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Do backpackers need survival tips? Backpacking may never become a matter of wilderness survival for you, especially if you are careful, but getting lost or twisting an ankle far from any road is always a possibility. Learning a few new things from time to time is a great way to make your trips safer and more interesting, so with that in mind, here are a few random survival tricks and skills based on my own experience.
Want a survival tip that makes for a delicious meal? Crayfish turn red just like a lobster when they are boiled, and taste similar. You get a little chunk of meat from the tail of each. Finding them under rocks is more efficient than baiting them. Since they swim backwards, reach from behind them to catch them.
For quick ropes or cord in the desert, peel yucca leaves into strips and braid them together, overlapping the ends. It took me thirty minutes to make a rope like this that four of us couldn't break (two on each end).
You can kill porcupine with a stick. They won't die easy, but they're slow, so you'll have plenty of time. Dress them from the underside, where there are no quills. They taste good roasted over a fire. The mountain man tradition was to never kill a porcupine unless it was a true emergency, because as long as they're around, there is easy food for survival situations.
You can cook in containers made of birch bark. Fold it into something like a breadpan. There are two methods. One is to drop fire-heated rocks into the liquid to bring it to a boil. The other is to use the pot directly over the flame. If the flame doesn't go above the level of the liquid, the pot birch bark pot won't burn, because the heat is conducted away quickly by the liquid inside (this is the method I have tried.
In the right snow conditions you can make snow-block shelters without tools. I 've made trench-shelters of 2 x 3-foot snow-blocks with no tools. I stomped rectangles in the heavily-crusted snow and lifted up the resulting blocks. Stacking them on either side of a trench in the snow, and then across the top for a roof, I was able to make a shelter in twenty minutes.
Maple syrup is made in late winter and early spring, but it is too much effort to in a wilderness survival situation. However, you can get a couple hundred calories per day by just drinking maple or birch sap. Collecting it can be as easy as snapping off the ends of twigs and putting something underneath to catch the dripping sap. I've collected a quart per day for several days from one cut branch.
There are hundreds more of these little tricks that can make wilderness travel more interesting and safer. While you may not be interested in practicing survival techniques, why not at least read a few survival tips now and then. You may someday remember something that can save your life.
For more survival tips, see the
new Wilderness Survival Guide at:
http://www.The-Ultralight-Site.com/wilderness-survival-guide.html