A Week in the Woods: Safety First

Once I had determined that I would like to spend a week in a handmade shelter in the boreal forest, there were several safety issues to take into account. While I liked the idea of being out in the wilderness by myself, I didn't like it enough to risk injury, mortal or otherwise. Brainstorming with my coworkers and reading survival literature produced the following concerns:

Bears
In the weeks approaching my expedition, bear sightings had become relatively common, and several of us had encountered bears at a closer range than we would like. Me being alone for this week exacerbated the issue; a single person may have more difficulty frightening off bears than a group, and nobody would be close by to call for help if an incident did occur. Bear risk reduction happened in a number of ways.
1. Food - I didn't bring any meat in my food supply, and food was stored in a bear-proof canister about 20 meters away from my sleeping site. In general, I tried to avoid giving bears any reason to confront me.
2. Alarm system - I chose a site for my camp that was surrounded by three squirrel territories; squirrels bark when large animals are nearby, so I hoped to get some warning of any intruders. For the first few days, however, the squirrels mostly just barked at me.
3. Defense - I had a can of bear spray with me at all times, and when I went to sleep at night, I kept the bear spray propped up in a boot at the entrance of my shelter to be ready at a moment's notice.

Exposure
My week in the woods was planned for the middle of August, and things were beginning to get chilly in the Yukon. If it got too cold at night or if it rained, things could range from unpleasant to dangerous. Since I picked a spot in the forest that was just a few hours hike from the main camp, the most important thing as far as exposure was concerned was for me to give up and go back to camp if things got too extreme. But to prevent this eventuality, I planned:
1. Shelter - I brought four large garbage bags to line the roof of my shelter to ensure that it would be waterproof. In theory, a roof of spruce boughs alone would have kept me dry, but I didn't want to take any chances.
2. Clothes - in addition to my base of jeans and a t-shirt, I brought a sweater, a light jacket, a heavy jacket, a rain jacket, and rain pants. I wore all of it except the rain gear for the majority of the week, only getting down to the t-shirt once when it was the middle of the day and I was getting warm from manual labor.

Falling Trees
I was glad to have picked up a book on wilderness survival in the weeks before my expedition because I learned from it that an important danger to consider when one is sleeping in a forest is that of falling trees. There were a lot of dead trees in our valley thanks to an epidemic of beetles in the 1990s, and it doesn't pay to assume they won't fall at any given time. The solution for this was fairly straightforward.
1. Location - I chose a spot for my shelter that would be untouched even if every tree in the area fell directly towards it. This took a good deal of time, but I was very happy with the location I eventually found.

Poisoning
Throughout the summer, I was one of the more adventurous members of the camp when it came to consuming the local flora. I always make sure to identify a plant and make sure it's edible before I go to town on it, and even then I start with small morsels and wait to see if anything happens if it's a plant I haven't eaten before. There was much discussion in camp of Into the Wild, a book (and movie) telling the true story of an Emory graduate who went to live in the Alaskan wilderness and died there after eating a poisonous plant. In the end, I decided it wouldn't hurt to be extra safe on this one.
1. Avoidance - originally, I planned to not try any new plants during this week, but ultimately I decided to not eat any wild plants at all-- I had enough fun with that earlier in the summer and it made everyone feel better about this risk.

The final elements of my comprehensive safety plan were communication and transportation. For the whole summer, we had generally reliable radios that we used to communicate while in different study grids, and I brought a radio and two month's worth of batteries to ensure it kept running. I was too far away to radio the main camp, but I could talk to people who were on a nearby grid, so at least I could check in each day to say I was still alive and kicking.

As for transportation, the site I chose for my camp was close to the Old Alaska Highway, a dirt road wide enough for one vehicle that had been abandoned upon the construction of the new Alaska Highway. My camp was out of sight of the road, but I marked a few trees with initialed flagging tape so that people would be able to find it if need be. In short, if things did start to go wrong, I had a good chance of being able to let people know and they had a good chance of being able to get to me quickly.

A few other dangers were considered; apparently moose are very unpleasant if they feel threatened. A coworker kindly lent me a water filter so I wouldn't have to risk disease from the local stream. Getting lost in the woods would be a downer, but with a compass and two ranges of mountains to navigate by, I couldn't go too far wrong, and in any case I stayed around my camp for most of the week. There is, of course, no way to ensure complete safety in the wilderness, but after all this planning I felt that the risks were both minimal and manageable.