How to Make a Hiking Survival Kit

Series Summary

Hiking is an exhilarating way to exercise and sometimes too exhilarating when the hiking exercise becomes a survival exercise. If you intend to go hiking, it is essential to know at least a little about survival in the wild. You would be well advised to gain more than just a modicum of survival skills. It could mean the difference between spending an uncomfortable night in the woods or not even coming back. This hiking survival series is meant to give you basic hiking survival tips and techniques to help keep you safe when hiking.

In this free hiking survival video series, learn essential hiking survival tips and techniques from hiking survival expert Karl Jensen. Karl will teach you survival skills such as how to pack a hiking survival kit, how to make a medical kit for hiking, how to build a good fire, how to build a camp fire, how to find materials for a camp fire, what to do when you get lost hiking, how to fin your way home when you get lost hiking, how to find shelter when hiking, how to build a simple shelter when hiking, how to avoid bad weather when hiking, how to not get lost when hiking, how to use a hiking survival kit, how to stabilize hiking injuries, how to avoid dangerous plants when hiking, how avoid hypothermia, how to treat hypothermia, and how to send help signals when hiking.

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm going to talk to you now about your survival kit. There are a few things that you should definitely have in it. One thing that is optional is a little bit of tender. You don't have to have this but it is a good idea to just have so everything else is wet and you need to start a fire, you can just use this tender here which you know is going to be dry and it is already dry because it has been in your pack the whole time. Also, you are going to want a headlamp or flashlight. This is really good to have in case again, you need to go out and it is dark or anything like that. You can pick them out at any outdoor store. I highly recommend you get one. Another thing that every survival kit should have is a good compass. This one works pretty good. You should definitely have a compass in case you need to go into your map to find your way out. One of the most important things in here is this whistle. Now this whistle you can use to call for help. Three blasts will call for help and there is a certain way to use it which I will show you. I won't actually blow this whistle because it is definitely loud and I will probably blow my ears out. The way you use it is you put it in your mouth, cover your ears and then blow into the whistle. Make sure you cover your ears because it is absolutely definitely loud. Three blasts if you are calling for help. Remember three of anything always means help. So you've got your whistle, compass and headlamp. Another thing you might want is either a lighter like I have here or matches. Now lighter is pretty good because it is fast fire. But the problem is if the flint in there ever gets wet, it is useless and it won't work. So what you could have instead is a waterproof container like this that has matches in it. Now you want to make sure the container is waterproof because if your matches get wet, they are not going to light either. So if you've got matches in there, make sure you have a striker. Take one off the side of a match box if you want but make sure you have a striker because you are going to need something to light your match with. So you've got your matches, you've got your lighter so you can start fire with your tender. Lastly another optional thing to have that is very useful is a bit of string. It's not heavy, not big but good to have in case for some reason you got lost or stuck and you needed to make a shelter you could use this to tie stuff together. You could use it to help make a splint, anything you need. Just make sure you've got a little bit of string with you and it could come in handy. So make sure you've got all these basic things in your survival kit and you will be a lot safer. "