gear and skills........

Bushman5 · Feb 6, 2011

GEAR saved a mans life in sub 25 below weather http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2011/02/04/snowmobiler-safe-rcmp.html

SKILLS obviously saved his life too......

.........HOWEVER would those "skills" worked had he had NO "gear"?????

one could argue that BOTH gear and skills are required to survive. One needs the other........what i'm saying is that one cannot rely on SKILLS alone...sometime ya need gear..........

random thought.

paperairplane · Feb 6, 2011

Bushman5 said:
GEAR saved a mans life in sub 25 below weather http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2011/02/04/snowmobiler-safe-rcmp.html

SKILLS obviously saved his life too......

.........HOWEVER would those "skills" worked had he had NO "gear"?????

one could argue that BOTH gear and skills are required to survive. One needs the other........what i'm saying is that one cannot rely on SKILLS alone...sometime ya need gear..........

random thought.

You can improvise gear, especially of you have sufficient skills.

Bushman5 · Feb 6, 2011

fair enough, lets apply that theory to the snowmobiler who's sled broke down......what could have he improvised?

Munky88 · Feb 6, 2011

Assuming he had a knife, which i think its safe to say everybody here would have. Fire would have been easy with electronics from the snowmobile/gasoline. Food dosn't really matter, shelter would be easy enough to make provided weather wasnt too bad.

The more pertinent question would be why would you want to improvise gear? What did he have to gain by going "ultralight" on his 500 pound snowmobile.

He'd gain respect from the fringe of a small irrelevant internet forum for being "Hard" and "sufficiently skilled". Anything else?

He lives in Newfoundland & labrador, which is probably second to New zealand for "what the hell!?" weather. The bare minimum to get me, or any sensible member out into backwoods in a place like that in winter would be an axe and a bivy sack. Say you get wet in -25c weather. How long do you have until you frost over? maybe 10 handicapped minutes. Think you can improvise shelter and fire in 10 minutes with non-functioning fingers?

Gaurdian_A1 · Feb 6, 2011

paperairplane said:
You can improvise gear, especially of you have sufficient skills.

If you had sufficient skills, you would have come prepaired and packed your gear accordingly with the weather in mind.

survival starts before you even leave your house. do you have everything you need to cover your basic needs?did you pack some things in case sh*t goes bad?

-G1

BearKinder · Feb 6, 2011

Munky88 said:
He lives in Newfoundland & labrador, which is probably second to New zealand for "what the hell!?" weather. The bare minimum to get me, or any sensible member out into backwoods in a place like that in winter would be an axe and a bivy sack. Say you get wet in -25c weather. How long do you have until you frost over? maybe 10 handicapped minutes. Think you can improvise shelter and fire in 10 minutes with non-functioning fingers?

LOL. :thumbup:

Wasn't it Les Stroud, Mr. I go out with nothing but a multitool and harmonica, that said there's no way in hell he'd be in Labrador in winter without an axe? I think he had a rifle, too, IIRC.

I agree with the OP and the post I quoted.

It isn't about being skilled enough to improvise gear, it's about can you improvise that gear in time?

It's a simple decision tree really:
If I go out to [here] and really need [this], is it likely I'll die without it, or before I am able to compensate for not having it? If yes, then pack it.

cuphead · Feb 6, 2011

paperairplane said:
You can improvise gear, especially of you have sufficient skills.

improvise from what?

have you ever been out here, or even snowmobiling?
Let me tell you how it works.. theres hardly no cover. snowmobiles are expensive and so are parts... so the odds of your pulling a les stroud and stripping it is very unlikely... odds are your thinking of when you can repair it for the next trip. I know I own 2. If your snowmobile is a piece of sh*t to start with, it means your broke. it also means your probably pushing your luck throwing 350$ at a pass for the trails. and barely making it what with how much a snowmobile sucks gas up real fast. (try 90$+ for the type of distance he was going)
an example of how pricey it can get is imagining this distance as a daily commute. 630$ a week just on gas. Thats sometimes 2x more then what the average person makes per week in this area.

I'll agree to use the battery to aid in ignition of a fire, perhaps use some of that gasoline. But that's all. Anyone who's talking about ripping a seat apart to make a backpack or bivy sack for his feet to his knees is on crack don't even think of ripping out wires, cause then your really broke. no means of traveling around, repairs cost an arm and a leg and getting specific parts takes time.

