Actually survived

[UKdave]

OK.We were chatting away about outdoor stuff at work,and a very good question was asked, which i wasnt able to answer (nothing new), has anybody, both here and abroad,ever been in a life or death situation and after being rescued said that they survived because they saw it on a survival show on the TV? I`m not talking members on here i mean joe public in general?
David

 

[irishlostboy]

usually any true "life or death" situations i have been in i survived due to quick reflexes and training. any i have been in have happened so quick that if i had to stop and think about them i would have been screwed.

 

[malente]

usually any true "life or death" situations i have been in i survived due to quick reflexes and training. any i have been in have happened so quick that if i had to stop and think about them i would have been screwed.

Now you've got me intrigued. Stories please! (if you're happy to share em, that is...)

Luckily, I've never been in a life or death situation myself, and I'm not planning to change that

Mike

 

[irishlostboy]

personally, i have had some very close calls kayaking. getting sucked into the backwash of a very large lock gate being one of them. i thought it would be a good idea to play on the wave of the water getting released from the lock. i got ripped from my boat. and just about managed to secure my place in the outwash. my boat didn't make it though and ended up spending nearly five minusets in the green room (i.e.deep under water) getting played with in the backwash. that was scary.
another would be a very extended swim on strandhill (surf beach with notorious undertow.) it took me about half an hour to reach the shore after a wave exploded my spraydeck. there was no one else out surfing with me, so no rescue. i gave up solo boating strandhill after that.
i still do solo boat, and do crazy things. but i always weigh up my choices as carefully as i can against my skills. i am a solid and well taught kayaker and instructor. but **** happens to the best of us.

we had one case of a guy falling 40 feet into a gully using his head to provide protection from the knocks. i was first on scene. someone else who was with me panicked and tried to go down to assist directly on top of the guy. i sent them back to get help from our leaders, as she was too bugged to deal with the victim. he wasn't moving or responding. i descended to the side of him, and was calling out, sure he was dead.
just as i got to him he sat up. i was so relieved. i bandaged up his head and checked him out for broken bones. the luckyest guy ever. a broken nose, and a broken toe. and much cuts bruising etc. he needed an air rescue out (naturally). he never set foot on a mountain again.

i have lots more horror stories. LOTS. but they all have a happy ending so far. mostly the point i am making is when things go wrong, success or failure is dictated in a very short time window. so quite often your initial responses need to be trained to act in the correct way, as stopping to think what so an so from tv would do is just not feasable.
maybe if you were lost and starving you could thing "ray mears does ......." but nine times out of ten, you are lost and starving because you screwed up a series of choices ages ago.

 

[malente]

Wow, thanks for sharing.

Good luck and happy endings to your continued adventures!

we had one case of a guy falling 40 feet into a gully using his head to provide protection from the knocks.

That made me laugh a bit

I'm just doing a bit of mountaineering and climbing (Alps and UK), nothing happened so far
(keeping fingers and toes crossed that it stays that way)

Mike

 

[NoDachi]

Nothing life or death, but I attempted to do a 5 day expedition across north yorkshire.

On the first day I broke my thumb in two places in the morning when I fell over (I won't go into details but my friend was laughing ) but we decided to carry on without getting any medical attention. I just wraped a bandage around it and carried on (which I later regret, my thumb causes me problems ever since).

And with only a one man tarp between 2 people, no rollmat, and a small 1-2 season sleeping bag. Needless to say it rained heavy practically none stop. My water proofs was no longer being water proof after the first day, all my clothes was soaked through, I didn't have a warm meal or hot drink for the entire expedition.

Needless to say, after the 5th day when we arrived at the end, both of us was suffering from hypothermia, and nearly was hospitalised by that alone, both of us had trench foot, my friends was the worse case the doctors had ever seen. Dehydration was pretty bad aswell, since us feeling all cold and miserable, we didn't drink enough water. I think only about 2-3ltrs for 5 days of solid walking so that made us feel pretty bad. I got a metal rod as thick as pencil led stuck about a couple of inchs into my thigh one night when walking in the dark, but since it didnt peice my trousers because it was blunt I couldnt pull it out by my self my friend had to give it a really hard tug. My trousers was both badly torn at the knees where I fell on some rocks, taking alot of skin with it causing some deep cuts that took a year or two for the scares to heal. And a load of other minor injuries.

But the main thing that I found the hardest was sleep deprevation, we found it impossible to sleep. Near the end I was beginning to halucinate and act all trance like while my friend kept crashing and blacking out while we was trying to build a shelter one night.

