John Jay has created a functioning plywood gun.  No, seriously.

David Codrea:

Agreeing with federal prosecutors, U.S. District Court Judge David Bury ruled on Friday that testimony regarding guns tied to Operation Fast and Furious “gunwalking” will be barred from the murder trial of the two men accused of killing Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Per KVOA News 4 Tucson, the jury “will not hear any details of how two guns found at the murder scene were part of a U.S. government-sanctioned weapon program.”

Mike Vanderboegh in Trump being a Charlatan (or Mike citing Jack Kelly).  Well of course he is.  He’s also an egomaniac, believer in a single payer health system, and has promised to bring all the Mexicans back across the border “legally” just as soon as they go home (which of course means that you would take care of those little Hispanic babies until they are 85 years old, just legally rather than illegally).  And he has a squirrel on his head.

Remington’s problems aren’t over yet.  I told you so.  I told you the better thing to do would have been to acknowledge the problems and recalled the Walker Fire Control System.  But then the lawyers and corporate executives got involved.

He left camp without survival gear or the proper clothing.  As we’ve discussed many times before, don’t be that guy.

Dependent care issues.  Return to regular posting soon.  Thank you.

In the mean time, read this (and this, and this and this).  Contemplate the list of survival equipment I have recommended you take even on a day hike.

First, a wonderful example of being equipped and prepared for survival:

A young teenager lost on a hunting trip is safe with his family Sunday night after he was missing for more than 24 hours in the Southern Colorado wilderness outside Custer County.

Clayton Jones, 13, was found by family friends Sunday morning just after 10:30 a.m.

Jones spent 27 hours on his own in the woods after getting separated from his father and grandfather around 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning.

“I was a bit freaked out,” Clayton said. “It was a little scary, I just wanted to get home.”

This teenager got thanks to his savvy survival skills. More than 12 hours after his ordeal began with no sign of another person let alone his family, Clayton had to seek shelter.

“I did build a fire,” Clayton said. “After I got warm, I saw a cabin and slept the night on their deck. The next morning, I found a road, kept going and ran into friends and they brought me back.”

When he received word his son was safe, Barry Jones started balling.

“I cried for 10 minutes,” Jones said. “I couldn’t even talk. To have a kid missing for that much time, whew, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever been through in my life. I taught him good, but I don’t care how much experience he has. I don’t care if he’s 35, I’m going to worry about him.

Clayton’s survival kit included food, water, rain gear, gloves and a knife.

Barry Jones teaches wilderness survival classes.

The smart lad got off the cold ground, built a fire, had food, water, rain gear and a knife.  I only recommend a few more things.  He did well.

Now for an extremely bad example from some adults.

Three hunters caught out by a snowstorm got a lucky break early this morning.

The trio had returned to their vehicle last night but became stuck. However, they were later airlifted out of the Te Papanui conservation block, 50km west of Dunedin, suffering from mild hypothermia.

Police were alerted about 5pm yesterday and a search and rescue team, which included three four-wheel-drive vehicles and a helicopter, tried to get into the area. However, poor weather stopped them from reaching the stranded hunters.

At 2am, the weather improved enough to allow a helicopter to get into the area and the men were airlifted out.

Constable Donald Peat said that the hunters were not properly equipped for the hunting trip.

”They were not carrying any survival equipment, such as extra clothing, extra food, sleeping bags or a personal emergency locator beacon,” Peat said.

It just doesn’t take much to be prepared: 550 cord, a tarp or rubberized rain poncho, trekking poles, a gun, water, protein bars, a tactical light, redundant means of fire starting, a small water filtration device or a small container of household bleach, a tactical knife, clothing for warmth (e.g., parka, emergency Mylar thermal blankets), and a compass.

With this simple list you can have shelter, fire, self protection, warmth, light, and ability to stay dry.  And if you’re going out in the woods, stop and buy a lighter or Ferrocerium rod.  Do this whether you’re going in the wilderness for one hour, one afternoon, or one week.  Do it regardless of how long you intend to be in the wilderness.

