CEO of My Patriot Supply Finds Himself In Real Life Survival Scenario

My Patriot Supply – by Matt Redhawk

Yesterday I had a  real life survival situation I wanted to share with you. I definitely took lessons away from this experience and hope by sharing my little adventure that perhaps you will, as well.

I live in the mountains of northern Idaho in my off-grid home with my family. For some time I’ve been meaning to take my ATV out and explore some of the hundreds of miles of trails on the State and Federal land that border my property to the north. I knew I could reach these trails from my land, but first I needed to clear some fallen trees from the rather precarious path that starts near my solar panel array and takes a rather steep and windy climb up the mountain.   

My Chief Financial Officer, Steve, came over to help. We threw the chainsaw in the back of the ATV, grabbed some snacks (beef jerkey, crackers, and grapes) and filled our water bottles and headed up to clear a path.

After a couple hours of clearing dead and fallen trees we finally reached the first trail, which was an old skid-steer road from logging that took place many, many years ago.

Being the first time on these trails I brought a small handheld GPS unit to mark our path, as these old logging roads are a labyrinth of twists and turns with lots of offshoots. They are quite literally a maze that would be very easy to get lost in.

The first goal was to reach the top of the mountain. I anxiously wanted to see the peak, and so we tried several paths until we found the right one.

   Image 1:  We made it to the summit.  What an amazing view!

We stopped for a while, to take in the sights and to munch on the snacks we had brought. Looking at the time I realized that we still had a few hours to explore before my wife expected me home for dinner, so we started exploring several of the other trails in the area, trying to see what we could find and map out for future exploration.

Things took a turn for the worse when we stopped a second time and turned off the ATV. We had heard something moving in the brush, and hoped that by turning off the engine we might get a better  idea of what we were hearing and maybe even catch a glimpse of some of the abundant wildlife in the area. Elk, Moose, and Bear all are plentiful in the area, however there are also known to be mountain lions, wolves and pretty much anything else you can think of. Next to Alaska, Northern Idaho is one of the last great frontiers – one of the reasons I selected this area for my family.

We sat completely still, listening and watching, but whatever we had heard in the woods was either out of range at that point or smart enough to also sit completely still until we left it’s home.

Deciding to continue on, I went to start the ATV….nothing.

I tried again, and still nothing. The engine was turning over but would not fire. I remember the salesman telling me this ATV had technology built in that would prevent flooding, however I figured I had somehow accidentally flooded the engine and if I waited for a little while it would fire right up.

Steve and I got out and looked around, hoping to spot the tracks of whatever we had heard moving in the brush. We found fresh Elk tracks, but figured it had to be long gone by now. About fifteen minutes later I decided to try to start the ATV again.

It still wouldn’t start.

We were officially stranded.

   Image 2:  ATV unable to start…stuck several miles from any possible help.

Now I started to get nervous. We had absolutely zero cell service, and I knew we had been out of cell range for a while. The handheld GPS unit told me our GPS coordinates, but how little good that did when I had no way to relay them to anyone.

I didn’t bring along my portable handheld radios because I knew in advance the mountainous terrain would prevent a radio signal from reaching anyone where we were going.

It started to sink in that we were stuck up this mountain, and were likely the only human beings in at least 15 square miles. No one knew exactly where we were, we had no way to reach anyone, and it was going to be completely up to us to get ourselves out of this situation.

I immediately took an inventory of everything we had with us:

1 Axe 

1 Can of bear spray
2 Water bottles, both about 1/2 full
2 Pairs of work gloves
1 Handheld GPS unit with 50% battery remaining
2 Worthless cell phones
1 ATV that wouldn’t start
1 Pocket knife

And in the glove box:

2 Lifestraw Personal Water Filters
1 Magnesium Fire Starter 

3 Beef Jerkey sticks
1 Package of crackers

I instantly realized that if we were really going to be stranded on top of this mountain for the night that I most certainly had failed to put an adequate emergency kit in the ATV.

Why I failed to better stock it, I have no idea. Perhaps I felt too comfortable in the faith I put in the vehicle – after all it was a fairly new unit, still under warranty in fact. I think in the back of my mind I hadn’t really thought through the possibility of something so new breaking down on me. Plus I had never taken it more than a mile out of cell range before. Still, I should have known better.