We both looked like an absolute mess when we finaly got back to civilisation. But we did the entire expedition of 120 miles on time.

It was such a hard lesson for bushcrafting beginners, most of it was entirely avoidable with the right experience and understanding. But you can't say we didn't learn ALOT from it. Ray Mear's TV shows never really helped us when it came to it ;-)


Oh and 2 years ago I was nearly caught up in a car bomb in Sri-lanker when it detonated 50 meters ahead on a street I was walking. But that's not really a bushcraft survival story.

 

[featherstick]

As Irishlostboy says, most of the time you are lost and starving because you screwed up a series of choices ages ago...

 

[OregonDave]

Interesting question UKDave. Knowledge is accumulative, so a tip here and there would perhaps make a difference even if a person forgot where he learned it. My early childhood outdoor experience with my family laid the foundation for later Boy Scout activities that then led to my military training. My current "bushcraft" learning is composed of remembering leasons learned as well as learning some new ones. Kit is fine, knowledge is better, especially, IMO, the knowledge to be cautious around unknowns.
OD

 

[Wallenstein]

I think this is a hard question to answer...

Here's an illustation:

Earlier this year I went up to the Lakes for a few days, staying in the Langdale Valley.

We planned a walk along Crinkle Crags for one day, but were mindful that the weather forecast wasn't great.

So we packed appropriate wet weather gear, and plenty of supplies, and set off with a clear route plan (including escape routes of the high peaks).

When we got to the top of the peaks the wind/rain was the strongest I've ever been out in - consistent gusts enough to blow me off my feet, and I'm not the lightest chap in the world! It would have been madness to continue on the exposed route we had originally planned, so we ducked down a side-track off the mountain to get to lower ground. We were on hands-and-knees for much of this descent, such was the power of the wind, and it took a couple of hours to travel 1200m.

Quite eventful, great to chat about over a pint in the evening, but hardly a desperate battle for survival.

Yet we used a range of "survivial skills", such as:
- proper route planning
- checking weather forecasts
- taking decent maps (and knowledge to read 'em!)
- the sense to get off the hills *before* it became dangerous

I would count all those things as "survival skills" - especially the final one! - but failure to plan our escape routes, or lack of willingness to cut short the walk, or getting lost through lack of navigational skills could very easily have put us in real danger.

I can see where the OP is coming from, but I guess I'm saying that we all use "survival skills" all the time, but because we don't have to eat lizards or whittle an ocean-going canoe from a coconut shell we don't recognise them as such.

That same weekend a person died on Helvellyn - it's not a stretch of the imagination to see how that could have been one of us... if we'd been cold and wet, and if we'd got lost, and if we'd had no idea to get off the high peaks. But because we used the skills we had, we "survived", even though it won't make headlines.

 

[Nicolas]

I did not have any moments I feelt screwed when beeing out and about but boy did I had close calls while lifting weights in the gym.
Just a couple of weeks I did some incline bench press and the bench underneath me just colapsed, try to balance 100kg and not let it fall on your chest.
The other time I helped my buddy with some last set and some cable snapped and wizzed by my head so fast I would have lost an eye for sure if it hit me.

 

[_Geraint_]

Like Wallenstein

I was walking in the lakes with my brother and brother in law whilst on a "short" walk up pike o'stickle tarn. It was raining lightly until we got to the top, then It got to get windy and very dense fog set in, we walked slightly off course, not wanting to walk to close to the edge we couldn't see.

We decided to walk on (at this point we should have walked back) and at this point we got "lost" and kept walking on. Then the winds got really bad, If I had to guess I'd say 70MPH, along with rain being driven at 70MPH it made looking ahead quite difficult.

We found a stone shelter and rested there for 5mins to catch our breath, at this point we all decided to just head down, we found a stream and decided to follow it down. (I wouldn't recommend this)

Lucky for us it was the Cumbrian Way, and we walked down into Seathwaite.
Where there was a telephone box and we were able to phone my dad who was in Ambleside to pick us up.

Not really a survival story, more of a close call.

We had a map with us, we had a planned out route, we also left a copy of the route with someone. We knew it was going to rain, but it didn't say anything about fog.

Knowing when to turn back is absolutely vital.
And being prepared and having the right kit for the job is also key.
We were lucky, we could have easily got Hypothermia if we took any longer getting off.

You learn from mistakes.

