Boulder Outdoor Survival School (BOSS) Promo Code

One of the coolest things about blogging is the networking. I absolutely love getting email from people who find my blog interesting and outdoors people with similar interests and goals. The Boulder Outdoor Survival School is one of those people. I truly feel humbled to be approached by great companies and organizations and I feel honored to help out anyone in the outdoor education world. That being said, let me introduce to you the Boulder Outdoor Survival School.

BOSS, the Boulder Outdoor Survival School, is the oldest and largest survival school in the world (website), based in southern Utah since 1968. Courses range from 3 to 28 days long and teach a wide range of wilderness skills. What sets BOSS apart from other programs, however, is their dedication to “primitive technologies” — teaching people how to enter the wilderness with a minimal amount of modern gear. Instead of backpacks, sleeping bags and tents, course participants sleep in wool blankets and ponchos. Fires are made by friction (rubbing sticks together) rather than with matches. The curriculum highlights the wisdom and skills of traditional cultures, inviting people to step back in time and re-connect with nature and themselves. It’s an incredible empowering program.

~Juliet, BOSS Community Manager

On the BOSS website, you'll find all the information you might need including a mission statement that even Thoreau would appreciate. "At BOSS, we believe there is power in the "Old Ways" of walking lightly through the wilderness, and we believe that power is accessible to everyone."


BOSS instructors have learning backgrounds from all around the world. Countries such as Malaysia and Thailand are places where BOSS instructors have learned aboriginal survival skills. This is starting to sound a little like Les Stroud's new "Beyond Survival" show. These instructors work to bring "back to basics" skills to their students and reinforce a natural appreciation for ecological impact and environmental preservation.


To kick off their new website, the Boulder Outdoor Survival School is offering a limited time 10% discount on this year's courses (excluding the Slidrock Gathering). Use this special Boulder Outdoor Survival School Promo Code to get your 10% discount.


Enter Promo Code: "BOSSadventure10"


You can also read more about BOSS on their main website (www.boss-inc.com), on Facebook (www.facebook.com/SurvivalSchool) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/BOSS_survival).


Have questions about BOSS? Chances are, the Boulder Outdoor Survival School's FAQ's will answer those!

Backpacker Magazine Reviews the SOL Origin Survival Kit

I'm here to point out, once again, that not every article you read has your best interests at heart. For example this week Backpacker Magazine (which I love and respect) did a photo gallery gear review of the Survive Outdoors Longer (SOL) Origin Survival Kit, set to release March 18th 2011. Before we get started, it's very important that you review the concepts I laid out in my "Eight Rules to Follow for Your DIY Survival Kit". Important things to remember from that articles are:

• Not everyone has the same survival skills, thus each survival kit should be unique
• Survival kits should be uniquely tailored to complement the environment you expect to be using it in
• Every item in the kit must be able to perform double duty in order to optimize weight/space/functionality ratios
• It's a good idea to make the majority of your survival implements yourself, or thoroughly test them before you need to use them so that you will be exceedingly familiar with their uses
• There should always be at least one trash bag in your survival kit, they fold up to almost nothing and can be used for almost anything

Okay, now that you're read the article again and brushed up on the major points here, we're ready to move on and talk about the SOL Origin Survival Kit. This kit comes in a hard plastic case which houses an internal waterproof compartment, and external "slots" into which fit various survival implements. So the case is serving dual roles, this is good. It comes with one of those cheap-o dollar store compasses (the kind you'd give out at your kid's birthday party). I would never trust my life to one of those things since, from my experience, they're less likely to point north than moss on a tree. Not to mention, even if you do get the little 1/2" compass to point in the right direction, you can't take a decent bearing off of it because it's too small to orient well. *Sigh*

From the Backpacker.com review

Moving on, we'll take a look at the knife included with this kit. They talk about how this knife has a whistle (good) and a little LED light to illuminate what you're cutting. I guess it's good that this guy had a block of Velveeta cheese in his Origin Kit. It unless you're stabbing something to death, however, this LED won't do you much good since it's oriented straight down the knife blade which only illuminates thing in front of the knife. The plastic handle doesn't buy my trust, either... not something I would want to rely on for my life.

Now we move on (in their review) to the waterproof compartment which holds (oddly enough) eight different items that are already waterproof! Tin foil, nylon cord, safety pins, a needle, fishing line, fish hooks, steel wire, and tinder in a plastic bag. The only thing in this waterproof container that would be adversly affected by water is the tinder, which is already in a plastic bag! WHY would you make such an obviously redundant blunder? Because these companies are looking out for profits, not your survival. Their tinder, by the way, is advertised as being waterproof even without the doubly redundant waterproofing system they put in place.