I’ve also explained what I do for fire when intending to go into the wilderness.  For every night I expect to be in the wild, I put a briquette of match light charcoal and a cotton ball soaked in Vaseline into a waterproof container (one piece of charcoal and one cotton ball for each night).  The cotton ball starts immediately, and helps the charcoal to start within seconds.  This makes fire starting quick in the event that you get wet when it’s cold or in the case of wet wood.

Prior: Wilderness Survival

News from New Jersey:

WEST MILFORD, N.J. – Authorities believe a 300-pound black bear attacked and killed a hiker in a North Jersey nature preserve.

West Milford police said five friends from Edison, N.J., were hiking in the Apshawa Preserve when they encountered the bear on Sunday. Police say the group of inexperienced hikers became frightened and ran in different directions at about 3:44 p.m. They noticed one member was missing when they regrouped.

A search team located the body of 22-year-old Darsh Patel at 5:54 p.m. West Milford Police Chief Timothy Storbeck said there was evidence of bite marks and claw marks on Patel’s body.

The bear was about 35 yards from Patel’s body, circling the area, according to West Milford Police Capt. Richard Fiorilla.

Storbeck said members of a search-and-rescue team clapped in an attempt to scare away the bear, but it stayed there as if protecting the body. The bear, which was believed to about 4 years old, Fiorilla said, was euthanized at the scene.

Take note that this isn’t a Western state where we are discussing a brown bear attack or a mountain lion attack.  This is the East, and it was a black bear attack.

I’ve said it before.  Don’t go into the wilderness without a gun.  Of course in New Jersey the problem is that it is a “may issue” state, where one must “specify in detail the urgent necessity for self protection” in order to carry a weapon.

The fact that a bear killed a man wouldn’t be considered an urgent necessity for self protection by the authorities.  They would rather see people die at the hands of animals or men than to allow their citizens to go armed.

California:

For one California man, what began as a day fishing trip quickly turned into a five-day fight for survival.

Mike Vilhauer, 58, went fishing Aug. 6 at Lower Sunset Lake in Alpine County when he noticed he wasn’t catching any fish. Deciding he needed more bait, Vilhauer, butterfly net in hand, left on what he thought would be a short trip to find some grasshoppers.

“I was just zigzagging up and down the mountain,” Vilhauer told ABC News. “I didn’t see anyone for quite a while.”

After a few hours, Vilhauer said it began to get late, and he decided he should probably head back to the fishing site. “That’s when the fun began,” he said.

Vilhauer began to make his way towards what he thought was the fishing site. But with darkness upon him at about 8 p.m., he decided to make shelter under a pine tree, covering himself with pine needles and willow branches in an attempt to stay warm. Vilhauer attempted to call 911, but a weak signal thwarted his efforts.

Vilhauer continued his search for the help on Thursday. Weak from his lack of food and water, he adapted what he called his “survivor man routine,” drinking water out of puddles, regardless of what else was in the puddle.

“I thought ‘I’m going to keep walking, I’m going to get back to my wife,’” said Vilhauer, who lives in West Sacramento.

After trying to find a way back the whole day, Vilhauer came across a stream and began to follow it before the sun began to set. Setting up a camp of tree bark and needles, he slept for another night in the open wilderness.

He was crushed to find on Friday morning that the stream came to a dead end. “At this point I’m thinking ‘Man, this is looking bad,’” Vilhauer said.

Vilhauer continued to wander in circles on Friday, unsure of where he was or where to go next. Exhausted and hungry, he set up camp under a large rock.

“I hadn’t slept at all,” said Villhauer, “It was cold and I just tried to keep moving around. It rained every night.”

Saturday morning brought no relief.

“I hadn’t eaten since Wednesday morning,” said Villhauer, “I was so weak, I could only do so much before getting too exhausted and having to lie down.”

