Survival Kit Bags

I wanted to talk a little bit about the bags survival kits come in. If you are familiar with survival kits you know that most kits come in mini-backpacks. These backpacks are made of thin nylon that do not hold up well in the back country. They are also worn on your back which prevents you from carrying anything else. The other downfall to this is that if you are carrying your survival kit on your back you always have to take it off to get to your survival kit.This can quiet often be a problem. The reason they come in these cheap nylon bags is because they are cheap. If you search for wholesale backpacks you will see you can buy them with your logo on them for as little as a couple dollars each.
At Rocky Mountain Survival LLC we break the norm to bring you practical survival kits. Although cost is a factor true usability drove us in our decision to not use the norm in bags, after all, it is your life we are talking about. So like in many other areas we have raised the bar to bring you the ultimate in survival kits.
Our wilderness survival kit comes in a 600 D Polyester (canvas like) material that holds up very well in the back country. It is a drop leg bag which means it hangs from a belt and sits on your upper thigh and is strapped to your leg for stability. Because of where it is worn, it is out of the way of your other gear such as a full backpack, guns, bows, etc. It is also always accessible even while wearing the kit, so you do not have to remove it to get to your survival gear.
Our Bug-out-bag comes in the Leapers UTG tactical messenger bag made of the same type of material as our wilderness survival kit. This kit is worn over the shoulder and also has a belt strap for stability. This bag also has a concealed carry pocket for carrying a pistol and has plenty of room for personal gear. Because it is worn on the side it is also out of the way of your other gear and you can get to your gear without removing the bag. We thought about using the Maxpedition bag for this kit but could not find a reason to switch. They are both USA made out of the same material and the UTG is much less expensive and better designed so we stayed with the UTG.
These bags cost us 20 to 30 times what it costs for the typical survival kit bags but we felt that usability and dependability really mattered in this case so we went with the much better bags. We are talking about saving lives and some things just are not worth skimping on. We take survival seriously.

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Lens Of the Day

Sorry its been a while and I will get back to writing here but I thought I would share this with you for now. I know I already posted the story here about Mt. Saint Helens But if you really want to get a feel for the story check it out here http://www.squidoo.com/surviving-mt-saint-helens I was able to add pictures that really brings the story to life. This lens also won lens of the day and has now had over 600 views and over 100 comments. So go check it out to get a better fell of what it was like.
Thanks
Timo

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Surviving Mt. Saint Helen's

Everyone has been after me every since I started this survival blog to tell my story of surviving Mt. Saint Helen’s . Although I have verbally told the story many times, especially right after the event, This is the first time this has ever been put to paper or told in such detail. I hope that I am a good enough writer that it gives you some sense of being there but you have to remember this was an event like no other in modern history so it is a bit hard to compare it to other things.

May 18^th 1980. It was a day of terror, awe, and perseverance. It was a day of the unexpected. It was a day that claimed 57 lives. It was the day Mt. Saint Helen’s erupted.

I was living in a little town called Randle in Washington . It was a small town in the mountains of southwestern Washington State nestled between three large, what we thought were extinct, volcano’s: Mt. Rainer, Mt. Adam’s, and Mt. Saint Helen’s. We had known for months that Mt. Saint Helen’s was going to erupt. It had started showing signs of activity and news stations were warning everyone to stay out of the area. I remember during this time when we would go to a town called Chehalis for groceries. On the way back there was a breath taking view of Mt. Saint Helen’s . Most of the terrain between us on the road back was flat giving us an unobstructed view of the mountain and with it’s smoking top it looked so majestic.

None of us had ever heard of an exploding or stratovolcano, well I am sure the scientists did, but there was no mention that I ever heard, of the possibility of it exploding so I think the scientist were probably just as shocked as we were. I thought it would be like the volcanoes you see in Hawaii that spew lava for awhile and that’s about it. We were about 20 miles away and there where some rolling hills between us and the volcano so I figured I would be able to go to the top of one of these hills and watch the lava spew

.