 

[littlebiglane]

Can't say I have been in too many life or death situations. Some of these have been abroad but must be left for another time. In the same vein as a couple of other posts - talking about the Lakeland.

Late Jan/Feb about a decade ago I decide to do some high level camping with my bro. I had all the kit and was well prepared. My bro (who would rather save money than get properly equipped) took - unknown to me - turned up with a one season sleeping bag, a gap packamac, running trousers and timberland trainers. It has been snowing and it was the week that over 20 people got pulled off the hills in the area by Naval/Coastguard rescue and Mountain Rescue due to bad weather.

In our excitment we arrived at the bottom of Langdale around 4pm (I think) and decided to walk up across Bowfell to camp.

So...two mistakes so far:
I had a 'team-mate' who was poorly equipped thus compromising our safety. I ignored this weakness.
Deciding to climb up Bowfell late in the day when it was going to get dark, in bad weather. I knew the forecast and that it was going to get worse. Excitment got the better part of caution.

We got up to Bowfell a couple of hours later, it was getting dark and I thought it best we pitch up as the winds were picking up to above 70mph, gusting a bit higher - possibly around 80mph on the exposed bit I suppose. I take it was this strong because the wind crushed my Terra Nova Quasar and pulled it off the hill (most probably due to poor anchorage) and I saw my tent sail off down the rather remote Langstrath Valley and into the growing darkness. It got prettly lonely all of a sudden.

My bro had started turning blue-grey and was also starting to panic (truly panic - ie babbling proto-terror, hyperventilating)

Then came the hail the size of broad beans.

By this time it was definitely dusk. I could have happily zipped myself up in my bivy bag and -24 sleeping bag and had a tolerable night. But my bro would have probably frozen.

I took the decision to dump some of our kit and make our way back down into Langdale before it became so dark I could not see my hand infront of my face. We had just under 1km of vertical descent to get down.

Mistake no.3 (at least) was to leave it so late as climbing down these hills in the near pitch-black (think of the Great Slab on Bowfell and the rather steep/wet/waterfall Ghyll down into Langdale, in bad weather with someone who has early-mid stage hypothermia. Risk of falling/slipping was a constant threat.

It took us 3 to 4 hours to get back down to the valley floor and managed to walk into the Dungeon Ghyll hotel bar (with a swimming-pool of water around our feet) in time to warm my bro up slowly and me to sink some whiskies.

Mistake no.4 - don't give anyone with Hypothermia alchohol.

Still he survived and I felt a little stupid since I thought I was more sensible than that.

I talked to Mountain Rescue the next day. They said the most important decision I made was to quit and come back before full-night. Sometimes a very difficult decision to make (and under the circumstances - and on balance - probably the right one on this occasion - but not without its own risks.)

It would have been a terrible night if we had stayed up there.

The result of this experience made me more determined to improve my skills and my judgement/experience of handling these occasions - it spurred me more into the outdoors. My bro never goes into the countryside now. Shame.

More stories later........

 

[sandbender]

Sometimes, no matter how skilled you are, or well equipped, your forced to rely on the abilities of others.

I once foolishly tried to drive a snowmobile through a tree, happily I managed to save the snowmobile from serious damage by absorbing most of the impact with my head.

My chin struck the tree first, this resulted in multiple breaks and fractures across the jaw, the force of the impact was focused through my teeth all of which simultaneously exploded, excepting my two front teeth which remained intact by virtue of the cushioning supplied by biting my tongue in half.

Needless to say my brain was 'shoogled' about during this process and I have no memories of the event immediately before or after the crash.

The accident happened in Sweden some two hundred kilometers north of the Arctic circle, the forest path where the accident occurred was of the beaten track and about ten minutes (by snow mobile) from the road most likely to have any passing traffic, the temperature was around - 30C this would fall to - 40C when night fell.

Had I been traveling alone the outlook wouldn't have been too rosy, luckily I was traveling with several others who handled the situation brilliantly, nobody panicked, everyone seemed to find a relevant task to do and within half an hour a Swedish Rescue Services helicopter arrived and I was whisked off to Kiruna, where the Swedish Health Service bolted me back together.

 

[FerlasDave]

Wow, thanks for sharing.

Good luck and happy endings to your continued adventures!



That made me laugh a bit

I'm just doing a bit of mountaineering and climbing (Alps and UK), nothing happened so far
(keeping fingers and toes crossed that it stays that way)

Mike

hi mike! im a climber too, how long have you been on the rocks?