AY Honors/Wilderness Leadership/Answer Key

The principles of health apply whether you are in the wilderness or not. A healthy diet should be maintained on any wilderness outing. Regular medications (if necessary) should be taken as prescribed. Personal hygiene should be practiced, including washing the hands frequently, and brushing the teeth regularly.

The danger of being in the wilderness is that it is remote. Ambulance service is not available in a forest, and transporting an injured person to a facility where professional medical care is available is likely be a time-consuming proposition. Furthermore, the more time that elapses between an injury and treatment, the less positive the outcome is likely to be.

Therefore, extra care should be taken, and the risks should be evaluated with the remoteness of the location in mind. Be conservative, and minimize risk wherever possible. This means you do not jump from high places. A sprained ankle can lead to disaster. Remember that if a person is injured badly enough to become immobile, someone will have to carry him out, along with his gear and their own gear, especially if that gear is critical to survival. If everyone is already fully laden, this can be a tremendous problem.

This is also the reason that "horsing around" should not be tolerated by a leader. Horseplay can lead to injury, and injury is to be avoided.

Fire safety should also be practiced, as should ax safety, and knife safety. Remember that an injury in the wilderness is always more serious than an equivalent injury at home.

3

Know and demonstrate the principles of signaling and rescue.

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/First aid/Signaling aircraft

4

Assist in planning and participate with a group in a mock demonstration of what to do if lost, stranded, or injured in the wilderness. Assist in planning and participate as a leader in a search and rescue operation involving a hidden "injured" person.

Lost

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Camping/Lost

Stranded

If you find yourself stranded in the wilderness, the first priority should be to find (or make) shelter. The cause of death for most stranding situations is exposure to the elements. Shelter is more important than water or food. A person can die of exposure overnight, whereas death by dehydration takes a day or more, and death by starvation may take several weeks. If possible, find or build a shelter well before nightfall.

If you have a cell phone with you, try calling the emergency service (911 in most places) and let them know of your predicament. Give them as accurate a description of your location as possible. If you cannot get voice service, try sending a text message instead - these are more reliable when the signal is weak.

After shelter has been secured, the next priority should be to build a fire. A fire serves many functions, the primary one being the provision of heat. This is especially important in winter conditions. A fire will also provide a visual indication of your whereabouts to any search party that has been dispatched to find you. Fire will also keep wild animals away and will provide a morale boost.

When day breaks, assess your situation. If the weather permits, venture out and see if you can figure out where you are or if there is anything you can do to improve your situation. Do not venture far from your shelter, or if you do, leave an indication of where you are headed. If you feel you need to leave your shelter, head for higher ground where cell phone reception may be better (again, use a text message instead of voice). It is far easier for a search party to find a person who stays put than it is to find one who is roaming about.

Try to make your location visible to aircraft. Keep the fire going even in the daytime. Make an S.O.S. in the snow or sand, or use rocks to spell out the letters. Drape brightly covered cloth over shrubbery. Do whatever you can to make your presence easily detectable. Then wait for rescue.

Injured

In a bleeding injury, your first priority is to stop the flow of blood. Do this by applying pressure to the wound and by binding it with bandages. Review your first aid procedures before setting out. If you are injured and stranded, stay where you are. This is the quickest path to rescue. Do not attempt to traverse treacherous territory if your are physically unable to do so. This could lead to further, more serious injury.

Search and Rescue Drill

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/First Aid/Searches

Of course, for a mock search, you may opt out of using "all available resources," such as dogs and aircraft. For this requirement it will suffice to conduct a sweep of the area and if that fails, conduct a grid search.

5

Demonstrate some skills necessary for wilderness leadership in one of the following areas:

Imagine yourself going into the wilderness with a group of people. Of all the people in the group, one seems to know nearly everything about staying comfortable and surviving in that environment. Whom do you think the group will follow?

Of course there is more to wilderness leadership than knowing how to thrive in the environment. A good leader will also know how to persuade people to follow. This is accomplished through competence and respect. But these qualities of a good leader are common to all of the areas listed below. Therefore, in the sections below we will focus on the skills necessary for comfort and survival but that are unique to the area being discussed.

5a

Tropical

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Tropical leadership skills

5b

Desert

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Desert leadership skills

5c

Swamp

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Swamp leadership skills

5d

Mountain (rocks, ice, high altitude)

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Mountain leadership skills

5e

Temperate forest

Fire

Small fires are better than large ones as they require less fuel and make less smoke. Sit close. Less fuel means less work in gathering fuel. Review the answers in Camping Skills IV to refresh yourself on how to build a fire in wet weather.

