Posts by ShemSeger
Pemmican Pemmican was a high energy food used by the Native Americans, who introduced it to the early explorers and fur traders in North America. There's no specific ingredients for pemmican, but...
Short answer: As soon as it's determined that continuing could run the risk of someone getting into trouble or sustaining an injury. We had to abandon a cave-surveying expedition this past summer...
My 6 year old daughter was playing with ropes today and tied a knot of her own creation. I tried to demonstrate to her the importance of learning to tie good knots that don't slip, but when I went ...
If someone is seriously hurt deep in a cave, and only hours away from dying, chances are they are going to die. You have a map, but do you know how to read it? Cave maps don't read like a topo ma...
I know that eating bananas is one way to turn yourself in to a mosquito magnet. The potassium in the bananas apparently attracts them to whomever eats them. Whenever I meet someone who says they al...
I've led quite a few groups through one of the biggest caves in Canada, and I've received leadership training from the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides through the Alpine Club of Canada. K...
There are several knots that can satisfy your needs. The most common knot for making a loop of cord is a double fisherman's knot. This is what most people use when tying cord for prusiks, abalakov...
Your settings are mostly personal preference. Adjusting your DIN settings is not a complicated procedure. It's not uncommon for ski resorts to provide public benches with screwdrivers chained to t...
You can, but how well you glide will vary depending on your skins. Some styles glide better than others, and you will glide more with a shorter skin opposed to a full length skin. There's a 2km ap...
Not as real as the danger of death by exposure and hypothermia while outside the igloo. Your risk of asphyxiation in a snow shelter depends largely on its size, and the number of people inside it...
Climbing scree is a skill all on it's own. The trick is to have good balance and have a good feel for the ground, and gradually transfer your weight from one foot to the other, almost like walking ...
You will always be warmer in a shelter of any sort than you will be out against the raw elements of winter. You would be surprised how much warmth a tent can provide, but they still aren't the bes...
I was at the Remington Carriage Museum last night and was noticing the stove jack on an old covered wagon that was heated by a wood stove. It was made out of a large square piece of sheet metal. As...
Bats eat hundreds of mosquitos per bat every night, which is amazing for human peoples and the principle reason people hang up special made bat houses. Bat guano (poop) also creates habitats for ot...
It's easy to tell when your screws need to be sharpened, because they don't cut as well and get increasingly difficult to place, but with proper maintenance your screws should never get to that poi...
Most backpacking sleeping pads are insulated, some are even down-filled. When they're deflated they lose a lot of their insulating properties. This can be detrimental in cold weather, because when ...
Downwind. The first time I got caught in open water with whitecaps was when I was 13. We were on a multiday canoe trip and the winds picked up on the last day when we had to cross the lake. Instea...
Would they eat wild horses? Yes, and they do. Would they control their populations? No, not really. The fact that there were 30 - 60 million bison roaming North America before westerners came to t...
"Mountain Exposure" is a very broad term. Simply defined, it means you are exposing yourself to some risk of injury or death in the outdoors. Your level exposure while climbing is determined by h...
Red Ochre Red Ochre is a natural earth pigment found in clays that are rich in iron. It's been used for thousands of years by cultures around the world as a natural sunblock. It's also the same pi...
RETREAT Your option 2 is best, but having said that, rescue crews will want to know you're out there sooner than later. In the option 1 you described, you would be activating your PLB, then waiti...
I have to contend with 100km+ winds with my 17.5ft canoe, so I've tried pretty much every method of attaching a canoe to a roof you can conceive, and the one that works the best is this one: It'...
I've been in the early stages of hypothermia before, and I can tell you from experience that when you're in the early stages of hypothermia, you're convinced you're okay and that nothing is wrong; ...
The rule with Via Ferrata is to always have at least one point of safety clipped in at all times. Many people have fallen to their deaths while unclipped from their safety lines in order to pass an...
Sew it back on and tape the seam. Stitching GoreTEX is the same as stitching any other material, the difference is you want to use Tenara thread, and you waterproof the seams on the inside of the...
