Outdoor Enthusiasts Are Not Prepared

Search and Rescue incidents have risen dramatically. How prepared are you for the outdoors?

Are you really equipped to deal with the outdoors? Maybe you have spent a lot of money and purchased all the right gear with the best technical specifications and you know how to use the GPS app on your phone. That is all a good start and you probably feel quite secure knowing that you can rely on your gear. Great gear goes a long way and can make you comfortable in the outdoors. However, great gear on its own can give you a false sense of security. For example you could drop your phone and either break or lose it, the weather could take a turn for the worse, your bike/atv/snowmobile could stop working or get damaged, or maybe you end up getting injured after tripping over a tree root. In BC, over the past year, there have been 2117 Search and Rescue incidents involving 2841 people who needed help and 23565 Search and Rescue volunteers who came to their aid. These incidents mostly cover people who got lost or injured while partaking in outdoor activities such as hiking, mountain biking, cycling, snowmobiling, hunting, ATVing, boating, fishing, snowshoeing, kayaking, skiing, sledding, tubing, and even whole families going camping. Furthermore, with restrictions due to Covid-19, more people are heading to the outdoors than ever before and as a result there has been a large increase in search and rescue missions in the past year particularly over the summer. For instance, last year there were 1678 incidents in BC involving 2175 people and 18964 Search and Rescue volunteers meaning this year there was over a 25% increase in the number of times Search and Rescue teams were called out and over a 30% increase in the number of people who needed help. With all the hard work of Search and Rescue teams, there are still missions which are not successful and in some cases it is not possible to contact someone for help. If we want to explore the outdoors, we should also try and be responsible about it by taking a bushcraft and wilderness survival course so we can avoid tragic outcomes. We want to help you increase your safety in the outdoors and should things go terribly wrong you will be equipped to survive.

Unexpected situations in the outdoors lead to stress and stress can be deadly

When something unexpected happens in normal everyday life, we can easily find people who start to worry. If we take an unexpected situation and put it in a wild environment then that worry easily translates to stress. When we are stressed we are putting ourselves at risk and we are more likely to make mistakes. The more mistakes we make in the outdoors especially when we are not prepared, the more our chances of survival start to decrease because when we are stressed, we are not thinking clearly and our critical thinking becomes impaired. Even very experienced outdoor enthusiasts can and do encounter serious problems in the outdoors. Right here on Vancouver Island a very experienced hiker went on a hike over a number of days. The trip plans were left at home so everyone knew the details of the hike and when the hiker was expected back. After failing to return, Search and Rescue was contacted but were unable to locate the hiker and the hiker’s body was discovered days later. Unexpected situations can happen to anyone regardless of how experienced you are in your outdoor pursuit.

Let’s take a common example of getting lost in the outdoors. Most people would start to feel stressed. Stress can affect us both physiologically and psychologically. Let’s take a look at some physiological impacts of stress first. When we are stressed, our heart rate goes up and we also experience increased blood pressure. An increased heart rate would result in more energy or calories being burned. To survive in the outdoors, saving our energy is crucial as we need our energy to create, for example, a safe fire to stay warm or a shelter to shield us from the elements. Stress also causes your muscles to tense which means that they will not be working efficiently and to make matters worse, using muscles in a tense state will lead to injury. This would mean that on top of getting lost, you are now also injured. There are also psychological implications as well. If you are burning more energy, you will start to get tired and in the end, stress leads to exhaustion which in turn leads to cognitive impairment. This means your ability to think critically and make informed decisions is decreased. Stress also leads to short term memory problems, which is not particularly useful especially if you are trying to retrace your steps and get unlost.

As you can see, the stress we experience when we encounter an unexpected situation has detrimental effects and decreases our chances of surviving in a difficult situation. Taking a professional, practical wilderness survival and bushcraft course will make you familiar with unexpected situations as you will be able to physically practice skills to help you survive in the wild and build critical thinking as you work out the best course of action. Consequently, the practical experience and skills that you learn and practice in a survival school will reduce and even eliminate your stress.

Outdoor enthusiasts are not invincible

You might be thinking ‘This will never happen to me!”, but no one really thinks anything will happen, until it actually does. Optimism bias is real. We are more likely to overestimate the likelihood of positive events but underestimate the likelihood of something negative happening. Here is a real-life example and we don’t have to go to the backcountry for this as this incident happened near Vancouver. A hiker went out on a well used trail thinking they would be back on the same day as it wasn’t a long hike. Halfway through their hike they ended up getting lost and their mobile connection dropped. It started getting dark and the weather changed. With snow and cold weather no doubt hypothermia would kick in. Unfortunately the hiker wasn’t prepared for an overnight stay in cold conditions and tragically search and rescue workers found their body the next morning. What would you do in this situation? Do you know that hypothermia can kill in less than a couple hours? Even starting a fire in these conditions would not be easy and without any knowledge about fire starting techniques, your chances of survival are quite low. How optimistic do you feel about your chances of surviving this ordeal? This hiker, as many might do, thought nothing would happen and the hike would be safe given so many others hike there often as well.

Being physically prepared with survival skills and mentally prepared for your outdoor adventure not only requires knowledge about the wild surroundings but also requires knowledge about what to do if something unexpected were to happen. If you get lost and it starts to get dark, will you be able to keep yourself warm overnight? If you encounter wildlife, are you prepared to deal with it? If your plan A doesn\’t work in a survival situation, do you have plan B and even a plan C? Taking a survival course will equip you with the right frame of mind to deal with unexpected situations and help you develop what we like to call the survivor mindset. Sure, you can read about what you should take with you on your outdoor trip, or watch videos about survival skills. These in no way will replace learning. Actually practicing outdoor life skills as well as developing your survivor mindset with knowledgeable professionals is the way to go. You can’t learn how to play the piano just by watching YouTube videos – you have to practice. Bushcraft and wilderness survival courses such as this one (https://www.owncorp.ca/outdoor-life) will help you become more confident in the wild and the critical thinking we aim to bring out in you not only applies to wilderness survival, but is transferable and will also help you in everyday life. We have all heard about ‘flattening the curve’ when it comes to Covid-19. Maybe we should do the same for Search and Rescue missions. Let seasoned and skilled experts help prepare you for unexpected situations in your life!

Renita Silva, Vitaliy Svetlichnyy