Alone

[OldJimbo]

As to the West Coast Trail I hiked it in 74, 77 and 79 and only met two folks going the opposite way.

Yep I was there in the 70's and spent quite a while at Clo-oose, since we could get huge crabs at the Nitinat narrows for a couple of bucks and cohoe from fishing boats which anchored in the bay for about the same. Planked salmon and fresh crab, it was like heaven. Now there's apparently the $150 registration plus $25 booking fee. And there's a mandatory orientation session and chopping tools are not allowed. My friend's son used to run the trail with friends in the 90's but now you can only cross the narrows with a permit and ticket so they caught up with people like that dodging fees.
I took my grand-niece and her husband on a lightning week long trip of BC when they had a week's layover on a trip to New Zealand. Even parking between Ucluelet and Tofino was a $20 fee at the designated parking lots (the only legal parking). I was pretty enraged since I've been a tax paying BC resident for a very long time.
Thank goodness we saw the trail in prime time!
I had to save a guy from a bear raping by Jasper on the same trip. We'd stopped so my Brit relatives could get yet more pics and a guy came up and was going to cross the road to get close to the bear to take better pics. Luckily I was able to drag him back! No the bear wasn't going to attack or rape him but the parks officials close by sure would have made him think he'd been since they have huge fines for approaching wildlife AND are a money making venture.

 

[OldJimbo]

The fire thing looks really difficult, I can understand Joe being so upset by the loss of his fire-steel. I've struggled to light fires in the UK in a wet season, let alone in an area where wet is the default situation and even growing wood has a high water content. Once you're established and can dry and store wood, friction fire-lighting becomes relatively straightforward and the loss of a firesteel wouldn't be as much of a problem, but when you are trying to cope with everything being sodden then a reliable source of hot sparks is extremely valuable.

That's why I reckon building a substantial shelter is a priority even if you couldn't build in a chimney. Given a bit of time you could also try cleaning the clay too, to see if it became usable.

Let's do this bit by bit..
As the show should soon show, rain here can be a whole other experience. I was in Calgary with my sister last summer for my grand-daughter Lyssa's wedding and she had her first experience of real rain. It's scary when your rain-fall bounces a foot in the air after hitting pavement! My sister has been in the far east for the last half century - Ontario.. Even coming from the wettest west coast I was shocked by Edmonton where traffic was halted while they removed man-hole covers in underpasses and cordoned off lanes. I was wondering what all that was about until (during a heavy storm) suddenly there were geysers of water coming out of manholes to a dozen feet in the air.

Yes if Joe had constructed a cabin fast then friction fire-lighting could have happened. Now when I use wood to make bridges and stuff I use driftwood hauled up at huge effort instead of just dropping a nearby conifer. That's because I'm not on a tree license like those guys and so while I can drop any deciduous tree I want except dogwood, conifers are commercial wood. I guess it was Lucas who dropped a tree? Green logs are trivial to split so a log cabin happens faster than most people would think possible with planks. Think minutes per split with an axe poll instead of baton like I've shown in pics. So a cabin is doable! And native people have done well here in long houses made from cedar planks for a long long time - using friction fires. It's a real trick to get cedar or cottonwood rigs to work otherwise! Here you could vastly expand on Mors' super stuff on lean-to's and fires since here heavy rain can also be horizontal. Native people did huge trips along grease (oolichan grease - small super oily fish fermented for grease) trails for trading inland and long canoe trips. They had some tricks I don't know about with friction fires since there is no flint here and little obsidian - and the pyrite you'd need to work with it is a trick to find.

When I started teaching elementary school here after years of high school I found we had kilns! My ex-wife was interested in pottery and I knew where to find clay deposits. By the time I started in elementary, the loot situation had gone from "Sure you can have a computer worth $700,000 in current dollars to "Clay is so expensive to ship!". Luckily we found local clay which was super and so pots fired with it would ring nicely! Electricity was free to schools then so over the years I wore out the kilns. And then roads flooded so it wasn't as simple as driving up on the west side of the valley and filling a bunch of five gallon pails with clay cut from a river bank. Given that I've got waterfalls falling into the ocean here I guess I should have pursued my clay washing more, for coastal clay. I guess eventually I'll get to this - cheap old man's pleasures.

 

[Draven]

I've been enjoying this show quite a bit. At least three of the participants are members over at an American bushcraft forum - Joe, Sam and Dustin.

