Why People Don't Like Bear Grylls

I received an email from a PR team that handles the Degree (antiperspirant) brand.

They asked me to post this video on the blog. I replied that this is not beneficial in any way to the visitors of Highball Blog. It's well produced but it's a commercial. They din't reply.

Sleeping in the Snow and What To Eat in Order To Keep Yourself Warm at Night

Do you watch Survivorman? You know, the TV show on Discovery.

I do. I also watch I should't be alive.

But no mater how sympathetic I am with the people/characters, I'm still just a guy on a couch eating snacks (in a warm home with no pain or fear whatsoever).

Could You Survive The Wild? 8 Essential Wilderness Survival Tips

Would you survive a night on your own in the wild? Most people can’t honestly answer ‘yes’ to that question because they wouldn’t be prepared to handle the unexpected.

Here you’ll learn some basic survival concepts and essential tips in case you ever need to brave the wild.

Tip #1: Always prepare to spend the night outdoors.

Far too many outdoor adventurers make the error of optimism. They prepare for the best case scenario make the mistake of omitting the “what ifs”. Even when embarking on a simple day outing, you should have all the gear you’ll need to survive the night.

Tip #2: The basic needs are warmth, water, sleep and food.

A high-quality sleeping bag will help ensure warmth and sleep. You should also have lighters protected in a waterproof container as well as knowledge of where you can acquire dry wood in the event of wet conditions.

Additionally, know where your fresh water sources are in the area, and have plenty food on hand, such as trail mix and protein bars. We can survive a long time without food, but those energy sources can make survival much easier.

Tip #3: The right equipment can go a long way.

Highly useful gear to have handy on your adventure includes a first aid kit, compass, map of the area and signals, such as a whistle, signal mirror, aerial signals, light sticks and emergency flares.

Other helpful items include waterproof matches with tinder, a flashlight, bandana (to cover your head from scorching sun or even as a bandage if you get injured), thread and needle, lip balm, sunscreen and insect repellant (you don’t want those bugs to eat you alive!).

Tip #4: Practice makes perfect.

Reading about wilderness survival techniques is a good first step, but it is not enough. It is very difficult for a novice to apply theory in an actual emergency.

Practice and familiarity are crucial. Practice starting a fire and using the various safety equipment, and consider taking a wilderness survival course.

Tip #5: Choose your shelter site with care.

Optimally, a shelter site should be flat, dry and well drained. It should be a convenient distance from water and firewood. However, do not choose a site too close to water because of insects, flash flooding and other dangers.

Tip #6: The three stages of fire building are tinder, kindling and fuel.

Good tinder is dry and ignites with only a spark: grass, leaves, paper, bark and even resin. Kindling is highly combustible material that you add to the burning tinder. Dead branches and materials from the underside of trees and bushes work best. Once the kindling burns, add your fuel, which generally consists of large dry pieces of wood.

Tip #7: Know how to navigate.

It is one thing to be able to follow a compass and use a map, but it is also relatively easy to navigate via the sun, moon, North Star, Southern Cross, wind and even moss growth on trees and other foliage. Most courses cover these skills.

Tip #8: Know how to find and prepare water.

If you don’t have water or a limited source, finding more is your priority. Conserve water by avoiding direct sunlight and heat, and then use your map or head downhill following cues, such as moist ground, animal tracks and so forth.

Keep these tips in mind on your next outdoor venture and you’ll be all the more prepared to face whatever unexpected situation that lies ahead.

About the author: Jason Thompson has been publishing articles online for more than a decade, and many of them deal with the great outdoors and tips for passing the hunter safety course California requires. He has had survival training, and is a skilled hunter, angler and boater.

Photo source: Total Film

8 Rules To Follow for Your DIY Survival Kit

This is a guest post by Casey Fiedler who writes on how to find adventure in modern life. Check out his blog at Contemporary Adventures.

What should you put in your survival kit?

This question pops up all the time across the web. I’ve spent time in the outdoors, in wilderness survival classrooms, watched what YouTubers and professionals alike have to say on just about anything that could go in a “Survival Kit”, and I’ve done my time in the bush practicing extended survival techniques. 

The one thing I always notice is people’s tendency to over pack and over-list “necessities”. A list of survival kit necessities should be just that – necessary. I’m not going to tell you what to pack; any search engine result will have a list of possibilities. The intention of this article is to help you choose what’s worth it, and what isn’t. 

By following these simple rules, your survival kit will become smaller, lighter, more efficient, and more likely to keep you alive!

Here are 8 rules to follow when putting together your own survival kit:

1.     Make it yourself. Never buy prefab kits from the local outdoor store because, most of the time, they’re overpriced, over packed, poor quality, and don’t even contain the real necessities of a survival kit. The sardine can above looks sexy but that's not necessarily helpful...

2.     Keep it small. This rule is a little flexible. For example a survival kit that would be stored in the trunk of a car could be much larger and heavier, opening up more options for content choices. Backpackers and outdoorsmen, however, need to have a lightweight, small, easily portable kit that won’t burden their movements in the woods. Become proficient with a few items, know what you need, and pack only the necessities. It’s a survival kit, not carry on luggage.

3.     Complement your own abilities. Not all survival kits should be identical. If you’re the worst fire starter since the beginning of man, then keep a couple good fire starters in your kit. If you can start a fire in the pouring rain with just the hairs off your back, then go easy on the fire gear. We all have our strong suits; know yours well and pack as little as is necessary to compliment your level of proficiency. This will keep the kit size small and efficient.

