Virginia Outdoor Adventures: Hiking, Camping, Kayaking, Local Travel and more!
From the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia is a mecca for outdoor travel and adventure. Virginia Outdoor Adventures Podcast is your local guide to hiking, camping, kayaking, travel and so much more. Get the information and the inspiration to plan your own adventure, right here in Virginia. Lets Go!
Virginia Outdoor Adventures: Hiking, Camping, Kayaking, Local Travel and more!
Wilderness Survival Skills That Could Save Your Life When You’re Lost, Injured, or Stranded with Tim MacWelch, Advanced Survival Training (Ep 71, Part 1)
Could your outdoor adventure turn into a survival situation? In this eye-opening conversation with wilderness expert Tim MacWelch of Advanced Survival Training, we dive into the essential skills and knowledge that could mean the difference between life and death when venturing into Virginia's beautiful but sometimes unforgiving wilderness.
Tim shares critical insights about why even experienced hikers and outdoor enthusiasts can find themselves in trouble, including unexpected weather changes, injuries, becoming lost, or accidents that can escalate quickly.
The conversation takes a practical turn as Tim addresses listener questions about survival priorities that help you focus on what matters most in an emergency.
Whether you're a casual day hiker or seasoned adventurer, this conversation delivers practical wisdom that makes the outdoors safer for everyone. Let’s Go!
Join us next week for part 2 when Tim answers more of your questions about wilderness survival skills, such as how to find shelter and make a fire, and snake bite care. You won’t want to miss an exciting giveaway Tim is offering my listeners.
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Episode 34. Foraging for Wild Edible Plants
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From the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia is a mecca for outdoor travel and adventure. Virginia outdoor adventures Podcast is your local guide for hiking, camping, kayaking, travel and so much more. Get the information and the inspiration to plan your own adventure right here in Virginia, I'm your host. Jessica Bowser, could your outdoor adventure turn into a survival situation? In this eye opening conversation with wilderness expert Tim mcwelch of advanced survival training, we dive into the essential skills and knowledge that could mean the difference between life and death when venturing into Virginia's beautiful but sometimes unforgiving wilderness, Tim shares critical insights about why even experienced hikers and outdoor enthusiasts can find themselves in trouble, including unexpected weather changes, injuries becoming lost, or accidents that can escalate quickly. The conversation takes a practical turn as Tim addresses listener questions about survival priorities that help you focus on what matters most in an emergency, whether you're a casual day hiker or seasoned adventurer, this conversation delivers practical wisdom that makes the outdoors safer for everyone. Let's go Virginia Outdoor Adventures is sponsored by the Virginia association for parks, V, A, F, P champions parks across the Commonwealth. Registration for the annual conference is now live. Join us may 1 through fourth at occaneechi State Park. This year's conference will feature a tour of Staunton river battlefield State Park, a guided paddle program at occaneechi, perfect for those working on paddle quest, and a special dark sky program at Stanton River State Park, plus special guests and speakers, workshops and panel discussions, meals and lodging provided, plus plenty of opportunities for conviviality around the campfire with like minded Park enthusiasts. Register for the VA FP annual conference today by clicking on Virginia association for parks in the show notes of your listening app. Tim, welcome back to Virginia outdoor adventures. Hi, Jessica, thank you for having me back. I'm so excited to have you back, because you've been a guest before in Episode 34 which was in season three, and that was an episode about foraging for wild edible plants, and it was such a popular episode that I thought it would be fantastic to have you back again to cover a new topic. That's great. I'm pleased, very pleased. So what do you love about Virginia's outdoors? I have
Unknown:to, I have to say the forests. That's the thing that that we just don't have anywhere else in the country, not quite like the forest in Virginia. Other places, they've got beautiful landscapes that are that are similar. But this is, this is my home. This is where I grew up. And so there's just nothing else that looks quite like this. I
Jessica Bowser:totally agree, Tim, should we jump right into the first listener question? Absolutely So, just so that everybody knows, I did solicit listener questions for this episode, and this was a topic that was highly requested by some of my listeners, especially on my listener survey, and I asked people what exactly they wanted to know, because I didn't want to guess. I wanted to make sure that we covered all the things that people were interested in. So let's go ahead and jump into the first question. And this is from my friend Kevin in Leesburg. And I will just preface this by saying that he was being sarcastic when he said this, but I threw it in here anyway, because I actually know, and you know that there are some people who think this. So he said, do you even need survival skills? We have smartphones and cars.