I feel pretty bad for Joe (the fella who lost his firesteel) - he's a knowledgeable guy and I think he'd have had at least as good a chance as anybody if that hadn't happened. A stupid mistake that cost him dearly - and a good lesson for us and him. One mistake while you're camping is inconvenient, but one mistake while you're alone with limited kit and no reprieve in sight and you could be finished. He stated in a youtube vid that his gameplan was to stay on/near the coast and try to rely on seafood for a protein source. IIRC he said that he netted fish with gill nets professionally at a previous job, so he probably would've stood a decent chance and he had just got to his beach when he lost the steel!

IIRC, none of the guys are from the pacific northwest - adapting to the rain must have been a real challenge. I have to admit though that I expected to see more logs being busted open and feathered for dry tinder. They probably cut a lot, though.

I think that Sam stands a pretty good shot. His attitude is outstanding and that seems to be a major thing messing people up.

 

[Robson Valley]

Haven't seen any of the shows. Anyone who stuck to the coast would have had a banquet of shell fish (clams & oysters) with every low tide. The high sides of most estuaries still show remnants of
ancient kitchen gardens.
I've been wet out there in the winters = messes with your head.

 

[TeeDee]

Best quote so far from Sam , whom I'm kinda hoping for as he seems to be the one having the most fun.

" My Wife is Pregnant. I made her Pregnant."

 

[OldJimbo]

I've been wet out there in the winters = messes with your head.

Over the years I've known a lot of people who came out here for a good career working indoors and living in weatherproof warm houses - who quit because they couldn’t take the perpetually grey skies and constant rains of fall. It took an immense amount of work to keep them going until they could legally quit their contract in December, otherwise they'd have been blacklisted from their career. Meanwhile lots of us were happily donning rain-gear and going out hunting or fishing in the rain on every opportunity. It seems that a person has seasonal affective disorder or they don't.

An interesting thing about the lonely coast is that until smallpox and flu which killed almost all of the native people, it was actually a heavily populated and busy place.

 

[Robson Valley]

I'm fortunate in that I can basically ignore the BC winter gloom.
Plus, I'm far better dressed for poor WX, rain or snow, over the past 15? years.
I can fish all day in the rain, not hunt. Hunting in the snow is OK. Busting ice out of my rod guides is not.
I need "dry" first in order to focus on anything else.

There are no Dragonfly clan people any more.
On Haida Gwaii, smallpox killed all of them and their village was abandoned.

The anthropologist Franz Boas estimated that the coastal native population was no more than 200,000.
That implies a lot of food and a lot of shelter and very efficient organization. Stone Age.

 

[Countryman]

Ok I caught the first 2 episodes on catchup this evening and I'm hooked. Is this being repeated?


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[copper_head]

Episode 3 airs tomorrow, although I guess it's available online already.

 

[Countryman]

Thanks Copper Head. I thought I had missed it.


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[rik_uk3]

I watched e3 on Saturday, its good but its just not 'grabbing' me...should do but its not

 

[Dave]

For episode 3 I'll refer you to post 88.

 

[OldJimbo]

I watched e3 on Saturday, its good but its just not 'grabbing' me...should do but its not

I should feel that way since this is one of those "competition shows".

What turned me around when I started watching (after initially dismissing the show), was that I am interested in how people make out. I don't care who wins, but I am interested to see a condensed version of how people with skills from other regions do on the coast.

The problem is that really the whole show is a set-up, and you have to get past that in order to get your insights. Just the example of taking someone who has an issue with dogs to a place where the wolves and coyotes howl every night should be the first clue. Lots of bears - yep put people in the nursery, the strip of trees bounding some clear-cut. While there's readily gather-able food, most of the good stuff needs a canoe to get to it, or is in the form of bivalves which you'd be wise to leave alone unless you know if the stuff is affected by red tide. The clear cuts should be loaded with deer there, but you need a gun, bow or some nasty stuff to feed well. Heavy rains should start soon - on and on it goes..
But what is now "The West Coast Trail" started as the "Dominion Lifesaving Trail" because so many people got ship wrecked there. A lot of people have had to face what these guys are facing.

The anthropologist Franz Boas estimated that the coastal native population was no more than 200,000.
That implies a lot of food and a lot of shelter and very efficient organization. Stone Age.