Grounding himself underneath the rock, Villhauer tried to build up his strength. He decided he would try to climb up the side of the ridge, only to find out that every time he thought he had reached the top, there ended up just being another peak ahead.

Suddenly, Villhauer could hear helicopters in the distance. One flew overhead, but kept going, leaving Villhauer “disheartened.”

“It was a rollercoaster of emotions,” said Villhauer, “I thought, ‘You know what? I’m done. This is it.’”

“I was thinking about my family and my wife and all of the stupid things I’d done to get myself into that position,” said Villhauer.

“And then, after 10 to 15 minutes I decided ‘No. Hell no. I’m not going to give up, I’m going to get down to that stream and I’m going to sit there and wait until somebody finds me,’” he added.

Villhauer made his way back down the stream, drinking out of puddles along the way, and made his way back to the rock.

He picked up a piece of driftwood and began writing his last words to his wife.

“I put all of these thoughts down, I had to continue on another piece of drift wood,” Villhauer said.

He then used cypress needles to spell out “HELP”, saying “I figured if I don’t make it, at least I gave it my best shot.”

Sunday morning, Villhauer had just had his first meal in five days – a dandelion – when he heard the helicopters again.

“I got excited, I started waving around my blue shirt on a stick,” said Villhauer as the helicopter kept repeatedly flying over and then leaving.

“It was a big rush, and then the letdown. A big rush, and the letdown,” described Villhauer, who assumed that the choppers were operating on a grid system, so once they deemed the area clear they would not be returning.

“I figured, if they hadn’t seen me yet, I was in here for the long haul.”

The choppers returned and began circling Villhauer, when he suddenly heard a bark from behind him. It was a search dog leading one of the rescue teams that had been looking for Villhauer since Friday.

After five days in the wilderness, he had been saved.

Folks, as I have pointed out so many times, carry a day pack / patrol bag.  Twenty pounds can save your life.  You need: (a) a gun, (b) fire starter, (c) a tactical light, (d) 550 cord, (e) water, (f) a heavy rubberized poncho, and (g) a compass.

With the gun you can protect yourself, with the light you can see at night, with the fire you can prevent hypothermia, with the poncho and 550 cord you can make shelter in under two minutes, you need the water to live and you need the compass to navigate.  You may even go comfortable and carry along a few energy bars.

Why is this so hard?  Why do people go into the wilderness unprepared?

Boston Globe:

Eric Mazur has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, skied down Mont Blanc, gone back-country skiing in the Rockies. Besides being a dean of applied physics at Harvard, Mazur knows his way around maps, compasses, and GPS coordinates.

But it was on a recent ski-trekking trip in the White Mountains of New Hampshire that he and a group of his students faced life-threatening peril. “We came very close to not making it out at all,” says Mazur.

A combination of near-zero temperatures, bad luck, and regrettable decisions in a massive wilderness area with no cellphone reception turned an overnight outing into a near-disaster. The story of the weekend in the woods is a lesson on how quickly events can take an ominous turn — and how grit ultimately got the group out of a frozen labyrinth.

All six suffered hypothermia and dehydration. Three had severe frostbite that turned gangrous. One was hallucinating. By the time they got to the emergency room at Speare Memorial Hospital in Plymouth, N.H., their body temperatures hovered near 92 degrees. At 90 degrees, Mazur says, the brain doesn’t get adequate oxygen “and that’s the end.”

Mazur has been unable to wear shoes on his frostbitten toes since the February misadventure. He wears open-toed post-op shoes, and three toes on his right foot remain at risk.

They left Fraser’s car in a parking lot off the Kancamagus Highway not far from Loon Mountain in case they decided to take a southern route out the next day — a route Mazur had done only once, the first time he led a group.

This is where Mazur typically would have questioned rangers about the southern trails: Which are broken in for skis? Which bridges are out? But because they were running late, and he thought Fraser had already asked, Mazur did not speak with the ranger, which he would later regret.