Unknown:You don't actually need them. Kevin, you specifically, yeah, just stay home. You can just order food on GrubHub. Maybe get a job where you work remotely, find yourself the mother of your children on some kind of dating app. I'm sure there's somebody within five miles. So, yeah, you don't actually have to have any sort of outdoor skills. But the average person who might want to go to the park, once in a while, take a camping trip, go backpacking, go kayaking, you know, just have some kind of outdoor adventure, they actually should have some wilderness survival skills, just in case. What
Jessica Bowser:situations might someone encounter that would require survival skills?
Unknown:You know, one of the biggest reasons the search and rescue gets called out for someone who's having trouble in the outdoors is the scenario where that person has gotten lost, and then a close second is someone who's having some kind of medical emergency, and this could be an injury, or it could be some medical event that they didn't get the memo that today was going to be stroke day or heart attack day, or, you know, some other major medical crisis. But. Between these two, between getting lost or having some kind of medical issue. You know, these are the things that can that can happen to anybody when we go out into the outdoors. What about weather
Jessica Bowser:changes? Those situations arise too Absolutely.
Unknown:So that's one of those areas that can kind of kind of straddle the issue of having a medical crisis. So if the weather turned colder, if the weather got wet, even if we knew where we were, even if we were not physically harmed, we could still start to drift into hypothermia by getting cold, by getting wet, by having the wind blow on us, and if we're not dressed for that, then we could go into hypothermic shock, and now we're back to having a medical crisis. So yeah, weather plays a huge role, and most people don't understand that mountains make their own weather. And so whatever the prediction was for that day that might have been at a lower elevation, and you go up on a mountain, and it could be a very different set of weather patterns that day.
Jessica Bowser:Yes, I can't tell you how many times I've experienced that myself, but you learn as you go that you just need to be prepared, because something can change. Like you said, you think it's going to be one thing. And then you get up there, I can't tell you how many times I've left the house and the weather is beautiful, and then I get to the mountain, I step out of my car and it's freezing and it's like, July, yeah,
Unknown:this is the thing that will sucker punch somebody who is not experienced, you know, they're not familiar with with the different regions, you know, within our state, just how different these, these micro climates, and how different elevation can make the weather.
Jessica Bowser:What are the key preventative measures someone should take before heading outside, including what to pack.
