to wet the wool garments beneath the surface.

Many of the garments I once bought in pure wool I now buy in a wool-and-synthetic-fibre mix. The cloth performs nearly as well so far as I can discern, and undeniably wears far longer.

A disadvantage to wool in some applications is its weight. If you must carry your bedding on your back, you soon give up wool in favour of down or fibre fill.

COTTON

Cotton materials are widely used in the bush with versatility and good results, but please be aware of their limitations.

In stout denim, cotton stands up to heavy use and provides good protection against insects. In a light but tightly woven cloth, it makes an excellent windbreaking outer shell for use in cold winter weather, usually in a mix with polyester. Many users believe the best shell cloth is found in sixty-five percent polyester to thirty-five percent cotton. In shell cloth, cotton and cotton mixes let body vapour move out effectively.

Though cotton is widely used in light underwear for spring, summer, and fall, veterans of the trail generally agree that it's dangerous stuff and best avoided. It has no place in underwear in any season — except perhaps in briefs.

Cotton takes up water like a blotter. Wear cotton trousers in wet snow and you will be soaked to the skin — and not only to the depth of the snow you are walking through. The damp will creep a good long way up your legs besides. The same seems true of cotton and synthetic mixes. Avoid cotton in keep-warm layers and in trousers and jackets in damp conditions. Denim jeans may be great around camp, but will accelerate heat loss if you are caught out overnight in a drizzle.

SYNTHETICS AND BLENDS

Early experience with using synthetics in bush clothing was not good. For example, nylon parka- and jacket-shells stiffened in cold weather and crinkled with a loud noise a moose could hear a mile away. Material which needed to breathe often didn't, while some garments were a fire hazard.

The response of many people in the bush to this initial experience was to avoid the synthetics and stick to garments of cotton and wool, according to the season and the weather. There has been, however, enormous progress in the development of synthetics, and now many not only are free of the early disadvantages but also offer positive qualities which, either independently or in combination with natural fibres, give us cloth which is arguably superior to anything we had before their arrival. This is particularly true of the blends.

When it comes to the primary qualities one looks for in a material — insulative ability, protection against brush, wind, and insects, the free passage of body moisture, and resistance to moisture from wet snow — one usually finds that the mixed materials will now perform as well as the natural material after which they are designed and will outwear the natural material by a long shot. Heavy pants of a wool, rayon, and nylon blend in proportions of 60-25-15 seem to function, so far as one can discern by wearing them, at least as well as pure wool, and undeniably will outwear pure wool by seasons. The shell on my fine cold-weather parka is of cotton and polyester in proportions of 66-34, and is certainly as effective as the best tightly woven cotton shell-material. It will outwear pure cotton by years.

As to fabrics of a straight synthetic composition — rather than a mixed composition with natural fibre — experience seems varied. Work socks of synthetic fibre do not give the comfort of wool and few people care to use them. On the other hand, straight nylon cloth, used to contain down or fibre fill or employed in some shell materials, seems quite satisfactory. The lining of my parka is a nylon fabric and I find no fault with it.

Light woven or knitted material in both polypropylene and polyester is quite successful in light underwear for comfort next to the skin. It has no absorbency and rapidly rids itself of unwanted moisture.

Striking in recent years have been the synthetic fleece fabrics. The pilling and shedding associated with earlier versions have been overcome, and very durable fabrics, easy to care for and successful in application, are now used in a variety of weights for underwear and outerwear of many sorts. More on this later (see here).

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from The Wilderness Survival Handbook by Alan Fry. Copyright © 1996 Alan Fry. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Contents

TITLE PAGE,
COPYRIGHT NOTICE,
INTRODUCTION,
CHAPTER 1: CLOTHING,
CHAPTER 2: FOOTWEAR,
CHAPTER 3: MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT,
CHAPTER 4: FINDING YOUR WAY,
CHAPTER 5: SHELTERING,
CHAPTER 6: FIRE MANAGEMENT,
CHAPTER 7: FOOD AND WATER,
CHAPTER 8: CAMP MANAGEMENT,
CHAPTER 9: SAFETY AND FIRST AID,
CHAPTER 10: SIGNALLING FOR HELP,
CHAPTER 11: WALKING OUT,
CONCLUSION,
APPENDIX A: REQUIRED EQUIPMENT ON LIGHT AIRCRAFT,
APPENDIX B: WIND CHILL CHARTS,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
ABOUT THE AUTHOR,
COPYRIGHT,