I Should Have Known Better! (2024)

i got this in a email..and because of its length.i have to do this in 3 post

I Should Have Known Better!

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.

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.

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.