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- Aug 17, 2014
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I'm not sure mine counts, but this is the closest I've ever had to something that could legitimately be called a survival situation.
About 7 years back I was on a solo weekend backpacking trip in the southern Oregon Cascades. I was on my second day out and that day my hike involved climbing up out of a valley up to a ridge, traversing the ridge to a shelter and then dropping down on the other side of the ridge to a river. My hike out was to be the next day, hiking out along the river. Everything was supposed to be on trail, according the maps and guides I had used to prep for the trip.
So, the first part of the hike went just fine, despite some snow covered sections I didn't have trouble following the trail all the way up the ridge which was rife with great views. I made my way along the ridge trail to the shelter as described, and thought about staying at the shelter, but I was low on water so I kept going on to head down to the river as evening was coming on and that's where things got hairy. Not long after leaving the shelter, the trail seemed to peter out and disappear. I doubled back a few times and thought I had found it... a few times. Before long we were getting into twilight, I had definitely lost the trail, I was out of water and was getting eaten alive by mosquitos.
I could see that I was on a descending ridge, and could hear water from a creek drainage in that direction, so that's where I headed. My reading of the maps I had made me pretty sure that that creek emptied into the river the trail had been supposed to take me down to, but of course I wasn't sure as I was a little dehydrated and starting to get pretty edgy about the situation. So I made my way down the slope to the creek drainage, which consisted of a mossy slot canyon, about 6-8 down from where I was. I made my way down along it for a while hoping to find a way down to the creek for water.
Eventually I found a spot where I thought I could down climb into the creek canyon -- thought being the operative word. Lost my footing partway down and fell on my back(pack) right into the creek. Through sheer luck I wasn't significantly hurt by the fall. I got up, collected myself, drank a bunch of water and decided that my best bet was to creek stomp down the drainage and hope to meet up with the river that the creek was hopefully flowing into. If my reading of the maps was right, I would then be able to find the trail on the other side of the river.
At this point it is now dark and I've headlamped up and starting crawling down this creek over and through logs, brush, etc, desperately hoping that it doesn't turn into a waterfall at some point ahead of me.
My luck on that front held out and I was able to slowly make my way down the creek to where it flowed into the river, by this time it was fully dark and I was exhausted. At the confluence of the creek and the river there was a bit of a flat sandbar that was good enough for me to pitch my tent on, so that became home for the night. I ate, studied my maps, and eventually got some sleep hoping that come the next day I'd be able to ford the river and that a trail would exist on the other side of it.
And that, blessedly, is how it went down. Fording the river in the morning was no problem and shortly after making my way up the bank on the far side I found the trail which took me back to the road and my original trailhead. Fortunately my period of being lost only set me back a few hours so my then girlfriend, now wife wasn't too freaked out, though since then I've only done solo trips a couple times, and only on the PCT, which has been just fine by me.
Knifewise, it was interesting. On this trip I had actually picked up my very first Benchmade Griptilian on the way out to the trip, and was totally loving fidgeting with that Axis lock for the first time. And it most definitely snagged on something in all the bushwacking and for all I know it's still out there somewhere. I had my Ontario Rat 3 on my backpack strap and that was the knife that used when negotiating the creek bed. And it actually was pretty necessary. Several times I had to cut branches out of my way and cut myself free from vines in the process. That little Rat was a champ at getting me through it.
And that's the closest thing I have to a real survival knife story. I'm definitely planning on not getting into any others if I can help it.