They then drove north to the departure point, a parking lot on Route 302, a few miles from Bretton Woods. It was noon when they donned cross-country skis and shouldered backpacks containing food, water, clothes, and sleeping bags that weighed about 30 pounds each. They had reserved bunks for the night at the Zealand Falls hut, run by the Appalachian Mountain Club.

Mazur relaxed. The paths were clear, the sun out, the fir and birch glades beautiful, the views spectacular. There was a lot of uphill trekking to the hut, which is at 2,600 feet, but they made it by late afternoon. For dinner, they ate the minestrone soup and pasta they’d packed.

Zealand Falls, one of only two White Mountains huts open in the winter, was at capacity with 36 bunks.

The next morning, they decided to explore the southern trail that would ultimately lead to Fraser’s car. If conditions were too difficult, they could always turn around.

But they didn’t set a point of no return and found themselves bogged down on an unbroken trail in deep snow. Single file, they took turns in the lead positions to break in the trail, but made slow progress. The hut ranger had assured them their hiking plans were solid, crossing the Presidential Range toward Loon Mountain.

“He made it appear like it was a walk in the woods,” says Mazur. That’s pretty much what Mazur thought, too: “The White Mountains don’t look like Everest or K2. I’ve always considered them a little bigger than hills.”

It was 15 miles from the hut to the parking lot near Loon, a full day’s hike under the best of circumstances. But this was February of a record-breaking winter. Many of the blue trail markers on the trees were covered with snow.

And there were many fallen trees, with all six having to take off their skis whenever they had to climb over. Each tree meant a 10-minute delay and “there were dozens and dozens and dozens of trees,” Mazur says.

Then there were the creek crossings: “down six feet and up six feet,” each one a 20-minute affair. “Meanwhile, the clock was ticking,” says Mazur.

Their water containers froze solid. They each had only an energy bar to eat. The trail, when they could find it, had become nearly impassable, unbroken and littered with obstacles.

As the sun set, Mazur still wasn’t too concerned; he’d summited Kilimanjaro using a headlamp. At about 6 p.m., now wearing their headlamps, the group reached Stillwater Junction, where several branches of the Pemigewasset River merge. Once across the frozen river, according to Mazur’s GPS, they would hit tracks.

Instead, they were greeted by more fallen trees and huge boulders. Mazur’s ski binding malfunctioned, so he took off his skis and carried them. His feet were freezing and wet. The temperature, he believes, was close to zero.

At 7 p.m., they were still 10 miles away from the southern parking lot. They were hungry, thirsty, and exhausted. “At that point, the group started to disintegrate,” Mazur says.

Two people wanted to return north to the Zealand Falls hut. But that was a 12-hour hike back. Two wanted to build an igloo-type shelter, but they had no tools, and it would take hours. Mazur and Kelly Miller, a graduate student from Toronto and the only woman in the group, agreed: They had to keep moving south.

At 1:30 a.m., they got to a creek that wasn’t frozen over and was dotted with tree trunks. Fraser led, then Mazur, followed by the others. It would take an hour for all to cross. Shivering on the other side, Mazur told Fraser that he could not stay still, he had to keep moving and would call for help as soon as he got cell reception. Fraser would wait for the others. Each person had a GPS.

The trail descended and Mazur’s skis picked up speed as his headlamp weakened. “Here I am with 30 pounds on my back on an icy trail in the dark, and I don’t know what’s ahead,” he says. “If you fall, it’s hard to get up.”

When his GPS died, he dug out the spare battery, but because of the cold, it would not turn on. By this time, Mazur and the others had been in constant motion for nearly 20 hours, with little water or food.

At 3 a.m., he reached a closed campground, where a map was posted. He still had 2.5 miles to go, but at least he was on the right trail.

Mazur says he never worried that they might not make it out. “But what I didn’t realize was the danger of hypothermia.”

It was 4:30 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 17, when he reached the parking lot.

You can hit the Boston Globe to see how it ends.  So I beat on this endlessly here, but this is ripe for yet another beating.