All I have to say is he was very lucky to have a sleeping bag with him. It's probably what saved his ass.

grunt soldier · Feb 6, 2011

i agree skills are very important. you definitely need to know what your doing when your in the outdoors period. but when time is of the essence (which i would say out in that frozen world it would be) i would always say its better to have some good kit with you that can keep you from breaking down too quickly.

udtjim · Feb 6, 2011

You can improvise gear, especially of you have sufficient skills. quote.

+ 1

knivesngear · Feb 6, 2011

if you have skills to use gear than what good would your skills be if you did not have your gear?

Marcelo Cantu · Feb 6, 2011

One could literally argue this topic in circles. I mean where's the line between gear and just the clothes on your back? Even the most non-technological tribesman(/woman) has gear that they carry and use every day.
Take an Inuit man. He doesn't leave his home without his multiple layers of fur on his body and his feet, that he'll wear every day in the winter, his knife, gun, shades, edc. Is that gear or just what he wears on his commute. The same could be said about a kalahari San bushman. Does that they use it every day move it from the realm of gear into EDC?

It's through experience that you start to plan for an ever widening set of circumstances that may necessitate you to utilize your gear that you know how and when to use. The point that I'm clumsily trying to make is that when you have the prepared mindset, your gear and your skills are one. You take a naked Inuit and put him a mile from hiis home in the winter and he's dead. Put me with all his gear somewhere else and I'm probably dead too.

It is my opinion that the more you use your gear and the more it becomes a part of your outdoor experience, the more it becomes a part of you and ceases to be just gear.

ETA as much as I love and play with knives every week of my life, my mom, in the kitchen with a knife can create art, make a salmon lool like flower petals and not even think twice about it

kgd · Feb 6, 2011

Marcelo Cantu said:
One could literally argue this topic in circles. I mean where's the line between gear and just the clothes on your back? Even the most non-technological tribesman(/woman) has gear that they carry and use every day.
Take an Inuit man. He doesn't leave his home without his multiple layers of fur on his body and his feet, that he'll wear every day in the winter, his knife, gun, shades, edc. Is that gear or just what he wears on his commute. The same could be said about a kalahari San bushman. Does that they use it every day move it from the realm of gear into EDC?

It's through experience that you start to plan for an ever widening set of circumstances that may necessitate you to utilize your gear that you know how and when to use. The point that I'm clumsily trying to make is that when you have the prepared mindset, your gear and your skills are one. You take a naked Inuit and put him a mile from hiis home in the winter and he's dead. Put me with all his gear somewhere else and I'm probably dead too.

It is my opinion that the more you use your gear and the more it becomes a part of your outdoor experience, the more it becomes a part of you and ceases to be just gear.

ETA as much as I love and play with knives every week of my life, my mom, in the kitchen with a knife can create art, make a salmon lool like flower petals and not even think twice about it

I have to agree with Marcelo here!

When I think about it, skills amount to two things - 1) generating experience in using novel technologies or techniques to address a situation and 2) practice of rarely used techniques for imagined (proposed) situations. In the end, I think most humans are not particularly creative under pressure although that is something that survival schools try to train.

We can be very creative when we are sitting on our in our favorite comfy chair calling the 'should have, could have's' when analyzing some poor wretch's situation. But most of us are not in the poor wretch's shoes are we? If we were, our reaction are largely going to be based on our experiences of how to deal with the situation on hand. Some of us have trained for the scenario on hand, others may have read it in a book somewhere. I suspect only the folks who actually trained in the hands on way would actually recall and implement a set of skills for the situation cue. I suspect the arm-chair quarterbacks who skim-read a Cody Lundin book might not be able to react any differently then the poor wretch.

Now, I'm not claiming to be some survival dude ready for everything. What I'm claiming here is when the pressure is one, when you've jumped from the fying pan into the fire, when the panic 'oh crap, oh crap, oh crap' sets in....Well your noggin ain't working in common sense mode no more. You aren't going to go all Leonardo Divinci and invent a wooden helicopter. You are going to do what you've practiced and what is seared in your memory. If you want to survive and you engage in certain activities, then there is a value to pre-planned emergency scenario thinking. Why do you think your employer makes you haul your ass out of work in the middle of a Monday morning for a bloody fire-alarm??? Because you probably would just sit and sent instant messages to your girlfriend while being fried alive.

Lets face, we are just beasts and brutes and our response to situations is all in how well prepared we are. That can be a combination of gear and skills but one doesn't replace the other. Knowing what may lie ahead trumps both.

