Basic Wilderness Survival Tips

With the popularity of camping, hiking, and trailing at an all-time high, there comes a great demand to known even the most basic of survival skills before heading out on your next outdoor trip.  Although most tourist destinations that include campsites and hiking trails are marked to ensure that you stay on the right trail, there are instances where you can stray from the marked trail and become lost in the wilderness.  However, knowing these basic wilderness survival tips can play a big role in whether or not you can survive in the outdoors until you are found or have found your way back.  

 

The first thing you want to do before even leaving for your outdoor trip is to let your friends and family know where you are going and when they should expect you back by.  This can help out greatly if you are stranded out in the middle of nowhere and of course your rescue. Authorities can then be notified that you are missing and they will then scour the area where your last known whereabouts are and find you.  This can also help in the amount of time you spend in the wilderness before your rescue.  So make sure that if you are going on an outdoor trip that you let someone know where you are going and when you expect to be back.

Another basic wilderness survival tip is to of course find you shelter if you have found yourself lost in the woods.  Make sure that you choose a shelter that will protect you from weather and other animals.  Keep in mind that the temperature can be dramatically changed between night and day, so make sure that you are choosing a shelter that can keep your body temperature balanced and that you don’t get too cold.  You want to make sure that you have a type of roof or covering so that if it rains you don’t get wet.  Mixing wet clothes and cold temperatures only leads to worse life threatening problems.  Make sure that you get familiar with the location of your campsite so that when you venture off to find food and water you don’t become more lost and can’t find your campsite.  This is a very important tip that anyone that plans to survive in the outdoors should know. 

The next important tip to surviving the wilderness after finding your campsite is to get a fire going.  A fire is very important to have when you are lost outdoors.  A fire can help you in many different ways such as helping to keep your warm at night, keeps animals from approaching your campsite, and can also act as an oven to cook food from.  A fire is also very important to have because the smoke from the fire alarms rescuers and helps them to pinpoint exactly where your campsite is.  You want to make sure that your fire is constantly burning and finding wood to keep it going is another great tip when it comes to surviving in the wilderness.

After you have found a campsite and created a fire for your campsite, your next step is to find food and water.  It is always wise to carry a backpack whenever you go on an outdoor trip and should have basic survival gear, some of which should be water, canned goods, a metal bowl, utensils, and of course a can opener.  However, after you have run out of your materials in your survival backpack you then need to find a clean source of water, such as a running stream, and either hunt land animals or find a good fishing spot to fish from.  Keeping yourself hydrated is very important as well as eating food to give you energy until your rescue. 

One of the most important tips you need to make sure that you do whenever you get lost in the wilderness is to remain calm at all times. For many people they become angered or scared when they realize they are lost, however you need to remain calm because you need all of the knowledge and energy you have to put forth towards surviving the outdoors until you are either found or have found your way back. 

Although all of the tips are very basic survival tips, they are very important when it comes to actually surviving in the outdoors for days on end.  So make sure the next time you decide to go on an outdoor trip that you keep these simple tips in mind and use them if you happen to get lost in the outdoors.