The point where this expedition took a turn for the potentially deadly is when they were trudging along in the dark, wet and exhausted.  To my readers, if you ever find yourself traipsing down the trail in the dark, exhausted, dehydrated, cold, hungry and wet, you’ve screwed up.  Don’t go past dark.  Simply don’t do it.

Give me 30 pounds and I could have packed enough gear to have made it for a week in the mountains.  Give me 15-20 pounds and I could have been comfortable that night.

You don’t keep going.  You stop with daylight left because you have the wisdom to know that you’re not going to make it back.  You ensconce yourself in a shelter of your own making if necessary.  If you aren’t carrying a tent, carry a tarp with 550 cord and use trekking poles for support along with trees.

Cut pine bows from surrounding trees to lay down to keep the ground from sucking heat out of your body.  Gather wood, and use the 5X rule (gather five times more than you think you need to make it through the night).

If you have a sleeping bag you’ll likely be warm, if not you have the fire.  Carry a steel or aluminum container with you and you can boil snow or river (or even puddle) water to make it potable water (and in spite of what you hear know-it-all Cody Lundin say, it isn’t pronounced “pottable,” it is pronounced ˈpō-tə-bəl).

I’ve never understood survivalists who want to teach people to survive with nothing.  My philosophy is not to carry nothing.  Carry something.  That something, as I’ve recommended before, is this: (1) gun, (2) fire starter, (3) small tactical light, (4) container, (5) heavy rubberized poncho (or better yet, tarp), (6) 550 cord, and (7) knife.

With this simple list you can have shelter, fire, self protection, warmth, light, and ability to stay dry.  And if you’re going out in the woods, stop and buy a lighter or ferro rod.  Do this whether you’re going in the wilderness for one hour, one afternoon, or one week.  Do it regardless of how long you intend to be in the wilderness.

How much easier can this be?  Don’t go into the wilderness unprepared, and don’t travel after dark.

Fox News:

CONGAREE NATIONAL PARK, S.C. –  Search crews have found a father and his two children who had been missing for more than two days in the vast woods and swamps of the Congaree National Park in South Carolina, officials said Tuesday.

In a news release, the National Park Service said rangers had located J.R. Kimbler, his 10-year-old son, Dakota, and his 6-year-old daughter, Jade.

The three did not appear to be seriously hurt and were being taken to a local hospital for observation, officials said. Authorities planned to release more information later in the day.

Crews traveling by airplane, boat and on foot had been looking for the family in the 27,000-acre site since the father sent a text message late Saturday saying they were lost.

Officials closed the park Monday afternoon during the search. An investigative team from the National Park Service had also checked on leads outside the park in case the family members had not been lost while hiking.

There had been no indication Kimbler, 43, took any camping gear or other items for an overnight stay. The taxi driver left his cigarettes in his cab that was still parked near the visitor’s center Monday, and his daughter’s inhaler and other medicine were in the hotel room where he lived, according to his family.

The park has marked trails, but beyond the paths are tangles of old growth trees, swamps and underbrush. The land has become even more rugged since an ice storm in February knocked down thousands of trees and limbs.

“Many of the trails you can’t see to navigate right now,” said Sana Sohen, a park service spokeswoman.

ABC News reports that “Kimbler and his two children – Dakota, 10, and Jade, 6 – set out for a nature hike Saturday in Congaree National Park. They soon found themselves lost in the 27,000-acre park with no food, water or supplies … During the ordeal, the family drank dirty rain water collected in puddle, and even tried unsuccessfully eating wild turkey eggs.”

The Congaree National Park is more than 40 square miles of old growth forest and swamp, the original stomping grounds of General Francis Marion, legendary Swamp Fox of the war for independence.  It’s no place to go out unprepared and without a knowledge of the area.

We’ve covered this many times before.  I don’t even go on day hikes without a day pack or patrol bag, water, energy bars, tactical light, poncho, fire starting equipment, compass, 550 cord and a gun.

