Get noticed by rescuers
If you're injured or the conditions are too bad to
travel you may want to stay put and wait until you get
rescued. This assumes that somebody knows you're
missing, so make sure you tell someone where you're
going and when you plan to be back. In the wintertime
they will most likely be looking for you from the air
with infrared (heat) vision systems.
Your body gives out enough heat to be seen, but from
far away it could easily be mistaken for a large animal
and the rescuers could end up passing you by. Also if
you're behind a rock or a large tree seeking shelter
from the cold wind they can easily miss you.
The best way to guarantee that they will see you from the air
is to have a continuous fire burning. The trouble is
that it may take many hours or even a few days until
they come looking and you have no way of knowing exactly
when, and you will soon run out of firewood for
your fire. What you need to use is a wood burning backpacking stove like the
Stratus Trailstove
or similar stove, the trailstove is a small very
light-weight wood burning backpacking stove that is
specially well suited for winter backpacking. It
actually burns hotter than a regular fire but consumes
way less wood than a regular fire. A burning
trailstove will show up like a bright beacon in the
infrared scope, there's is no way that the rescuers will
miss you if you have a trailstove. Of course they will
find you if you have a regular fire as well but as
mentioned above you will have to work a lot harder
collecting fire wood to keep it going non-stop, but if
you don't have a Trailstove or similar stove then that's
what you need to do. |