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> Interesting day of survival training, some things I didn't know about survival
Tom_Crumrine
post May 1 2005, 11:23 PM
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30 April 2005

Intense day with Brian Horner from Learn to Return. Brian is a 20 year veteran of outdoor survival techniques. He talks fast, knows his stuff and is a lot of fun to learn with.

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For me the content was mostly a repeat of things learned in other survival safety courses but I really enjoyed the stories he told of hunting in Alaska. He goes out for long periods of time to hunt and takes no technology with him. No satellite phone, no LTR, no way to communicate. It sounds dangerous given that we have those tools in the modern world but I agree with Brian that those technologies can actually make a person behave in a more dangerous way.

At first thought one might disagree but I have felt that way for a long time. In my experiences in the outdoors people I have hiked with have come to rely too heavily on technology. If you rely on it too much you run the risk of real danger when that technology gives out. This winter I helped to lead a student group on a winter camping trip in February and got an unexpected 16 inches of snow. On the side of Mt. Whiteface the other leader and I had to think about 15 kids and their safety. The one thing that took the good situation to bad was the fact that we had agreed to let one student take the SAT and hike in with an adult later in the day.

In good conditions the hike in for the student and his adult companion would have been easy. I had done the entire circuit the week before in just a few hours. With all the snow though it had taken us 6 hours to slog to our night one campsite. Our problems were created because we both had cell phones. He called from the parking lot and it was almost dark. One of us started to hike down to him to meet him. After a few hours they had not met at the middle. Luckily there was still cell phone reception and the two groups were able to contact each other and call off the attempt.

We were very lucky. I have been mad at myself for a couple months because my gut instinct told me not to do the whole thing in the first place. We relied too much on cell phones and if one had failed we would have been in real trouble. Finally this brings me back to Brian’s point. If we had not had the cell phone option NONE of that trouble ever would have happened. The cell phone, a device that we should have been using as an emergency tool to get us out of trouble, had landed us in what could have been a terrible mess.

I began by saying that I had learned some of the things that Brian discussed in other classes. After looking at what I just wrote I have realized that I did learn something simply by being an active listener for the day. There is always a point to hearing something presented in a new way. Hearing Brian talk about these things refreshed my memory and again made me realize that I need to be more conscious of my gut feelings in the field. And not just gut feelings, it was very useful to think about doing all of the things that I have learned and rarely practiced. Let’s face it most people have never pulled traction in line on a broken femur. But hearing it all again along with all of the sprain and strain information brings it back to something that might actually come to me in a stress situation.

Brian also talked about habits of mind. Just like teachers try to teach habits of mind when teaching science to students (scientific method) Brian coaches habits of mind for emergency situations. If you already are prepared to have an accident and prepared for the fact that you might not make it back to camp then you are better prepared mentally for the journey.

That brings to mind another point. Mental preparedness for a tough situation can really help. There is a way to go about this. I have had some success in the past with positively thinking my way out of cold situations. I’ll have to remember to draw on the same kinds of things in the field experience.
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