Unknown:One of the biggest things people should do before they go on any outdoor excursion is to form a plan for that outing. You know you want to you want to plan out where you're going, what your route is going to be, what you're doing when you're coming back, which car you're taking, where that car should be parked. Just figure out all these little details. Study a map, you know, and just just get all that figured out, and then tell somebody exactly what your plans are. And this should be somebody responsible back home who would act as your safety net. So in the event that you do go out there and you get turned around, or you do go out there and you're just having a bad luck day, you know, that's the day that that you were going to have a medical emergency, and you didn't know it. You didn't get the memo. So you go out there and you run into trouble, and if you're not back on time, if you don't call and check in at the predetermined time, then your safety net person back home can reach out to maybe the local park. You know, a lot of parks have have a law enforcement officer, and they've got a hotline that you can call 24 hours a day, and so, you know, let's say, for example, somebody got lost at a local state park. You know, there's going to be a phone number that you could call if your friend went hiking in that park and did not come home, and their car is still in the parking lot, and you know, they're not answering their cell phone, and there are resources, so it's very important to know what those resources are, and provide that specific phone number to your safety net person who's watching out for you back home. I
Jessica Bowser:think this is a good time to mention that I have taken a couple of your courses before, and I just recently took one of your bushcraft crash courses. And you were telling the group during that course that the phone number that your person at home should be calling should not be the local police, right? And do you want to explain why that is? Yeah,
Unknown:that's That's right. So, movies, television shows, they've trained us that if anything goes south, you dial 911, here in America, and you know, you say, I'd like to report a missing person, please. So that's a big no no if we're trying to help somebody who's gotten lost in the woods or or having some kind of medical event out in the woods, a missing persons case presented to law enforcement, just the normal police department or Sheriff's Department. This is not going to get much attention, and probably nothing's going to happen for 48 hours. A lot can happen in 48 hours. Somebody could die of hypothermia in a few hours, if the weather is is, you know, turning colder, getting wet, getting windy, and so this is not the outcome that we we want to, want to create. So by calling that park number, that park emergency phone number, you might get a law enforcement officer who is at that park, or park rangers who are at that park, and then they can get search and rescue activated sometimes within an hour, and most search and rescue cases have a happy ending, and they are resolved within 12 hours here in the United States. And so by calling the right number and using the right language. So just to recap, we don't dial 911, and we don't use the M word missing. Or we don't say that word we call the park, or whatever authority governs the area that that person was going to. And we say that we need to report a lost use the L word lost hiker, lost camp or lost backpacker. Now, things can get set in motion at a much faster speed,
Jessica Bowser:with campgrounds open and warmer temperatures on the horizon, Virginia State Parks is launching its spring interpretive programs offering visitors of all ages the opportunity to explore the natural and cultural wonders of Virginia. The diverse programming is designed to inspire curiosity, foster environmental stewardship and provide enriching outdoor experiences for families, students and nature enthusiasts alike. Highlights include flora and fauna programs, learn about Virginia's native species through up close encounters and expert talks, historical and cultural tours, step back in time with interpretive walks and hands on history lessons, outdoor skills workshops, gain valuable knowledge on topics like archery, camping, fishing, kayaking, backpacking and more, Junior Ranger adventures, fun and educational activities designed to engage young explorers, citizen science initiatives, participate in real world research projects that contribute to conservation efforts, self guided programs, explore at your own pace with geocaching, discovery, backpacks, photo scavenger hunts, stargazing, tree identification, birding and more. Join us at Virginia State Parks for exciting, family friendly events that invite you to explore the outdoors. For a full schedule of events, including park locations and program details, click on Virginia State Parks spring interpretive programs in your show notes. Tim, what should people have in their pack as they prepare to go out. So
Unknown:your basic supplies for anybody, even for like a one hour hike, they should cover you if you were stuck out there overnight. And so these are going to be items that would provide warmth if the weather turns cold, things that would protect you from rain, if, if that weather pattern moves in, you'll need methods of signaling for help, because that's your tool to help search and rescue to help you. We want to help the people who are trying to help us. And so this could be something very simple, like signal whistle, just a brightly colored, very loud signal whistle. And then the items for shelter could be something like poncho, a space blanket would be an excellent choice, because that's going to help keep us warm and knock off the wind and the rain that are trying to trying to steal our body heat. We want to have just a few food items, some high calorie food water to drink, maybe some water disinfection tablets, which would allow us to resupply our water. So we could have a one quart bottle and some of those purification tablets, and now we can have many days worth of water, and it's, you know, something that can pack down very small in a survival kit, and so just a few basic items can make the difference in an outdoor emergency.