CM_Rick · Feb 6, 2011

I am going to have to agree with skills over gear on this one. Even with nothing the man could have dug out a snow shelter (I did not check out the link in the OP). Being wet is a totally different situation all together. In the arctic and wet, you better have a fire kit that is both fast and sustaining, like fuel and a flair. I have to assume that most follow the rule of avoiding at all costs getting soaking wet. If it were me, it would have been an unavoidable accident, like the earth giving away from me. And I am cautious enough that it probably wouldn't happen to me. The colder it is, the more I avoid bodies of water, except to get some water and I am extremely cautious.

I guess I will sum up my opinion like this: when in the wilderness, be it a survival situation or not, gear makes it easy, skills make it possible.

SouthernCross · Feb 8, 2011

G'day Bushman.

Bushman5 said:
GEAR saved a mans life in sub 25 below weather http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2011/02/04/snowmobiler-safe-rcmp.html

SKILLS obviously saved his life too......

.........HOWEVER would those "skills" worked had he had NO "gear"?????

one could argue that BOTH gear and skills are required to survive. One needs the other........what i'm saying is that one cannot rely on SKILLS alone...sometime ya need gear..........

random thought.

Seems to me to more like an inconvenience, rather than a Survival situation. :thumbdn:

I really think that that there is a difference between an inconvenience & a "survival situation"

Bear in mind that the media will always talk up anything

This comes from the link:

" As he was prepared for his trip by carrying material to light a fire, had food and extra gas as well as a sleeping bag, he survived with little trouble," Sgt. Boyd Merrill said in a statement.

I repeat, he had little trouble.

Come on guys, does this really suggest the guy was in any real trouble?

I've also got to ask questions about how much fuel did he have available?

He has been commended for "carrying material to light a fire". Does this suggest that there was combustible material available for him to have maintained a fire past kindling phase for the warmth?

Or does it mean that he did nothing more than "checked a box for survival", even though it was totally useless because he didn't have access to combustible material to take the fire past tinder/kindling phase to be able to provide enough warmth for the night?

Kind regards
Mick

neeman · Feb 8, 2011

Skills can also mean being prepared with the correct gear.

Temperatures in the area dropped to -25C overnight.
"As he was prepared for his trip by carrying material to light a fire, had food and extra gas as well as a sleeping bag, he survived with little trouble," Sgt. Boyd Merrill said in a statement.

BearKinder · Feb 8, 2011

SouthernCross said:
G'day Bushman.

Seems to me to more like an inconvenience, rather than a Survival situation. :thumbdn:

I really think that that there is a difference between an inconvenience & a "survival situation"

I don't remember where I got the original concept from (something I read), but IMO, a proper outdoorsman will synergize his skills and tools to a point that a survival situation for someone else is just a minor inconvenience to him at worst, and an impromptu camping trip at best.

As I posted earlier:

BearKinder said:
It's a simple decision tree really:
If I go out to [here] and really need [this], is it likely I'll die without it, or before I am able to compensate for not having it? If yes, then pack it.

Following that thinking, what would normally be a survival situation, won't be with proper equipment to your skill level and environment.

Calebklyne · Feb 8, 2011

If you have the skills and gear that you are used to using most survival situations might just end up being an extra night camping

AeroNautiCal · Feb 8, 2011

neeman said:
Skills can also mean being prepared with the correct gear.

You got there ahead of me!

The prepared mindset is not an accident or chance occurrence, its an acquired skill.

Collating and knowing when to utilize appropriate gear in the support of life, comfort and protection for hostile environmental and/or accident/breakdown scenarios is, in itself a skill.

stingray4540 · Feb 8, 2011

Surviving in the Wilderness ---- So easy, a caveman could do it

paperairplane · Feb 8, 2011

Having gear that is untested and / or that you are not expert in using is worthless. So is thinking that the gear is what will save your ass.

Guns, survival, camping, gardening, cars, golf, fishing - marketing has done a really good job convincing us that the best gear will make up for a lack of practice.

Guy 1 with an M4 and Eotech whose training is on Call of Duty or Guy 2 with a 30-30 that has taken 25 deer.

Guy 1 with a $400 pocket knife that sits in a cabinet or Guy 2 who has an Opinel he has carved 100 spoons with.

Guy 1 who has $3,500 in fishing tackle and makes it out once a year or Guy 2 who has an old Zebco and is out there every weekend.

If you have the skill, gear will make you better. Having the gear will not make you skilled.