Winter backpacking can mean your footprints are the only ones out there. That adds to the beauty of the experience, but also to the danger. Alone and in a cold enviroment, it’s important to know what to do in an emergency. Learning a few basic cold weather survival skills can save your life.

Fire Making

Imagine slipping into a stream and soaking everything with you, when you are more than a day from the nearest road and it’s below freezing out. What would you do? Start a fire, of course, but can you?

Always carry waterproof matches, and practice starting a fire in the cold BEFORE you go winter backpacking. Learn which tinders work even when wet. Birch bark, for example, will burn when wet, and so will sap from pines and spruces. You may have only minutes before your fingers get too cold to function, so speed is of the essence.

Winter Backpacking – Survival Shelters

You’ll probably have a tent with you, but you still may want to learn shelter building using snow blocks. Sometimes you can stomp out blocks without tools, using your feet, and then liff them from beneath. Just play around in your backyard until you get the hang of it. In an emergency, or if the weather turns extremely cold, you may want to put your tent behind a wall of snow blocks, to stop the wind.

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If it isn’t raining, a quick survival shelter for warmth is a pile of dry leaves, grass, broken ferns or other plants. I once collected enough dried grass from a frozen swamp in thirty minutes to make a pile several feet thick. I slept warmly in the middle of it (half the insulating grass above, half below) with just a jacket, despite below freezing temperatures.

Staying Dry

You can be wet and warm when it far below freezing, as long as you are active. The moment you stop moving, however, you start to lose your body heat. Once you get chilled through, it is difficult to get warm again. Hypothermia (a lowered body temperature) kills many people every year.

If you get wet, try to get dry before you go to sleep. Put dry clothes on if you have them, and use a fire to dry any wet clothes. Earlier in the day, you may be able to hang damp clothes on your pack to dry in the sun. Often when it is coldest, the air is dryer.

Try not to sweat. Adjust your layers, removing and adding shirts, sweaters and jackets as necessary to keep from getting too hot or too cold. Sweat, and clothes damp with sweat, will cause you to lose body heat fast once you stop moving. Stay dry to stay warm.

Wild Plants Backpackers Should Know

Why learn about wild plants just to go backpacking? Of course it is interesting for some of us, but beyond that, a little knowledge of plants can save your life. This isn’t just about the edible ones. Food is actually a low priority in most wilderness emergencies. However, there are many other important uses for the plants out there.

Useful Wild Plants

Cattails: The cattail is one of the most useful wild plants in the wilderness. Swampy or wet areas throughout the northern hemisphere have cattail plants, and once you identified them, you’ll never forget them. While they have five edible parts, cattails are much more than food plants. Their long flat leaves have been used for centuries to make baskets and food-serving trays. You can weave them into mats for sleeping on, and even make crude clothing out of them.

The “fluff” of the cattail seed head that makes it one of the first wild plants you should learn about. The old fluffy seed heads often cling to the tops of the stalks year-round. Put a spark to these and it they can burst into flame. This can be a life-saver if you don’t have matches. Stuff your jacket full of cattail fluff and you’ll turn it into a winter coat, possibly saving you from the number one killer in the wilderness: hypothermia.

Some have also reported using cattail as an insect repellent. Just keep a smudgy fire going by burning the seed fluff. This may not be any more effective than any smoky fire would be, but it’s so simple to collect and burn cattail fluff that it is worth remembering.

Yuccas: Sword-like leaves with sharply pointed ends make these easy plants to recognize. Few plants can be used so easily to make rope or twine. In the California desert I peeled yucca leaves into strips and braided them into a rope in a matter of thirty minutes. With two men pulling hard on either end, we couldn’t break it. This is one of the better plants for making ropes as well as finer string (separate out the finest fibers).

Yucca can also provide needle and thread for emergency repairs. Cut the tip of a yucca leaf from the inside, an inch down and about halfway through. Bend it back, and you’ll be able to peel some fibers out of the leaf, which stay attached to the “needle” or tip of the leaf. I’ve pulled out two-foot long strands of fibers this way, and sewn up clothing with them.

Milkweeds: Several parts are edible with proper preparation, and some people apply the white sap to warts to get rid of them. The really useful part of the milkweed, however, is the seed fluff. It is even more flammable than cattail fluff, so you can use it for starting fires from sparks.

It is a great insulator, too, even looking something like goose down. Fill bread bags with milkweed down and these “mittens” will keep your hands very warm. Insert your hands and tie the bags around your wrist or tuck it into your sleeves.

There are many other cold weather survival skills that you may want to learn. (You can generate heat by eating fatty foods, for example.) You don’t need to know hundreds of skills and techniques, but why not learn a few basics, like the ones above, before your next winter backpacking trip?