Jessica Bowser:Let's jump into our second listener question. This is from Cindy, who submitted her question on Instagram. And Cindy would like to know, what should I have in my first aid kits I have gotten lost or, as I say, turned around in the forest. So
Unknown:yeah, first aid, this is something that I often get on a soapbox and rant about a little bit in my survival classes here in Virginia. Survival is something that has a lot of facets to it, and one of the biggest and most important facets of it is first aid. I tell my students all the time, first aid is the most likely survival skill you will ever use in your entire life, and you probably aren't even going to need it out in the woods. You might need to perform first aid at home on a loved one. You might need it at work, you might need it driving down the road, you might need it on vacation. You never know when you're going to need first aid skills. And there's such a wide range of skills that we could acquire. You know, you're a living human person walking around in a living, breathing body. Don't you think you need to know how to patch it up, maybe take care of the people around you that you claim to care about, but you still refuse to go get a first aid class. Do you really even care? First Aid has two facets to it. For us as people who are practicing wilderness survival skills, the first facet is having the stuff. It's really hard to do first aid without first aid supplies, it can be done. It's just harder, takes longer. So the first part is the stuff, and the second part is the skills. So we need to be able to have both of those. The stuff is great, but it's not independent of the skills. We need to know the skills to use the stuff. And then the skills are great, but it would. Take forever to to fabricate a tourniquet. You know, if someone needs a tourniquet, you don't have time to cobble together a tourniquet with a branch and your belt and, you know, and whatever other junk you you can put together. Like, if someone needs a tourniquet, they need it on them in less than 30 seconds. Like, it's going to take you that long to just even find a stick that's not going to break. So I recommend having both of those hemispheres covered in first aid, both the skills learned in a hands on fashion and the stuff, the right equipment, the right supplies, the right resources in a medical kit that you can dig into easily, and even something that someone else could dig into and find the things they need. So maybe someone else uses your first aid kit on you. It's impossible to predict how that kit will get used, but I will tell you this, first aid is the most likely survival skill anybody's ever going to use. And so to that end, in our kit, we want to have the usual stuff for the everyday boo boos. So we want the band aids. We want some Neosporin. We want some burn gel. We want some anti age cream, you know, just the basic stuff for the cut, scrape, scratches, burns, blisters, these types of everyday injuries and just minor things. But we also need to be ready for a more serious medical emergency, and that's when we need the dressings, the bandages, the gauze, put a tourniquet in there and put it on top. I always put tourniquets on top of my first aid supplies, because that's the one that I would need the fastest. And thank god I've never had to put one on anybody outside of practice situations. But if we need it, we need it in seconds, not, you know, dig through the bag and try to find it at the bottom. And I also like to have a headlamp in my first aid kit. I don't want that right on top, because if someone gets hurt after dark, myself or somebody that I'm with, I need to be able to see to assess that injury and perform first aid. And I don't need to be digging through the bag trying to find the headlamp, either. So the headlamp and the tourniquet go on top in a large pouch in my medical bag. And then other pouches will have the Boo Boo stuff. And then other pouches will have some simple over the counter meds. And then other parts of the kit will have the bandages, the dressings, the gauze, the medical tape, things like that, that I could, you know, use to patch up a bigger injury and other things, you know, a triangle bandage is very versatile. So I can use that to create an arm sling. If someone has hurt their elbow or shoulder. I can use that to make a tourniquet if I had to, you know, if I needed to somebody's having a bad day if I need to roll out two tourniquets. But it's not unheard of, and so some versatile piece of equipment, like a triangle bandage, can serve a lot of different roles, and this is just the beginning. These are just a few of the top items. You could buy a first aid kit, or you could assemble it piece by piece on your own. I would just recommend that you don't cut corners on price. You will get what you pay for if you buy some knockoff tourniquet, it's probably going to crack into pieces when you're trying to use it.
Jessica Bowser:Be prepared on your next adventure with beautifully designed, high quality first aid products from, keep going. First Aid choose from. Keep going. 60 piece loaded mini kit, 130 piece go kit, or 270 piece super kit, featuring attractive designs that are compact and lightweight as well as durable and water resistant. Kits include practical items such as tick removers, Sting relief bandages and more and fit easily in your pack. Keep going as a small, family owned business that offers a satisfaction guarantee and ships from the USA. As a listener, you can receive 10% off first aid kits using the code V, A, O, a podcast. Check your show notes for the link during the Bush craft course you were talking about the need to understand or remember the rule of threes. Can you explain what that is?
