Snow survival made easy What to do when winter finds you unprepared

Author: Joseph Bergan

You got the phone call. Don't even lie and say you didn't. Your family called sometime during the last two days of last week after hearing about the blizzard of the century. They plead of you, "Don't go outside, I don't want you drifting into a snow bank and dying!"

DYING? That sort of thing is reserved for the infirm and the elderly. Middlebury students are invincible! We will live forever! Or will we?

Consider the following: You and some friends head out to the Green Mountains to do some snowshoeing. You pack some water, an orange and some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You were never any good at snowshoeing, in fact, you're just trying to impress Amanda, who sits in front of you in history class, and who your best friend John knows fromÖnever mind. The fact is, you lag behind and get lost.

The bad news is Amanda and John are making out somewhere, but you get the rations. After devouring them in five minutes (you never were any good at conservation), darkness settles in. Your cell phone is on your desk in your room. So much for dreams of outdoor adventures. Well, now what? How are you going to survive until the rescue party shows up? And who knows when that will happen?

Rest assured. For just this type of situation, The Campus has consulted with various scholarly works to learn how the Inuits - the true originators of keeping warm in arctic conditions - have survived for so long.


What to Wear?

When heading out into this frozen wasteland, what you use to keep your body warm will be your most important decision. Dressing for cold weather revolves around one simple principle: air pockets that trap in heat. That's right, layers of air are your best hope for staying toasty when the temperature bottoms out. But what if you didn't spring for the goose down jacket? What if you got lost with only a fleece? You are going to need some basic solutions, and fast. Read on for some natural ways to keep warm.

Seal: Is a waterproof skin, but bad in extremely cold climates. This is the ideal skin if you are sledding or engaging in a snowball fight.

Bear: Incredibly warm, and even better than seal for waterproof comfort. The one draw back of the bearskin is its heavy weight.

Musk-Ox: Carries the same problem as bear skin in that it is very warm, but very heavy. Also, musk-ox is very hard to keep clean. Though it may not seem that important right now, you'll thank us when the rescue party arrives. I can't tell you the amount of times I see people rescued wearing musk-ox, and even their own family stays at an arm's length!

Hare/Fox: Both of these animals provide the warmth of the bear and musk-ox, but are way too delicate to go climbing through the forest or journeying to find your way back to civilization. You'll reduce yourself to icy cold rags.

Caribou skin: For all intents and purposes, caribou skin is the best material for your money. Caribou have an incredibly strong hide, which is also incredibly light and very warm. The only problem is that caribou are mainly found in the Alaskan and Canadian Artic. So you aren't going to be able to utilize its amazingly warm fur.

Campus Recommendation: If you are adventurous, you could go into a cave, awaken a bear and then take his hide. Seeing as bears are not morning animals, and you are probably going to have only your hands to defend yourself when the whole family wakes up, it is probably a better idea just to stick with the jacket on your back.


Where to live?

Being trapped in the wilderness with three feet of snow all around you poses quite a predicament. Luckily, the native peoples of the Arctic are most helpful in the area of snow dwelling construction. The first step involves acquiring whalebone or an antler.

Unless you are very lucky, whalebone will be hard to come by in the Green Mountains. We recommend a nice piece of antler. This will serve as your knife when constructing your new home. You will want to find snow of a harder consistency, so search for sunny areas where the snow had the opportunity to partially melt and then freeze. Cut out a large rectangular block and put it to your immediate right. Welcome to your new home. Right now, you are standing in the living room/kitchen/family room/bedroom/ bonus room.

Keep using the knife to cut the blocks from the snow and then place them in a circle. After you have made a complete circle, trim another layer and start building up the wall until you have created a dome-like structure. Don't get too comfortable though, there's still more work to be done! Make a large snow table/bed in the corner of the room. Gather some twigs and place them on the bed, for drying. Remember what we said about how air keeps you warm? It will do you a great service to make a smaller room off the entrance to your main room. This will serve the primary purpose of keeping cold air out, and you will find it very useful for the hunting you are about to do.


What to eat?

We're gonna give it to you straight. It's probably best to stop thinking about Ross pizza when your tummy starts to growl. It ain't happening. As the indigenous people have done for centuries, your diet will consist of meat, and a whole lot of it. Usually, an Arctic Native American will eat six to seven pounds of raw animal flesh a day. This may seem like a lot, but after constructing a home for yourself and enduring the psychological stress of starting a new life in the Green Mountains, you will be quite surprised at how large your appetite can grow. Again, caribou is your best bet, because you can get about 200 pounds of meat, and their droppings are terrific for fuel to keep you warm. But again, you will be hard pressed to find caribou in the lower 48 states.

Brown bear and wolf are both great choices, except for the fact that you got lost snowshoeing, meaning your chances of emerging victorious in a battle against a wolf or bear are quite slim.

You aren't missing out on much. While both animals have a lot of great meat, which some old texts say can be eaten raw, their livers are rich in vitamin A, which people indeigenous to cold weather climates found poisonous.

Remember that chamber you built outside of your dwelling? Put a hole in the top of it and garnish all around the top of the hole with meat(it looks like you may have to beat that wolf after all). Then, sit inside and wait for a bird to start nibbling on the meat. Now is your chance to grab him by the feet and eat him. Watch out, those talons are going to be sharp! There is no need to feel ashamed. If Ernest Hemmingway killed birds in Parisian parks for sustenance when times were dire, so can you.


Pretty soon, you will become so adjusted to wilderness life, you'll forget all about Amanda and John or your silly homework. Doesn't homework seem so silly now! Maybe in the spring you will not even leave; you will just keep living in the great outdoors. Eventually, the search party will find you, but you will love the outdoors so much you'll fight them with rocks and arrows. Then they will overwhelm you with force and drag you away to an insane asylum, where you will live out the rest of your days. Have fun in the snow everyone!