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Guide>>Rope |
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By Rudy Nielsen |
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In my seven day survival vest, I
carry many things, including 100
feet of thin strong nylon rope which
I store in the back of my vest. Rope
is very handy out into the bush. I
have used it not only just for
camping, but it has gotten me out of
some very tight situations. |
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Out in the wilderness, you may not have a tent,
or you may be unexpectedly caught in the woods
overnight. With a rope, you can make a lean-to,
or the frame for an emergency tent. You can tie
the rope between two sturdy trees, and lean your
tarp, some pieces of wood, or even your coat or
other pieces of clothing to give you shelter for
the evening. |
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Rope can be very useful to store your food.
When backpacking out in the bush, taking a
bulky cooler along is not very practical. To
protect your food supplies from animals and
insects, you can tie one end of the rope to
a stick, throw the stick over a large tree
branch and tie your food supplies to the
other end of the rope. Then you can hoist
your food supplies high off the ground so
that animals, especially bears, cannot get
into them.
Another situation that you may find yourself
in is that you may find yourself on one side
of a lake or a wide river, and swimming
across may not be an option. With your
trusty rope, you may be able to collect or
to cut enough wood to build a raft using the
rope to tie the logs together to ferry you
across the water. |
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Hoist your food supplies to protect from
bears. |
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This is a calm creek, so I don't
need my rope to cross. |
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Rope is also useful in crossing smaller
creeks.
When I come to a very turbulent creek,
and I’m not sure if I can get across it
safely, then there are two ways that I
use to get across. First, I try to find
a large pole, and lean into it going
across the creek to steady myself. If no
poles are available, or if the water
looks too turbulent, I take my rope, tie
it to a large stick, and throw it to the
other side, where it should catch among
the trees or the rocks. I may have to
throw a number of times before it snags
on something solid. Then I tie the other
end of the rope around my waist, and
pull myself hand over hand on the rope
to the other side. Remember, always keep
the rope taut so that the rope does not
loosen, or the stick may become loose
and fall back into the river. |
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I remember that one winter’s day I was
hiking with my youngest son Darin and my
wife, looking at a real estate deal in
Northern B.C. We had accessed the property
by a four-wheel drive truck on a remote
snowy dirt road, and we were over 100 miles
away from the nearest town. We were quite a
ways back in the bush and we were running
out of daylight. We were unprepared to make
an emergency camp, as there was a foot of
snow on the ground, and the temperature was
at least -28 Celcius. We had spent all day
looking at this property, and on our way
back to the vehicle, we came to a lake which
hadn’t quite frozen over yet because of the
foot of snow covering the ice. |
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Note another use for rope in the back of
the photo |
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We could not walk around the lake because it was
getting too dark, so we had to take a chance and
walk across it or spend the night in the bush.
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I wouldn’t have even attempted to cross this
lake if I hadn’t carried my 100 feet of rope
with me. Here’s how we crossed a semi-frozen
lake, but I do NOT recommend that anyone else
ever do this, even in an emergency. I cut
my rope into two 50 foot pieces, and tied one
around Darin and one around my wife. Darin took
the lead, and I followed in his footsteps,
holding his rope at the other end. My wife
followed me at a cautious distance, walking in
our footsteps, and dragging her rope behind her.
Because the ice was not completely frozen, Darin
fell through the ice a couple of times. The
minute the ice began to break, I would dig in my
heels and pull on the rope to get him back out.
With me holding the other end of the rope, Darin
was able to pull himself out, only getting wet
to his waist. We were able to get across the
lake and walked at a quick pace back to the
truck, where we got Darin into some warmer dry
clothes. That rope really got us out of that
tough situation. |
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Rope is useful in a rescue
mission |
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Rope is also useful in a rescue mission.
When I was young and hunting in
mountainous terrain, I learned that is
was very easy climbing up a steep
mountainside. The problem is when you
try to climb back down again, because
you can’t see where the cracks are in
the cliff in which to put your feet.
While I never had a problem with this,
one of my buddies on a hunting trip got
stuck on a cliff, panicked, and froze on
a ledge halfway up a steep mountainside.
He could not descend any further. I had
to climb back down to our boat to get a
large coil of rope that I always carried
for the boat. Then I had to hike to the
top of that bluff, lowered the rope down
to my buddy and pulled him up the cliff.
We then found an alternate and easier
way down. After that episode, I always
made certain I carried a length of rope
with me. |
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This trick saved my son Dean and myself on our
annual survival hunting expedition. While in the
middle of a multi-day hiking expedition in the
bush, I had gone into hypothermia on a previous
night, and I was in very weak condition. We were
backpacking to our main camp, and we came to
some very steep cliffs. I did not have the
energy to find a trail around this cliff. We had
to lower our packsacks to the bottom of the
cliff using our 100 feet of rope, then we
lowered each other using this rope. In this way,
we got down to the bottom and continued on our
way to our main base. |
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There are many more uses for the 100 feet of
rope in my survival vest, and I will explain
more of them at a later date. Watch
www.niho.com for more tips on how I use my
survival vest. |
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