Unknown:Yeah, thank you for asking. I love the rule of threes. A lot of people don't really understand where to start when it comes to wilderness survival or any other genre of survival. The rule of threes gives us an easy to understand and easy to use framework. It's like a set of hooks that we can hang things on. It's like a set of boxes that we can place things in. And so the rule of threes dictates that we have three minutes to live without air. We have three hours to live out in the cold. If we have air, we have three days to live without water. If we have shelter and air, we have three weeks to live without food. If we have water, shelter and air, and so at its core, the rule of threes is showing you how long you have to live in increment. Of time. Now, of course, this is a gross generalization. You know, you might live more than three minutes without air. People that have been underwater in situations where they fell through the ice and drowned in in near freezing water, they have been revived after 40 minutes, 50 minutes after an hour in rare cases, and people might live for many days without drinking water. There are stories of people living over a week without drinking water, but in general, the average person is going to last about three days without drinking water. And so there are always wild extremes to these spans of time that a person can live without basic essentials, but in general, three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food. And so that shows us which survival resources are more important in a short term situation, and then which ones become more important in a long term situation. So for your typical 72 hour survival scenario. And a lot of people base their survival kit and their training off of the idea that they would be rescued within three days, or 72 hours. And so we would absolutely need air, and that's a freebie, thank God, unless there's an avalanche or or some other, you know, horrible situation. We got free air. So that one's a that one's one that we don't have to fight for, but the shelter and the water, those are things that we we have to have within a couple of days. And what's not accounted for in the rule of threes is medical emergencies. And so that one can just sneak in and hit us wherever maybe we've got, you know, the exsanguinating hemorrhage. We've got that massive bleed. We slipped in some mud and a broken piece of glass was sticking up, and it slashed our arm. That happened to a friend of mine, and he almost died out in the woods. He would just hike it along, and slipped on some mud, and there was a little jagged piece of a broken bottle, and hit it, laid his arm open from from wrist to elbow. And so he had to improvise a binding out of his T shirt and and use physical pressure, you know, use use a pressure point to help to control the bleeding and elevate the wound and, and, you know, very carefully try to get back to camp before he passed out there. He did not have the stuff to do first aid, but he did have the skills, and so ideally, we want to have the stuff and the skills. You know, sometimes you just don't have what you need.
Jessica Bowser:What an interesting example of how you think that just going for a hike could not cause an issue, right? I'm sure he was an experienced hiker, and that seems like a freak accident, but it can still happen,
Unknown:absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it's, it truly is a freak accident. There's a book called death at Yosemite, and it chronicles all the just ridiculously simple ways that people have lost their lives within that park since it opened. And it's just silly things. You know, somebody might have dropped a camera at an overlook, and then they they tried to climb down and get it because it was sitting on a ledge, and then they couldn't get back up and froze to death on a ledge just a few feet away from where they parked their car at the Overlook. You know, they're just story after story like that. And so if we think, Oh, nothing bad will ever happen to me, you know, if I go in the park, if I go out in the woods, odds odds are it won't, but every once in a while somebody does, unfortunately beat the odds. Well, from
Jessica Bowser:here on out, I think I'd like to just focus on listener questions. I think we did a good intro here with some basic information for people to prepare before they go out. But I want to focus on some of these listener questions. So the first one is from Patty, who lives in Henrico, and she says, I sometimes think twice about hiking in a new location because I'm nervous about getting lost. What would you recommend and what should I do if I become lost? Jessica,
