My Survival Class

My next few post are going to be a bit outdated because I just haven't had time to blog. But I want to have all this stuff written down so I don't forget it. :-) So here we go...

This Spring Term at BYU I needed to take two classes: Inorganic Chem Lab and Philosophical and Ethical Issues in Exercise Science. Both of these classes happened to be only 1 credit each so I had room in my schedule to add some fun classes. Since I love hiking I decided to take a class called Wilderness Trek which I assumed was about hiking. I was wrong. On the first day of class we found out it was a survival class. The teacher proceeded to scare us by informing us about our final which would be a 4 day trip where we were only allowed to bring a sleeping bag, coat, poncho and a knife. The next day of class most of the girls and a few of the boys had dropped the class, haha. I decided to stick around because I figured the skills we would learn would be pretty useful.

The day the Final trip came around I was not very excited, in fact I tried to convince Brian to break my ankle so that I wouldn't have to go... Brian made me go. The class got into the van and headed out to some unknown location in Utah. (They wanted it to be a secret so that it was like a real survival situation). In the desert, somewhere near Delta Utah, our van "ran out of gas". We all had to get out and walk to try and find a gas station. After walking about 8 miles our teacher finally showed up and told us to make camp for the night. At this point it was dark outside so all we could do was lay out our ponchos and sleeping bags on the ground. It was freezing that night and super uncomfortable because the spot they choose for us girls to sleep has dead sage brush everywhere.

The girls in the class

Super early in the morning we were woken up by our TA's and told to hunt for food. They had hidden a grape fruit for each of us to eat. We were told that was going to be our only food for the day unless we ate some of the plants around the area. So I saved mine to eat until I was super starving. The next task we had to do was build two traps that we had been taught how to make. This part was super frustrating for me. The rock that we had to set up our traps underneath was super heavy and we had to hold it up on our own with one hand while setting up the trap with the other hand. My problem was not that my traps were bad, I just kept dropping the rock on the trap, on my hand, on my foot and so on. I finally got both traps set up and passed off.

Next we had to make a bow drill fire kit and get a fire started. Making the bow drill kit was easy but the fire part took forever. Everyone seemed to struggle with making the fire even though we had all made them before in our classes. It got to the point where the TA's were helping us and we still weren't getting a fire. After about three hours of working at it Mike (one of the TAs) and I finally got my fire started. I was the third person to do it! Haha. After we got our fire started we were given flint and steel so we could make a fire faster.

After all our fires were made, we were taught how to make shoes from the bark off cedar trees and then they took away our shoes. The shoes we made kept your feet safe from prickles but you sure had to walk super slow in them or they fell off.

My cedar tree shoes

We were then all brought together for a devotional. Our teacher talked about how close you can be with God in nature and also about how animals were given to us by God for nourishment. By this time I knew what they were gonna make us do... we were gonna have to kill an animal. The TA's came walking up with three chickens. I was luckily not chosen to be the one to kill one but I did have to hold the rope to keep the chicken from moving. I was not very happy about having the chickens die but I was happy to have some food cuz I was starving! We cut the chicken up and made a stew type thing. We were also given flour, water and brown sugar to make these ash cake things which tasted soo good (but I'm sure they would taste nasty if I made them anytime else).

Before we were done eating it started to rain really hard. So we took what we could and the TA's brought us to some pre-made shelters to stay the night. We were supposed to make our own that night but they didn't want us making them in the dark and in the rain. The girl shelter was pretty nice but it was definitely only made to fit one person. We tried to get a fire started so that we could try and fix the shelter a little bit but it was too rainy. So we all crawled in there. I ended up on one the edges but found out there was a huge stick hanging down that stopped right above my hips. If I moved or rolled on my side it would jab me. Plus since the shelter was old, lots of the sticks had fallen down and covered the ground which made it really bumpy. Also the rain still came through the shelter a little bit. Needless to say, I did not sleep well that night at all.

The next morning we were woken up before the sun had even come up. The teacher then took each one of us to our own individual spots where we would stay for the next day and a half: "solo time". We had to stay close to our area and we weren't allowed to go find someone else, we had to be alone. Even though it was morning the first thing I did was build a fire pit and make sure that I could get a fire started. I knew that a fire would help calm me through the night when I was alone. I got the fire started in less than five minutes and decided to try and keep it going all day. I was afraid I might not be able to get another one going.

The back wall of my shelter

The rest of the day I spent working on a comfortable shelter, so first I cleared the ground of all rock and twigs and had nice soft ground. Then I started to build the wall off my lean-to. My first plan was to make a really good wall of sticks (and bark for insulation) and then just have my poncho be the V part down from the wall. After I had most of my shelter built a huge storm hit and I had to hide in my shelter. Turns out just having the poncho as a wall didn't work too well. The wind kept sucking it onto me and then some of the water would come through onto me. Plus I had left both ends of the lean-to open which let wind and water into my shelter. So once the storm was over I decided to build the V part with long sticks and then cover it with the poncho for extra waterproofing. I also covered one end with sticks and then branches off the cedar for added insulation from the wind. I spent pretty much the whole day breaking off big sticks and branches so that my shelter would be good. Plus I gathered tons of fire wood just in case I couldn't sleep through the night. I was glad I kept myself busy because then I didn't think about how alone I was.

My finished shelter

As soon as it got dark I headed into my shelter. I fell asleep very quickly and only had one scare during the night. I was woken up by what I thought was something walking through my camp. I had my head at the open end of the shelter so I tried to hide as best as I could. When the noise got louder and I was pretty sure the animal was very close to my head, I turned and looked outside and yelled RARR as loud as possible. Trying to scare off the animal. When I couldn't see anything and still heard the "walking" I looked around the camp. Turns out part of my poncho came loose and was hitting a stick when the wind blew it. Yeah I felt like a big dork. Haha.

Getting picked up after my Solo time

When I woke up in the morning I really had nothing to do since we were being picked up later that day, there was no point in making my shelter better. So I took out my sleeping bag and tried to clean it off and then I tried to bury as much ash as I could because there was a ton of it. But I pretty much had nothing to do since we weren't allowed to hike around. This was pretty much the only time when I got "homesick". They finally picked us all up that afternoon and took us to the area where the TA's stayed the whole time. They gave us some sandwiches to eat and had us sit in their huge shelter. Then since it was Sunday we were given permission to have a sacrament meeting. It was pretty cool, we sang songs and shared our testimonies. After that we packed up and headed home to real life and showers!

The whole class