They include a little "how-to" manual and survival tips booklet in the case. My dear readers, if you're lost in the woods and have to use your survival kit and you need a how-to manual you are, quite simply, a dead person. You had damn well better know how to keep yourself alive before you end up in the situation! Including a survival "how-to" booklet in the SOL Origins Kit just goes to show that they don't expect you to open the thing up before you need to use it. They expect their customers to buy it, throw it in the bottom of their packs until one day they need it and realize "holy shit, I don't know how to use any of the items in this kit I bought". 

If you only get one thing out of this article, let it be this: don't buy a pre-made survival kit. Do the research, learn the skills, and make one yourself. You'll quickly find out that including tinder in most survival kits is a waste of space since you can find it almost anywhere, any time. You'll learn that a trash bag is one of the most versatile items you can possibly take into the wilderness.

You might also learn that putting some water purification tablets in your survival kit adds (almost) no weight and saves you from having to boil all your water to purify it. Why didn't SOL include water purification? I have no idea! There are only a few things that will kill you more quickly in a survival situation than lack of water, and SOL did nothing to address this issue other than add some "sturdy" tin foil for boiling your water. Ounce for ounce, you can purify more water, more rapidly, with potable-aqua tablets than an army of men with tin foil could boil.

Dear readers,

I rest my case.

A Conversation With Les Stroud | The Backwoodsman

The March/April issue of the Backwoodsman Magazine, a primitive survivalist publication, featured a full cover picture of Les Stroud on a river raft with his digicam bandanna from the Peruvian Jungle. The article title, “A Conversation with Les Stroud”. In the write-up Les is asked several questions, which he answers quite extensively. I will sum up the question and answer session for you here.

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Q: Does Les Stroud believe everyone should know survival skills because an apocalypse is coming?

A: Les doesn’t worry about any apocalypse, he believes that learning and practicing survival skills should be done because one is passionate about it. It is a way of life. Les believes survival skills are not necessary for all people, i.e. city dwellers, but that the personal discipline and personal skills necessary to be a survival expert are universally applicable.

Q: Does Les Stroud think that Survival should be a public education requirement?

A: “Absolutely.” Les beieves that presenting children with the problems encountered in a survival situation help stimulate their personal confidence and ability to overcome adversity.

Q: What brought about the differences between Survivorman and Beyond Survival?

A: Les was passionate about the way his native survival coaches lived and survived when he was touring the world doing the Survivorman show. Thus, he developed a show where he lived among native groups of people and explored their ways of life and survival, Beyond Survival.

Q: Does Les Stroud feel more spiritually connected to nature after his Beyond Survival experiences?

A: Beyond Survival re-instilled Les’s connection with nature which he lost during the labor and time intensive making of Survivorman. Les believes he was more in tune with nature before starting Survivorman and making Beyond Survival allowed him the opportunity to rediscover his connection to nature through the native tribes he lived with.

Q: Who inspired Les Stroud to become Survivorman, and how did he learn his survival skills?

A: Les Stroud started learning survival like most people, a weekend hobby and local college survival seminars turned into a way of life. Les’s favorite survival company? Prairie Wolf, owned by John and Geri McPherson. In Canada his closest survival friends include David Arama and Doug Getwood.

Q: What’s the down-low on Les Stroud’s new album and multi-media tour?

A: The tour will be an emotional and spiritual journey through all of Les’s experiences around the world fostered by his Surivorman and Beyond Survival shows. It will not be a concert, but a conjunction of film and music which bring together all of Les’s favorite and most meaningful experiences.

Q: How does Les Stroud feel he influenced the mainstream view of survival skills and outdoorsmen in general?

A: Les Stroud believes he walked the line between filmmaker, and survival instructor. He claims to not be perfect at either skill set but believes that his position between the two extremes enabled him to bring survival skills into the mainstream. Les Stroud believes that it’s not necessary to be a hardcore outdoor addict or gear junkie to enjoy what he does, and he made this apparent to the general public. Les regrets that now the survival genre of television and filmmaking now has gone the way of all other filmmaking. It’s surrounded by drama, controversy, and bickering among the rather disconnect and ignorant masses. Les says that his background off the screen, as a normal guy, was one of the best things going for Survivorman.

Q: Does Les Stroud believe that anyone will top Survivorman in the outdoor filmmaking arena?

A: Survivorman took an intense amount of effort to produce physically. Setting and carry all of his own filmmaking equipment (upwards of 50 lbs), it was physically exhausting. The most important part, though, was his passion for filmmaking. Les thinks that his utter devotion to filmmaking and his passion for the outdoors are a combination that will most likely never be seen again.

Q: Will Beyond Survival run a season two?

A: Les is confident that there will be more than just the multi-media tour coming up in the near future. This neither confirms or denies a second season but promises us something in the future.

