Benefits of Survival Training

You now have three priorities: shelter, fire, and signal. After addressing these priorities, you can focus on water and food.

• This topic helps you to plan for the unexpected on a trip and to prepare in order to avoid common misadventures, such as being lost. It should not be seen as equivalent to survival training, which is much broader and more intense training in dealing with the rigors of the wild.
• Survival skills can vary widely depending on the geographical area. Your ability to survive in the snow or mountains, for example, might rely on a different set of skills and knowledge than surviving in the desert or heavy woods.

Taking a formal class in survival skills can be invaluable if your riding environment is extreme in terms of terrain, climate, or remoteness. Some benefits include:

• The potential for saving your life or the life of one of your companions
• The ability to enjoy areas of the country that would be off-limits to adventurers equipped with less knowledge
• Greater respect for the environment and wildlife and for their collective risks
• Greater confidence in your own self-sufficiency, which will translate to other areas of your life

Survival training skills range from somewhat simple tasks to quite sophisticated medical procedures. A survival training class could include how to:

• Light a fire without a match.
• Set a fracture in the wild.
• Avoid encountering bears.
• And much more.

The wide scope of useful topics makes it impractical to attempt to cover survival training within this course.