Unknown:all of the questions you got from our listeners are excellent. These are all amazing questions and and I really appreciate this, this question from Patty, a lot of people don't take that first step to go to a new place, you know, and you don't know what you're missing if you don't go there, and it can be a little scary. And so I would highly recommend for patty and everybody else that you find a buddy, find yourself a hiking buddy that you can do. You can go someplace new with. You know, there's there's strength in numbers. We instinctively know this as a species, and two heads are better than one. So if you go in there and you're trying to figure out, you know which way to go, then then two people might be able to get unconfused together. But before you go get a map of that new park that you want to go check out, you and your hiking buddy can study that map, figure out what's on the edges of that map. That Park is not infinite, like you are not going to hike out of that park onto another planet. That Park has finite borders, and so figure out what they are. If there's a road to the south of the park, and if there's a river on the west side of the park, and if those are the boundaries. And then if maybe in the north of the park there's, there's a mountain or something. If we can figure out what these boundaries are, what these geological features are and man made features, then we can use those to to kind of box ourselves in. And so you know, if you hike into the park heading north, and you bring your map with you, and you bring a compass, then to get out of said Park, we would go question mark. Where do we go? We hike in North. Where do we where do we go? To get out, we hike south, right? And so by just taking the time to study a map and learn the lay of the land and figure out kind of where the boundaries are, and we can use those as a handrail if we get lost, but we hit that river, and if we paid attention to which way the river flows, and you know where it's going to cross the road, we would have enough knowledge to self rescue. You know, we could, we could we could get Unturned around. You know, it's so easy to get confused and get turned around out there, especially if you go off trail, but you can, you can also self rescue. You can figure out where you are, even without advanced land navigation skills. I feel
Jessica Bowser:like there's so many stories out there of people getting lost and maybe even not making it, and when they're discovered, they're like, a few feet from the trail right? Like, if you don't know where you are, it doesn't matter how close you are to the trail, you're still lost.
Unknown:Yeah, and there, there's just, there's so many of those stories. There's too many. It's a tragic amount of stories like that. And so this is a scenario with a fix. You know, if we had a compass, even just with a compass, if we were able to pick a bearing, any bearing, and walk in a straight line, eventually we would hit something on the east coast here, especially in Virginia. And there's an old joke like, if you get lost in the woods, just sit down, because, you know, they'll build a 711 or a Walmart or something right next to you, just really soon, and there's stuff everywhere, like, you really aren't in the deep wilderness. If we went up to, like, you know, Northern Ontario and and, you know, went out in the wilderness, there we might be hundreds of miles from any man made feature or civilization. And so, you know, that could be out in the middle of nowhere, but here in Virginia, or really, most places within the lower 48 there are plenty of features that we can find and follow, power lines, roads, rivers. There are features, you know, that are man made and natural that we could use as some kind of guide to self rescue and get back to civilization. All
Jessica Bowser:right. The next two questions are both about water, but they're very different questions. The first one is from Kevin in Salem, and he says, I carry water purification tablets in my pack, but I'm unsure how to find water if I need it, especially in drier months.
Unknown:The dry months can be tricky, so once we get into July and August and and even early September, before the fall rains come the back country can be very dry still. If we go downhill. Across most of the planet, if we go downhill, seek a lower elevation, there will be points where springs are popping up. There is available water at the surface. And so if we if we follow different waterways and different drainages downhill we're going to hit water eventually we just have to go far enough to find it. And so, yeah, definitely keep those purification tablets Kevin and and also, it's a use it or lose it product. So keep the expiration date in mind. So the chlorine based products often last two years, maybe less. And iodine based water purification tablets are only good for a year, so make sure you replenish those periodically, just so you have that resource. I'm
Jessica Bowser:glad you said that. I'm going to go check my tablets as soon as we get off this recording. Yeah,
Unknown:check the dates, the water purification stuff, and some of your first aid supplies, and, of course, your food, are all going to be things that you'd want to, you know, cycle through. You'd want to use it periodically and replenish it with something fresh, good
Jessica Bowser:to know. And the next question about water comes from Chrissy, who lives in Chesapeake, and she says, the water where I live in the Tidewater region is salty. What should I do if I'm stranded and need water where fresh water isn't available?