With the gun you can defend yourself and perhaps obtain food, even with a handgun.  With the poncho and 550 cord you have instant shelter in the rain and can avoid hypothermia.    With the fire you have heat and light along with water purification, with the water you pack in you have temporary hydration and a container for collecting more water (it’s best to pack a water container that can be put into the fire).

With the compass you have navigation, and with energy bars you have relief from food gathering in the initial stages of survival.  With pack, water, bars, heavy rubberized poncho, 550 cord and a gun (with several magazines) you can get by with less than 15-20 pounds.

If you can’t pack in 15-20 pounds, you shouldn’t be going into 27,000 acre old growth forest and swamp that managed to destroy the morale of troops commanded by General Charles Cornwallis.

From Michigan:

SILVER CITY — A father and son from Albertville, Minnesota are lucky to be alive after being lost while snowmobiling and surviving 28 hours in near minus 20 degree temperatures.

Benjamin M. Jenny Sr., 40, and Benjamin M. Jenny Jr., 19, are in Aspirus Ontonagon Hospital Monday night in good condition. Both men suffered hypothermia and dehydration symptoms.

Michigan State Police at the Wakefield Post say the two men were snowmobiling in an area near Silver City in Ontonagon County on Sunday. They were last seen leaving a restaurant at 11:30 a.m. Police say the pair was on the trail all day and on a river. While on the river, their snowmobiles began to ice up and stopped. They were stranded in the back country, deep in the woods. It was 5:30, Sunday evening.

Authorities say at that point they tried to walk out. The snow at times was four to five feet deep. They had no survival gear with them.

The father and son did have a cell phone, but they could not get service. They instead sent a text message about their situation. After that, the cell phone went dead and the weather turned worse. A blizzard was taking hold.

The Michigan State Police were called in Sunday night about 8:30. Those with the Michigan DNR, the Ontonagon County Sheriff’s Department and County Emergency Coordinator and the U.S. Forest Service were all part of the search and rescue party.

Several search and rescue snowmobilers started down the trail Sunday night. Around one Monday morning, weather conditions turned them back. The blizzard was too much for the rescue crews. There was an eighth of a mile visibility, winds clocked at 20 to 30 miles an hour and gusting to 40 miles an hour. The search would have to wait until later.

A State Police official says search and rescue crews wanted to know the last known location for the two men. That’s when the United States Air Force entered the picture. The Air Force was able to use that last text message ping from the men, to narrow their location to within four square miles where they were last. That’s where the search and rescue crews headed Monday morning.

Thirteen people from local, state and federal agencies were involved in the search. They were on snowmobiles and snowshoes. The U.S. Coast Guard helicopter was called in to assist. However, weather socked them in, at their base in Traverse City. The Michigan Civil Air Patrol Group 700 also tried to get their fixed winged aircraft up, but weather made that impossible.

After a long night in the woods of Ontonagon County, with temperatures of minus 20 and a windchills even worse, no way for the men to start a fire, police say they knew they had to keep moving to survive.

Finally, at 2:11 Monday afternoon, 28 hours after being in the woods, Bill Doan, a supervisor at the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, found both men. Doan was on snowshoes.

Good grief.  We’ve covered this in detail folks.  I don’t even go on a long drive, much less out into the wilderness on camping, hiking, or other trips, without at least: A gun (or guns) and extra ammunition, a knife, 550 cordage, a rubberized poncho, a tactical light with extra 123 batteries, and multiple means of starting a fire.

This list is a bare minimum, and I might carry much more.  But with the items on this list you can keep warm, give yourself shelter (with the poncho and 550 cord), see at night, and protect yourself.  For a trip into the snowy wilderness, this list would be significantly expanded to include a tarp, fleece, heavy gloves, parka, head and face protection, and maybe a sub-zero sleeping bag.

Dear readers – don’t even be caught in a situation in which you weren’t prepared because you had quite literally nothing when you went out into the wilderness.  You know better than that.