4.     Keep the environment in mind. If you’re heading into the desert, you’re going to need to take some very serious water and shelter considerations. If you’re heading into the Arctic Circle where it’s light 24/7, maybe you can take the flashlight out to lighten the load and open up space for cold weather necessities.

5.     All items must serve double duty. If there is something in your survival kit that does not have more than one use, take it out! In order to effectively reduce pack size and increase efficiency, your survival kit items must pull double duty.  A couple exceptions might be water purifying tablets and ferrocerium rods (metal match). Take string or wire off their cardboard tubes and wrap them around the base of your canteen to save space. Pack each progressively smaller item inside the last, kind of like a Nesting Doll effect.

6.     Be frugal. This might qualify more as a personal rule, however I suggest you all consider it very carefully. Survival has become a niche cult sort of topic lately and manufacturers are loving it! Remember, the people who make survival kits for retail sale have one main goal: profit! Let’s consider this: your goal is to stay alive, their goal is to make money… those two don’t fit well together. Make your own kits and save money where possible, not everything is a scam, but no production kit will ever match the quality of a personally tailored survival kit. However, it’s not always about saving money, being frugal with your survival kit can often bring benefits by forcing you to make some of your own gear. Make your fire starters by dipping cotton balls in Vaseline; you don’t need to spend money on fire starters.  Make your own flint striker (okay, I’m a Blacksmith, not all of us are) unknown to most people, quartz rocks and various other minerals strike sparks just as well as flint! Find ways to complete your kit on your own.

7.     Test each item. Take your kit into the woods for a day, weekend, or week and practice using it! You can’t just expect these items to light a fire for you, collect all the water for you, or catch animals for you. It takes a lot of skill to start a fire with natural tinder in blowing wind, to carve each component of a figure four perfectly, or to capture an animal using an improvised trap. Practice makes perfect, and if an item in your kit doesn’t belong or doesn’t perform its duty you’ll quickly find out.

8.     Include one major item for each priority. Start off by putting in one item to get you each of your survival priorities. If you don’t know these, learn them! They are: Fire, Shelter, Water, Food, Signaling. The order will change from situation to situation. However, food always comes after water because it takes water to digest anything you eat. If you’re not taking in water, eating will dehydrate you and kill you faster than not eating at all. Once you’ve included one good item to help acquire these life-sustaining elements in a survival situation, go ahead and add some complimentary items to your kit as you see necessary to fill in the gaps. My list of important items might go like this:

• Pocket Knife
• Magnesium Fire Starter (or Bic Lighter…)
• Potable-Aqua tablets
• Whistle
• String and wire for snares and traps
• Trashbags - Two or three trash bags take up VERY little room or weight and can waterproof a shelter, make a poncho, windproof you, collect water, purify water, and perform just about every other survival duty in a pinch.

It’s not too hard to start getting ideas for items to include in a survival kit. 

The more you go out and practice with these, the more confident you will feel with your ability to survive in wilderness. You’ll see that a list of more than ten or fifteen items will be all that you rely on in the wilderness. Only you can choose which items are necessities. Tailor your kit using these rules and it won’t fail you in the wild!

How To Light a Fire in One Try - Video

I love fire! For a few simple reasons: it brings light, it gives me warmth and it makes me happy.



There are occasions, often while being up on the mountains, when I light a fire for pure joy, just to lift my spirit. And since I'm such a big fan of fire I should be able to light one in almost any type of weather conditions, right? I thought so too but in my last mountaineering trip I had a little bit of a struggle...

It was dark, freezing cold, the snow was big and all the wood we could find was either wet or frozen. We even tried to light the fire using one of our camping mini-stove and still failed. So then we brainstormed and came up with a neat solution that worked first time like magic:

• Over prepare your fire starter fuel! Don't you ever think you've gathered too many twigs or that they are too thin. More is better and thinner is even better. Also, any other type of tinder will help - you can't find much in wintertime though - dry grass, leaves, pieces of dry tree bark.
• Find a small opening between trees. You want the smoke to go up and you don't want to set the forest on fire.
• Clear the snow or tread on it until you have a flat spot for your fire.
• Make a U shaped bed for your fire. You don't want to waste the fire's energy for melting the snow, at least in the beginning you don't want that as the fire is weak. Also by doing this, you will ensure a better ventilation for your fire as it will be slightly above the ground. Build the bed out of spruce branches, dried wood of various thicknesses.
• Take a few medium sticks and roll them into sheets of paper. Three or four will do.
• Put the kindling paper inside the U shaped bed and add the "paper sticks" across the bed.
• Add the bundle of thin twigs and tinder on top of the establishment.
• Light the paper under the paper sticks. Try to light it from both sides so you'll increase the chances of drinking hot soup later.
• You should now have a lively flame which asks for more wood. So add more wood to the fire. Increase the thickness of the wood as the fire grows stronger.

Now you can prepare your food, get some warmth, dry your clothes and let's not forget - tell stories by the fire.

Conclusions: It's essential to prepare thoroughly all the details before kindling. If the wood is wet or frozen you need more paper for starting out your fire. More tinder plus very thin twigs are always smart things to have before building the fire.

These tips are not necessarily for a survival situation. I usually carry matches and paper when I go outdoors, trekking or hiking, for more than one day. I sincerely believe it's good to be prepared for bad situations - frost or falling into water or whatever - and carrying some extra gear and gadgets is one way of being prepared for the unexpected.

Keep yourself dry and warm!