Unknown:Chrissy has got the opposite problem, Water, water everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink. So we are not built to drink salt water. Human beings cannot drink salt water. It's something that is kind of confusing, because we need salt, we need sodium as a nutrient, and we need water, and salt water gives you both, but gives you too much sodium. This is going to affect the electrolytes in your body, especially the electrolytes in your brain. And you will go crazy, you will go absolutely stark raving mad, and you're also dehydrating your body at the cellular. Level, because the salt is going to require water from your cells to be able to be processed. So it's really a lose lose scenario. So for somebody in a coastal area where the water even tastes slightly salty, so either full on salt water, which is 3% salt, or brackish water, which is a mixture of fresh and salt water in that area. If the water even tastes slightly salty, we should not consume it. So the alternative is to find some kind of spring or stream of fresh water that's pouring into the larger body of water. So try to find a river dumping into the bay, or a stream dumping into the river, or a spring dumping into a stream, or wait for rain, but you could die of thirst waiting for rain in a dry season. Another option would be to dig for shallow pits in sand dune areas and see what water you can find there. Sometimes sand dune areas will trap rain water, so the rain will fall there, and it will go down into the sand, and it won't evaporate. And sometimes you will have a layer of fresh water on top of the salt water under the sand. But we can't dig too deep, you know, it's hit and miss, but we would have to dig basically a little well and taste the water for salt.
Jessica Bowser:Okay, so the next question is from Dakota, and she sent this question in on Instagram. She said, I took a foraging class once so I could learn to identify plants I can eat, but I don't think it would be enough to hold me over in an emergency or for several days. How else can I find food foraging?
Unknown:You know, that's what we had our previous episode about, yeah, and there's always something to eat. Wherever you are in the wild, there's always some kind of wild food. The problem is, it may not be enough. Many seasons out of the year, the wild edibles are low calorie food items. So even something like berries, raspberries and blackberries, they're 50 or 60 calories per eight ounce cup, an eight ounce cup of berries, like, that's one serving. So let's, let's run the math. How many cups of berries, Jessica, do you have to eat to get 2000 calories from just berries? I'll just say a lot. A lot is the correct answer. So it's going to be like 40 cups, 48 ounce cups of berries at 50 calories per eight ounce cup. So that's a couple gallons of berries. So who's going to be sick? Who's going to get sick to the stomach? Eat not many berries? You are that's a bit much. Yeah, it's too much. So there are times in places where we would have abundant plant life that we could subsist off of entirely in the autumn. So in the fall, we've got tree nuts, we've got fruits, we've got berries, we've got many different food resources, many of which are very nutrient dense. So the tree nuts alone would give us something that we could live off of. But not every tree nut is safe for human consumption, and some require special processing, like acorns, tannic acid and acorns is going to make you very sick unless you know how to get rid of it. So yeah, take another foraging class. You and your listeners and everybody else like take another and keep brushing up on that skill set. And then, in the event that we're in a season where the plant life is not giving you a lot of calories, think about a backup plan for getting wild food. So something like fishing. We could fish 12 months out of the year. Just a small amount of supplies can allow us to do survival fishing, just some hooks and some fishing line. We don't need all the other junk. We just need the hooks in the line. Learn how to tie a knot in monofilament fishing line and tie a hook onto the line, and tie the line onto a long stick, flip over a rock and find a worm and dunk him in the water and see what you can catch. And that's going to give us a source of protein and fat that we will very often lack from the plant kingdom. Foods,
Jessica Bowser:excellent. Okay, there's one more question about food, and this is from Fernando, and I completely relate with what he's saying here. He says, I constantly see people setting off for an all day hike with only snacks to eat. How much food do I actually need to carry?