It all sounds so easy in books, just make a huge warm dry long house out of cedar planks, and few huge dugout canoes, nets for oolichan, some cordage strong enough to pull in a halibut. On and on... Then a person tries one little bit and finds out just how hard it is. It didn't take me long to figure that I'd vastly under-rated the tasks.

 

[Countryman]

How can any of you not like this?


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[dewi]

How can any of you not like this?


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To be fair its following the same format as most survival type shows on the tv... instead of showing what it is to survive, it is concentrating on manufactured dramas and editing the film to follow those dramas with the exception being the big fella who seems to be in his element. He's pretty much the only one who so far has identified local plants to eat, cooked a slug (which looked pretty tasty) and seems at ease in his environment. Everyone else is drama drama drama.

Can fully appreciate the fear of the wolves, and being charged by a bear doesn't sound like a pleasant experience, but at the same time they knew they'd be in a wild environment... surely they should have been prepared to hike out of danger? One of them at least had the foresight to realise he'd need to cross the channel to get to fresh water and improvised a boat.

The guy with the fire steel... fair enough, he lost his firesteel, but surely he could have dug deep and thought of a solution to his predicament rather than quitting straight away... or, and I mean this genuinely, was it edited to make it look like he quit straight away? Drama again.

It is better than many attempts at survival shows, but after talking to a friend of mine who lives in Vancouver... he has offered to take me onto the island for a week to camp and experience it for myself.. he's not the type to put us both in the danger that the show would have us believe the island to be. He laughed when I said the only way I would go is with a rifle by my side.

 

[Robson Valley]

I can drop you off near the middle of nowhere within 30 minutes of my house but it's all prime Grizz habitat.
The key advantage of Vancouver Island is the coast, itself. You can forage for more than you can eat, every low tide.
Small foods in the interior are surprisingly difficult to harvest (birds & rabbits & squirrels.)

 

[dewi]

I am genuinely tempted to take up my mate's challenge of a week on the island... all I offered him when he came over here was a few nights in the local pub, a trip to a closed maritime museum and a once round at the transport museum. Not exactly the cultural exchange he was hoping for, other than the local ales he enjoyed.

I wonder if without the drama, without the selective editing, whether a programme like Alone could hold its ratings and be some sort of groundbreaking success for being different from the competition-led game-show-like drivel we're treated to on every channel every night of the week.

Good honest bushcraft and a strong mental will should find the 'winner' of Alone, but I reckon the true winner will be the one who feels truly at home with their environment and enjoys the experience... my money is on the big fella. He's got character and humour... just as important as the skills needed to survive.

 

[John Fenna]

To be fair its following the same format as most survival type shows on the tv... instead of showing what it is to survive, it is concentrating on manufactured dramas and editing the film to follow those dramas with the exception being the big fella who seems to be in his element. He's pretty much the only one who so far has identified local plants to eat, cooked a slug (which looked pretty tasty) and seems at ease in his environment. Everyone else is drama drama drama.

Can fully appreciate the fear of the wolves, and being charged by a bear doesn't sound like a pleasant experience, but at the same time they knew they'd be in a wild environment... surely they should have been prepared to hike out of danger? One of them at least had the foresight to realise he'd need to cross the channel to get to fresh water and improvised a boat.

The guy with the fire steel... fair enough, he lost his firesteel, but surely he could have dug deep and thought of a solution to his predicament rather than quitting straight away... or, and I mean this genuinely, was it edited to make it look like he quit straight away? Drama again.

It is better than many attempts at survival shows, but after talking to a friend of mine who lives in Vancouver... he has offered to take me onto the island for a week to camp and experience it for myself.. he's not the type to put us both in the danger that the show would have us believe the island to be. He laughed when I said the only way I would go is with a rifle by my side.

The guy with the lost sparkstick is "Ranger Joe" on BcUSA and he tells his tale in a video on that site....

 

[OldJimbo]

I wonder if without the drama, without the selective editing, whether a programme like Alone could hold its ratings and be some sort of groundbreaking success for being different from the competition-led game-show-like drivel we're treated to on every channel every night of the week.

I think that only the Ray Mears' shows can hold enough of an audience to proceed without huge drama. The "Life Below Zero" series is good - but that's because no drama has to be built in, in N Alaska.

 

[Johnny Canuck]

I love Ray Mears, his Aboriginal Britain and Northern Wilderness were superb.