Survival night

Only 5 weeks left!! The end of this course is hectic. Ive been real busy with school stuff and had no time to mess around on here. I got my business plan and ski trip plan done and sent off on time and the last few weeks I've been busy planning next weeks paddling trip and done a few things in between.

Two weeks ago we had a kind of mini survival test. Nothing too serious, we just headed out to the forest in the morning and had a short session on how to go about make an emergency shelter using only what we could find around us. Then we got sent off alone to build a shelter and stay in it overnight with only what we had with us which wasn't a lot.

I chose my spot, which was a flat-ish area where I could lay down, not close to an ants nest and not under any dead standing trees to fall on me during the night. There is no right or wrong way to build an emergency shelter, as long as it protects you from wind and rain as much as possible and gives a little insulation from the cold ground your good. I wasn't sure what kind of shelter I was going to build, but I started by wedging a small fallen tree trunk against a spruce tree that was going to be the main roof support.

Then I got more of the same logs to make cross pieces for the roof and carved some small wedges to help them stay in place. To make this task a little more realistic, even though it was far from a true survival situation. The only tools we were allowed to use were whatever we would normally have with us on a day hike in the forest, so I had my knife. That was also the case with our clothing and food situation. I had my regular clothes for a hike in the forest and just a bottle of water and afternoon snack of two bananas. No sleeping bags or food to cook.

I also used birch twigs to tie the cross pieces on to make everything a little more stable. A little unnecessary, maybe I wouldn't do it in a real survival situation if I had no time, but I knew it wasn't getting dark until 22:00 then so I was in no rush.

I weaved branches of rowan between my roof supports so I would have something to build the actual roof on. Something was starting to take shape and I began collecting spruce branches to build the roof. I was going to need a lot if I wanted it to be even slightly water proof. This took some time, I don't know how long I was doing it, but I had a proper sweat on when I finished.

Home sweet home. I made myself a bed of more spruce branches and put a log in front to try and stop me from rolling out during the night. I had my bag with me. It only had the water and binoculars inside, I'd eaten the bananas and it didn't end up making a very comfortable pillow. I still had a few hours of daylight left so I went on a bit of a mission because the mosquito's had started to come out and were already doing my head in when I was sitting around my camp. There was a forest fire warning so we couldn't light fires, so no warming up by a fire either.
When it finally got dark I tried to sleep a little, but no luck there. With my hood done up as tight as possible and my bag wrapped around my face to keep the mossies out, I could still hear them buzzing around my head. Eventually they disappeared when the temperature dropped. I was OK for a while, the spruce branches actually did quite a good job. I had maybe an hour or two of sleep then the cold crept in and just after 03:00 it started to get light and the bloody birds started singing. We had to orienteer to a meeting point by 07:00 to get picked up and taken back to school. At 03:30 I gave up trying to sleep so got up and went hiking to warm up and start to make my way back.

Alright I was a little hungry, tired and cold, but it was a pretty good experience and I'm confident enough that if it happened for real it would be fine.

Laters