Adventure Story
Day 2
Well, so far this survival ordeal in the Sierra Nevada has been a little easier on me than usual. For this first shoot of the season, I’m not far outside of the town of Oakhurst, California, somewhere in the bush, a short ways after crossing Willow Creek, a popular hiking trail. Due to an overwhelming amount of viewer requests to both ‘head out there with the same gear as a backpacker, angler or hunter would have,’ and to stay on the continent and show some survival techniques in the areas most of us go to, I am, in essence, simulating a backpacker in the Sierra Nevada.

No one’s allowed to film in parks here so I couldn’t get into the beautiful Yosemite, but I’m on its doorstep in equally beautiful cedar and pine woods, about a quarter mile from Willow Creek. There’s a fantastic view of the falls here called ‘Devil’s Slide. I have a tent and sleeping bag with me this time — the lap of luxury! It’s a huge advantage in that I don’t have to worry about making a shelter at night. But I set up the scenario for this show so that I would come out prepared for just an overnight — a regular backpacker, out for a night in the wilderness. I spent day one hiking in; day two was spent ‘getting lost.’ So now, into my second night, I have only one peanut butter cup and a small chunk of cheese left in terms of food. I’m out of water, and though I’m by a stream, they say to watch for Giardia (a parasite) in the water here. I had one flameless boil-in-the-bag meal container left, so I used it to boil water and make some pine tea — lots of vitamin C and nutritional sulphur. I have no matches, but I have a flashlight. I have all my usual camera gear so I have to make a survival base camp to see what the area offers me for survival. There are mountain lions around, and two days ago someone was mauled not that far from here. In fact, I had to move some deer bones left over from an old lion kill in order to set up my tent. There are also black bears and rattlesnakes, but it’s highly unlikely I’ll see any. I’m most worried about stumbling into poison oak, there’s tons of it here.

Thanks to the tent, I’ve finally been able to get a decent night’s sleep on a survival trek. But this time I have a surprise planned. On day six, I’m going to head deeper into the bush and on day seven, the local SAR (search and rescue) is going to try to find me. If they can’t, I’ll stay in another day to give them a second chance.

Day 3 - Morning
I’ve forgotten how vivid my dreams become when my stomach is empty. I’m able to be comfortable in the tent but the lack of food makes it so that I don’t sleep very deeply. The dreams come strong and clear. There should be some wild edibles I can find today.

Day 3 - Night
What a day. I harvested a lot of wild edibles today — for breakfast I found a big patch of miner’s lettuce. I hiked across the creek and foraged for wild onions, Manzanita flowers, pine buds and acorns. I actually found some original mortise holes — six holes in the rock made by natives 500 to 1000 years ago. I even found a pestle. So I guess I’m the first human in hundreds of years to actually grind acorns into flour in those holes. The flour is soaking overnight in an effort to leech out the tannins.
Fire! I took my flashlight, actually a headlamp, took off the lens, attached the wires and turned it on, with a cotton ball from my backpacker’s first aid kit nestled on top. It got hot enough to ignite the cotton and now I have fire!! Although, now it means getting up throughout the night to keep it going. Tomorrow I’ll hope to make some acorn cake and set some traps over where I saw some squirrel activity.

Day 4 - Night
This is probably a good time to write in my journal, seeing as how I’m stuck in my tent in a thunderstorm. I sure wasn’t ready for this — what a classic mistake! All that time to put away firewood and prepare for a storm and I got lulled into forgetfulness by the good weather and the fortune of having a tent. So now I’ve scrambled to put firewood and dry tinder under my tent vestibule and I put a big punky log on the fire in the hopes that it will protect it and keep it going. Now I sit and wait and hope that no monster branches come down on the tent in the storm; some of the ones above me would be big enough to kill me.

In spite of all that, today was a good day; I got lots done. I started out by cooking some acorn flour ash-cakes. They were great! I followed that with some harvested cambium bark from a pine tree and some miner’s lettuce. The afternoon was spent setting up several Piute deadfalls to try for squirrels and gathering some pitch wood for a torch.

Late in the day I tried to use my water bladder bag to boil water. Unfortunately, I ended up burning pinholes in it. I know it can work but I must have got it too close to the heat this time. So there goes my water-carrier. I still have two of the tin foil boil-in-a-bag pouches, but they won’t close tightly anymore. I gathered a few pine nuts, made a pitch wood torch, and that’s when the storm came. It’s really coming down now.

Day 6 - Night
Well, the storm on day four didn’t do much. Four hours of light rain and wind, not even enough to soak the ground through the pine needle duff. So, day five ended up being all about setting up another Piute deadfall, but no luck catching any squirrels so far. I also took the strings off my guitar and used them to set up a squirrel pole set of snares. I then buried the body of my guitar under the forest floor duff and duct-taped my empty Pringles chip container in the hole so that mice could get in after the bait of leftover peanut butter cup, but not out. I then gathered some snow plant and attempted to boil it in the boil-in-a-bag pouch. I never got a rolling boil by suspending it over the flames but it steamed enough to make a meal out of the snow plant.

Today I started something different, a surprise for the show. I left my primary base camp and hiked farther into the mountains. Tomorrow, the SAR is sending 35 crew in to see if they can find me.

The hike up the 1200 feet to the vista I am on now was tough but invigorating. Some of it is quite steep, so I had to get down on my belly to climb through the thick bush. Unfortunately, some of that thick bush was large patches of Manzanita trees. They’re beautiful trees but very strong and even though they have no thorns their twigs cut like razors. To make matters worse, they’re a favourite hangout of lime disease-bearing ticks. In some spots I was literally reduced to crawling on the forest floor to get through the tangle. But, as always, the view from the top was worth it. And tonight there is no moon so the stars will be amazing — an entire star field, without light pollution to minimize it.

I’ve taken a twenty-hour head start on the search and rescue teams to head deeper into the thick of it and give them a good challenge. Of course, that means that all my safety nets are gone. I’ve used my Spot device so that only my safety team can track me — but it would be impossible for them to hike to me safely during the night.

Day 7
During the first few hours of the day I continued deeper into the bush. At one point I found myself with a very slippery and fast-moving creek to cross. The slick rocks here claim a life every year so this is not the time, while I’m completely alone, to take chances. I spent a good deal of time trying to find a safe place to cross. In the process, the SAR helicopter flew overhead looking for me and I was unable to signal it through the trees. They are out looking for me with dogs, on horseback, on ATVs, in Jeeps, in a chopper and on foot. It’s about three hours into their search time so far and I’ve had no sign of them. I won’t hide from them, I’ll be fair, but I won’t make it easy for them either. The Sierra Nevada is pretty rugged bush in spots.
We’ll see.