Prior:

Survival In The Canadian Wilderness

Nineteen Snowy Days Of Survival

Gene Penaflor of San Francisco made it 19 days in the Northern California wilderness with no help.

The 72-year-old hunter who was lost for more than two weeks in a California forest survived by eating squirrels and other animals he shot with his rifle, and by making fires and packing leaves and grasses around his body to stay warm, his family said Monday.

Gene Penaflor of San Francisco was found Saturday in Mendocino National Forest by other hunters who carried him to safety in a makeshift stretcher, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

Penaflor disappeared after heading out with a partner during the first week of deer hunting season in the rugged mountains of Northern California, a trip he takes annually. The forest is about 160 miles north of San Francisco.

“He goes hunting every year, and he comes home every year,” his daughter-in-law Deborah Penaflor said Monday outside Gene Penaflor’s small home in the Bernal Heights neighborhood. “We’d gotten a little complacent that he would always come back.”

Gene Penaflor separated from his hunting partner for a couple of hours as usual to stalk deer. While they were apart, Gene Penaflor fell, hit his head and passed out, Deborah Penaflor said.

He woke up after spending what appeared to be a full day unconscious, with his chin and lip badly gashed. He noticed fog and morning dew and realized he’d been out for a while, Deborah Penaflor said.

Gene Penaflor had a lighter, a knife and water with him when he went hunting. But his daughter-in-law said the knife and water bottle somehow got lost in the fall. She had no further details.

Still, he was able use his rifle to kill squirrels to sustain him while he awaited rescue. He also found water in a nearby drainage.

To stay warm, Gene Penaflor made small fires and packed leaves and grasses around his body. When it rained or snowed, he crawled under a large log and managed to stay dry, authorities said.

“He knew at some point he was going to die, but he figured he’d last as long as he could,” sheriff’s Detective Andrew Porter told the Ukiah Daily Journal (http://bit.ly/1ekjENg ).

[ … ]

“I didn’t panic because panic will kill me right away. I knew that,” Gene Penaflor said to a KTVU-TV reporter upon his arrival home.

Mr. Penaflor was in the very large 53,887-acre Yuki Wilderness area (web site here), and was found 19 days after he went missing by a group of hunters.  He also ate snakes and lizards to stay alive, and attempts to signal helicopters by smoke failed.  Finally, a massive search effort with dogs to find him failed.

He fell in steep, rocky, treacherous terrain.  This underscores the risk of solo backpacking as well as the improbability of lone wolf scenarios.

Unfortunately he lost his container and his cutting tool in the fall.  I would have gone back to find them.  At least he had his rifle with him and that likely saved his life by giving him a source of food.

Whether alone or not, I would have never entered a wilderness this large or terrain this difficult without at least the following in a day pack or one day patrol bag: large tactical or fixed-blade knife, tactical flashlight, 50-100 feet of 550 cord, a heavy gauge rubberized rain poncho, stainless steel container for boiling water, fire stating kit, wind/rain parka, gun (if I wasn’t hunting with a rifle I would be carrying at least a handgun) and extra ammunition.

I have discussed this before but it bears repeating.  My fire starting kit would include a lighter and matches, as many pieces of match-light charcoal as nights I expected to be in the wilderness (one briquette per fire), and several balls of cotton soaked in petroleum jelly for rapid ignition.

Surviving this 19 day journey without fire would have been impossible.  It’s remarkable that he was able to find sufficient shelter from the rain and snow to survive.  With a large Poncho and 550 cord one can always build shelter (at least in wooded areas) within one to two minutes.  Assuming that you are using trekking poles you don’t even have to be in a wooded area.

Even with this kit the total weight of your can ruck can be kept to 15-20 pounds, which is a small price to pay for survival.  Kudos to Mr. Penaflor for his survival, and with every report like this we learn more about what it takes to make it in the wilderness with minimal resources.  Plan, purchase, prepare and practice.