We began to have a discussion as to what we were going to do next. We checked the battery on the hand held GPS unit and discovered that it had 50% remaining. More than enough to get us back to the house on the ATV, however with the treacherous terrain we would have to cross I calculated that it would take us close to an hour to travel on foot what we could cover in the ATV in five minutes. At that rate of calculation I knew the GPS didn’t have enough battery to make it all the way back on foot. And by the same calculation, we most certainly wouldn’t make it back before nightfall and I knew that trying to walk in the woods on the side of a mountain in the dark was a horrible idea.

My first concern was water. I knew that whether or not we decided to leave the vehicle that we were going to need more water than we had. We could hear water trickling in the distance, and so we set off to find the source.  This area of northern Idaho has plenty of water, but we were near the top of a mountain in the summer – most of the water had already run down and any seasonal creeks were long dried up by now short of a new rainfall. Fortunately we were able to find the source of the trickling water we had heard. It would be enough to fill our water bottles, and that’s all we needed.

 

  Image 3:  We able to locate running water and the Lifestraws ensured we could safely drink it!

Thank goodness we had a couple of Lifestraws with us because we were able to simply place the Lifestraws inside of the water bottles and drink from it when we needed to, instead of having to be stuck at the source of the water.

We returned to the ATV and started to work on making camp. I realized that we did not have enough adequate clothing for the cold night atop the mountain that was rapidly approaching. Fire would be an absolute necessity. We had no issue finding kindling, and started stacking up enough wood to keep our fire going throughout the rest of the evening. A couple drops of fuel from the chainsaw would make fire starting a breeze, and so we decided to wait until it was closer to sunset to actually get our fire going as we didn’t want to burn more wood than was necessary. This would help us not to expend more energy gathering more wood than we needed as our food supply was extremely limited. Sure, there was an abundance of wild game in the area, but we purposely did not bring any weapons. We were, after all, on State and Federal land and I had been warned in advance that if you’re caught up there with a weapon they will automatically accuse you of poaching.

We spent time tinkering with the ATV, trying to figure out why it would not start. We continued to try to see if it would fire up, however at the same time I didn’t want to run down the battery so we were conservative with our attempts.

We discovered very quickly that driving around on the ATV kept us cool, however once we started walking around and expending energy gathering firewood that we began to sweat. Needing to keep ourselves hydrated we went through the water we had gathered and had to make a trip back to fill our bottles a second time.

We started making a rudimentary shelter. Trying to keep our spirits up I joked at the irony of the Founder and CEO of one of the largest survival and preparedness web sites in the world being stranded on top of a mountain without more adequate supplies. I just couldn’t fathom that I had allowed myself to get into this situation without better provisions.

Fortunately we had a method of getting clean drinking water, and a way to build a fire and a shelter. But food was another story, and we were starting to get hungry. At this point we had been stuck for nearly five hours.

Before erecting our shelter I wanted to try one last time to start the ATV. For the 30th time I turned the key…and Eureka! It fired right up!

Afraid that the engine would die again we quickly threw our gear into the back of the vehicle and started down the trails.

After about fifteen minutes we got very limited cell service again, and I started texting our GPS coordinates to my wife so at least someone would have a last known location on us in case we got stranded again.

Once we made it back to the trail we had blazed earlier in the day I knew we were only a mile from my house. This, however, was the trickiest part of the trail – as it wasn’t much of a trail at all – only what we had made earlier in the day.

I don’t think I’ve had such a great feeling of relief and comfort than when we popped out of the brush by the solar array and could see the roof of my house.

  Image 4:  The shadows were growing long with the fading sunset and I have never been so glad to be home!

 We parked in the garage and walked inside to find my wife finishing up a wonderful home-cooked meal, and my four month old daughter smiling at me from her chair.

Needless to say, after my ATV gets back from the shop the first thing I will do is to more adequately stock it with survival gear, including extra clothing, emergency survival food, and anything else that will make life just a little easier should I get stranded atop a mountain again. The area we explored was both beautifully breathtaking and amazing. Next time I will simply be better prepared.

I wanted to share this experience with you, as we are all human.  Without warning, life can change on a dime. While we were able to get out of this situation without extreme hardship and suffering, it definitely re-educated me to never take any situation as routine and always make sure you have the means to take care of yourself at any time.

Matt Redhawk

CEO of My Patriot Supply

To make sure you don’t end up in a similar situation, please call our Preparedness Advisors today at 866-229-0927.

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