Water

When travelling for extended periods of time in the wilderness, it is not practical to carry all the water you will need. Happily, it is not necessary to do that either if you know how to make the water that is available suitable for drinking. There are generally three ways to purify water: chemically, by boiling, or by filtering. The most reliable method of purifying water is by pumping it through a filter. Chemically treating the water is also easy and convenient until you run out of purification tablets. Boiling water requires that you stop long enough to build a fire and bring the water to a boil. Then you are faced with the problem of carrying boiling water. For these reasons, filtering is the preferred solution. Be sure to refill when water is available, and think ahead to when water may not be plentiful (such as near the summit of a large hill or mountain), and make adequate preparations.

Bear Danger

Bear danger is the risk encountered by humans while interacting with wild bears.

Although some bears are alpha predators in their own habitat, they do not, under normal circumstances, hunt and feed on animals of their own size (including humans). Therefore, the most important cases of bear attack occur when the animal is defending itself against any possible threat. For instance, bear sows can become extremely aggressive if they feel their cubs are threatened. Any solitary bear is also likely to become agitated if surprised or cornered by a threat maker, especially while eating.

Dealing with bear encounters

Before backpackers are allowed to enter an area with bears, they may be required to watch a video that teaches how to avoid encountering or agitating bears. Experts emphasize keeping your distance and making noise to avoid startling a bear as the best ways to avoid a bear attack. If a bear does become confrontational, the usual advice is to raise the arms above the head so as to appear larger, and to yell at the bear. Running away can activate the bear's hunting instincts and lead to it perceiving the human as prey. If a bear does charge, persons are advised to hold their ground, as most bear charges are bluffs. Finally, if a bear does attack, the usual advice is to curl into a fetal position so as to shield vital organs and appear non-threatening. If this is not effective in stopping the attack, the only option left is to fight the bear in any way you can. The ideal place to punch a bear is the snout or eyes. This advice applies to omnivores such as brown and black bears; the best way to avoid being attacked by the completely carnivorous polar bear is not to enter any area where polar bears live, or at least remain inside a hard-shell vehicle or building.

Food storage and garbage disposal

Bears have an excellent sense of smell, and are attracted to human and pet foods as well as refuse. Improper storage of these items can allow bears to eat human food and become dependent on it, increasing the probability of encounters with humans. Most brown and black bear encounters in human-populated areas involve so-called "trouble bears", usually young males who have just left their mothers and do not yet have a territory of their own. If they wander close to human settlements, the smells of cooking and garbage can cause them to ignore their usual instinct to avoid humans. Many parks and persons in areas with bears utilize bear-resistant garbage cans and dumpsters for this reason, and many areas have laws prohibiting the feeding of bears, even if unintentional. Campers can access bear-proof containers from many parks to store their food and trash. The containers are then buried or strung on a rope between two tall trees, out of bears' reach. They are also instructed to put their containers, campfire, and tenting 90 meters away from each other, forming a triangle.

5f

Plain and tundra

Snow Blindness

The reflection of the sun's ultraviolet rays off a snow-covered area causes this condition. The symptoms of snow blindness are a sensation of grit in the eyes, pain in and over the eyes that increases with eyeball movement, red and teary eyes, and a headache that intensifies with continued exposure to light. Prolonged exposure to these rays can result in permanent eye damage. To treat snow blindness, bandage your eyes until the symptoms disappear.

You can prevent snow blindness by wearing sunglasses. If you don't have sunglasses, improvise. Cut slits in a piece of cardboard, thin wood, tree bark, or other available material. Putting soot under your eyes will help reduce shine and glare.

Fire

Dried moss, grass, and scrub willow are other materials you can use for fuel. These are usually plentiful near streams in tundras (open, treeless plains). By bundling or twisting grasses or other scrub vegetation to form a large, solid mass, you will have a slower burning, more productive fuel.

Warm Clothing

Dress in layers and avoid cotton. Wool or synthetics are warm even when wet, but when cotton gets wet (even from sweat), it effectively conducts heat away from the body. Wear a waterproof outer layer. If you find you are beginning to sweat, remove a layer of clothing or vent it. It is common for a person carrying a heavy load or doing heavy work (such as with an ax or shovel) to sweat even on a very cold day. Keep adjusting your layers until you quit sweating, as you do not want to be wet. When the exertion comes to an end, sweat-soaked clothing will quickly chill you.

Travel

Travelling in the snow is in many ways easier than travelling over solid ground if you have the right equipment. Snow shoes will keep you from sinking into the snow making it far easier to walk. Skis will speed you along even faster. Load your equipment on a sled and pull it along behind you. In this way you can carry far more equipment (or small children) than you could with a backpack.

6

Understand and demonstrate wilderness and camping etiquette regarding the preservation of the outdoors.

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Camping/Etiquette

7

Identify in the wild, prepare, and eat ten varieties of wild plants.

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Camping/Ten edible wild plants

8

Learn some of the wilderness leadership qualities of two of the following:

8a

Moses

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Biblical Leaders/Moses

8b