127 Hours Movie Review

This movie was quite abstract. I went into it open minded since I found it hard to imagine how a director would go about making a two hour movie about a guy whose arm is stuck behind a rock engaging. James Franco, of course, is an amazing actor and his emotion and spirit really made the movie work while he played rock climber Aaron Ralston. Most of the movie trailer revolves around a very small section of the movie. I had hoped the whole movie would be filmed from the perspective of Ralston (Franco) documenting himself with the video camera. These scenes in the trailer are both funny and enlightening about the character’s personal development and overall plight. In the movie its self, we don’t get to see Franco narrating to the camera until about half way through or better.

While entrapped in the rock slit, Ralston (Franco) begins to hallucinate about everything from his family, to Scooby Doo. That’s right, at one point there’s a rather disturbing scene where Franco dreams up a giant Scooby Doo which is about to attack him. Scooby, we find out, was never real and Ralston (Franco) then wakes up. At first it’s a rather disjoint scene that doesn’t fit the movie but with a little analysis we can see that the director is trying to show Ralston’s mental dissolution and we can see that our hold on reality, as humans, is really quite fragile. The story really gives us, as an outdoor community, a sense of humility as we see Ralston re discovering his humble self. In the face of death we see how truly vain our choices can be.

Check it out. This trailer is easily one of the most inspirational clips I’ve seen in a long time! The Funeral by Band of Horses kicks in at the end to tug on the emotional ties of Ralston realizing that he’s going to die alone. Very powerful film, but dry at times.

How a Fire Piston Works

The goal of this article is to take an in-depth look at a fire-starting tool called a fire piston. You may have seen Les Stroud (Survivorman) use a fire piston on his “Alaska Adventure” episode in season 3. If you are reading this article, then chances are you were asking yourself “how does that work?” Here is the down and dirty on the fire piston.

There are suggestions that the fire piston was developed by some indigenous Indonesian, Southeast Asian, and Philippine cultures and “in widespread use”. (Univeristy of Bristol credit) It also seems that where fire pistons were developed and in use were also areas in which people had mastered blow-guns, another pneumatic invention that is most certainly too uncanny to dismiss as coincidence. (Credit) It is highly likely that the fire piston is, in a disjoint manner, an evolution of early blow gun technology. It would make sense that this be true, as a pneumatic seal would need to be mastered in order to make an effective blow gun, and cultures with this technology would be the most likely to further employ its use in fire piston development. A NYT article from October 9 of 1876 talks about fire piston use as a “philosophical play-thing,” citing it’s first recorded “invention” by western cultures as 1745 in Italy. According to the article, a scientist was doing experiments with *again* a blow-gun when he discovered its potential to release massive amounts of heat energy into the contained system. With this evidence, it seems highly likely that the technology of blow-guns gave rise to the technology of fire pistons.

So how does it work? Well, it’s rather a simple concept. What happens inside the fire piston when the user violently brings the plunger down is a sharp decrease in internal gas volume. The pressure inside the fire piston spikes to massive proprtions. This, in turn, causes the molecules of gas inside the piston to become highly energetic. So energetic, in fact, that they are now hot enough to light combustible materials easily. See, very simple. Watch this video below to see it in action.

Photo Credit: Lesstroud.ca

Survival Rule of the Day

The rule of threes:

3 minutes without air
3 hours without shelter
3 days without water
3 weeks without food

These are very general estimates but what they do convey accurately is the order in which one needs to acquire each of the essential survival necessities. The rule I'm going to discuss today is concerning water.

If you've gone several days without water, but are finding plenty to eat then do not eat! Your body needs water to digest food and without a source of fresh water to hydrate your body, you will speed up the process of dehydration by eating. You're going to die of dehydration well before you succumb to starvation.


Survival Rule of the Day:
No water? No food.

Gerber Makes Bear Grylls Knife

It is a sad day for me. My most cherished knife brand, Gerber, has decided to endorse and produce knives that have the names of survival idiot Bear Grylls on them. OUCH! Why would you do that, Gerber? For any of you who need a refresher on why Bear Grylls is the biggest idiot to ever set foot on television and the great outdoors simultaneously, I will release a post explaining it shortly. I've always loved Gerber because they combine quality with affordability. Until now they've been a brand that sells quality and not a label. Although the "Bear Grylls Survival Series Ultimate Knife" (ultimate knife? a bit bold, don't you think?) has the makings of a good knife (one piece through tang, one piece synthetic handle, sheath, lanyard) it has one fatal flaw. They put the words "Bear Grylls" on it, which is one of the fastest ways to get yourself killed in the wilderness. Nobody shows off more numerous or creative ways to kill ones self while trying to live in the wilderness than Discovery Channel's favorite... Bear Grylls. Therefore we can assume that any time you run into someone carrying this knife, they're probably a Bear Grylls fan. And while it's possible to be a fan of his show and have the vaguest hint of an understanding about correct wilderness survival... it's highly improbable. Don't be too quick to trust someone with a Bear Grylls endorsed product as they most likely wasted money on buying an item with his name on it, and are probably almost as full of ego as Bear Grylls himself!