Unknown:That's a phenomenal question. Fernando, you need to carry all the food, buddy, bring all the foods just, just, just hit the 711 before you go out hiking, and just load up your whole bag. This is going to depend on a person's metabolism and the amount of work that they're going to do. So I mean, if we're if we're climbing a couple 1000 feet in elevation on our hike, we are going to blow through a lot of extra calories, possibly 1000s of extra calories above your baseline metabolism, and so you just can't have enough food. And then if we stack on cold, the cold is going to strip the heat out of your body, and that's going to strip the calories out of your body like nothing else. And so we might want to have a couple extra 1000 calories per person per day in cold weather. And then if we stack on other environment. Mental factors like wind and dampness and all of that. This is our long term survival issue, getting enough calories, but it's also going to impact us in the short term. And so I would just say, Bring all the food you can. And I do have some criteria for good survival food. Yes, I want
Jessica Bowser:to hear that for sure, because you hear about like these three hikers surviving on slim gyms. And I'm like, I don't understand. Yeah,
Unknown:I mean, I mean, you could, you know, theoretically, and so you've preserved yourself with that high amount of sodium and BHT, and, you know, all the other junk that's in there. For me, good survival food needs to just fit a couple of criteria. One is that it has a long shelf life. So we talked about checking our expiration dates on our medicines and our water disinfection tablets. We ideally want to have a survival food that has a long shelf life, just so that we don't have to rotate it out very often. Another feature of the survival food should be very high calories, so we need something that's going to be offering a ton of calories, just so that we have them to burn for energy, for warmth. A lot of foods don't fit that requirement. So a lot of foods that we would get that have a long shelf life lack calories. And so we want to hit those two buttons we want to hit, the shelf life and the high calorie. And then a third feature, which is just just practical, that survival food should be something we could eat without any preparation at all. Just rip the bag open, rip the pouch open, rip the packaging open, and eat it. If you could eat it while you're walking, I'm satisfied. And so we need calories, shelf life and and just ease of consumption. So if that's a Snickers bar for you, then that's great. You know, if that's a some other product, if you want a protein bar, great. But the longest lasting thing that I'm aware of are the survival food bars, these different ration bars, and many different companies make them. So you can get a big brick of them, and that's something you'd find on a lifeboat, but you can also get them in individually packaged bars. New Millennium is a company that makes a bunch of different flavors, and it's essentially a really dense, dry shortbread cookie, but it's got a five year shelf life. It's got 400 calories per bar, and you know, you can eat while you're walking, so something like that, or something comparable to that, would would be a great choice for survival food. Think
Jessica Bowser:some of us need to rethink what we're putting in our packs and and I hear what Fernando is saying on this i i meet up with friends to go hiking, and I'm like, What did you bring to eat? And they're like, Oh, I stopped at 711 and they have a bunch of junk food in their bag, and that's all they brought. And I'm scratching my head, because I would die if that's all I had to eat.
Unknown:Yeah, I mean, we, we ideally want to have some some really good nutrition, because we're putting a lot of demands on our body when we're hiking and being out in the elements, and so yeah, we want to give it the best fuel that we can put in the tank.
Jessica Bowser:Ready to increase your outdoor skill set. As a listener of this podcast, you can join Tim for his outdoor courses using an exclusive discount code, choose from primitive cooking, foraging for edible plants, tree identification, herbal medicine, sustainable gardening, off grid cooking, blacksmithing, AX craft, rope craft and so much more. Click on Advanced survival training in your show notes and use the discount code Bao a 15 for 15% off any of Tim's extensive course offerings. Register soon. Offer expires on July 1. Join us next week for part two, when Tim answers more of your questions about wilderness survival skills, such as how to find shelter and make a fire and Snake bike care, you won't want to miss an exciting giveaway Tim is offering my listeners. Virginia Outdoor Adventures is inspired by and supported by listeners like you, which is why your messages and feedback mean so much to me. You can text me directly by clicking on Send me a text message in your show notes, I answer questions, respond to comments and share your feedback on the show. Never miss an update. Get even more information and inspiration by signing up for my newsletter. Click on newsletter, sign up in your show notes or visit Virginia outdoor adventures.com thanks for listening until next time adventure on you.