On the morning of May 18^th, I was in the groggy, lethargic state between being asleep and fully waking when I hear my wife get out of bed saying she thought her father (who also lived on the ranch) was leaving because she thought she heard a car rumble. When she reached the kitchen and looked out the window she let out a heart-stopping, blood-curdling scream that sounded like she was witnessing the end of the world, as I am sure she thought she was. It brought me straight up out of my bed and I ran to the kitchen to see what all the screaming was about. What I saw I will never forget for the rest of my life. It looked like the world was coming to an end. The sky was filled with very dark heavy clouds that were boiling and rolling towards us at a very high rate of speed with the biggest, thickest bolts of lighting I have ever seen. There is nothing I can compare it to. In one sense it was awesome, but in another, it was terrifying. What we later learned was that what we were witnessing half mountain exploding over our heads but it looked like half the world. We were in the direct blast path, in fact, you could not have aimed it at us more precisely. I didn’t know what to think or what was happening but I grabbed our 8mm camera ( yeah, that’s how it was done in those days ) and ran up to my in-laws house to film what was going on. You could feel the rumble of the mountain through the ground and in your chest as well as hear it. It was a low rumbling but yet very distinctive. There wasn’t another sound in the air or maybe I was so transfixed I didn’t hear any. While I was filming ash was starting to fall from these huge black clouds and occasionally a twig and finally a rock landed at my feet about the size of a baseball. My father in-law looked at me with a shocked ( did you hear that look on his face) we both looked down to see what caused the thud we just heard. Afraid that the next rock would hit us or a larger boulder would fall we ran into the house. I remember standing on the porch just before going inside and looking at the horizon or what was left of it and it was just like the famous film that Dave Crockett (no not that Crockett this didn‘t happen that long ago…look it up) made from a mountain top across from Mt. Saint Helen’s. The horizon was slowly disappearing as the ash cloud covered the entire sky. So after going inside we all sat in amazement pondering the situation when I noticed ash was beginning to creep into the house around the doors and windows. Not having any kind of like experience to draw on we didn’t have a clue of what to do except to try to seal all the cracks we could. It did little good, the ash was so fine I think it was literally coming through the walls. I remember very distinctly that it was becoming hard to breathe so we covered our mouths with tee-shirts and at one point the ash was so thick we even had to get them wet in order catch more of the ash. Later, I went back out onto the porch to see how bad it was. I had a flashlight with me and I remember the beam from the light barely showing a foot or so out. The ash was that thick and heavy. It looked like a VERY heavy gray snow storm. We sat in the house for hours wondering what was going to happen. Were more rocks, maybe even boulders, going to come through the roof, were we going to die of asphyxiation? Not much was being said but we all knew what was on each others minds ( was this it? Was this the end?) We had no idea what was to come. Try to imagine sitting in candlelight cut off from the world just witnessing what very much looked like the end of the world as we know it, not knowing what was coming next. My wife at the time even wrote a farewell letter explaining everything we were going through and saying her goodbyes. I really don’t recall how long it was before we saw the sky again, but when I went outside everything was covered in about 4 to 6 inches, as I recall, of heavy gray ash. It was kind of like when you wake up to find the first heavy snow of winter and everything is white only this was grey and eerie looking, everything was deathly quiet. Walking in it made me think that this must be what it‘s like to walk on the moon. Every step was a fresh imprint on this new land that was deposited all around us with puffs of dust with every step. It took weeks to clean up around the property as the dust was so fine it literally got into everything. We were lucky in the sense that we did not loose power for long so our food stayed cold and we had water. So the after effects were not bad as far as survival is concerned. It was a while before we got out and the stores were open so it was a good thing we always kept a large stock of food and water on the ranch, it could have easily been much worse.

This was an overwhelming experience for everyone there but especially my wife. She was insistent that we leave immediately and I mean immediately. As I recall it started the minute the sun came back out. Had she had her way all our belongings would probably still be there. I tried to assure her that the worst was over, as if I knew, but she would hear none of it. Looking back I can’t say as I blame her we had no idea and it was an overwhelming experience. I have witnessed many things in my life, I have traveled the world and seen a lot of awe-inspiring things. I am a scuba diver and explorer but nothing even comes anywhere near to holding a candle to what we witnessed that day. I consider myself a very lucky man to have been standing there witnessing the raw power of mother nature as it had never been seen before. It was totally awesome and admittedly a bit scary at the same time.
If you really want to get a sence of what it was like go to this story and CTRL Click on the second picture then imagine that rolling at you at a high rate of speed engulfing your entire world,

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The perfect everyday carry for all outdoor enthusiasts

In a wilderness survival situation food, water, and shelter are your top priorities, However, not everyone wants to carry a complete comprehensive survival kit with them. Some people would rather carry just the fundamentals. So I got to thinking about my everyday carry which consists of a knife, fire starter, water purifier and para cord. Well actually I carry 2 knives as my everyday carry because I find it difficult to do small precise work with a large knife and hard to split firewood with a small one. This is not to say that it can't be done, it's just not my preference. So with all this in mind, we at Rocky Mountain Survival have developed a survival knife kit. What I used to carry was a crude version of what we are now selling on our site. It took quite some time to find the right pouch to put the contents of the kit in. It had to be durable, the right size (not too big or bulky but big enough for the must carry) and as we learned, it had to have the right type of closure. Snap closures didn't work as they would crush the filter straw if you were not careful and Velcro was a little to easy to come open. We finally found the right size, with the right look. and a snap lock buckle closure from Blackhawk. As far as the contents of the kit, we wanted to keep it small, simple, affordable but most of all practical. The first item was a no brainer. It had to have a fire starter so we added a nice thick flint fire starter. The second item for the pouch we had many discussions about but decided on a water purification filter by Aquamira because we felt that pure water consumption was one of the more important and harder things to achieve. The knife decision was easy. It had to be carbon steel, affordable, and big enough to shelter build, etc. We chose the Cold Steel GI Tanto. A nice 12 inch, thick, heavy knife with a tanto style blade which covers many uses. Lastly we mated the knife and pouch with 10 feet of para cord which left just enough at the bottom to use as the leg strap for the knife sheath. This combination makes for the perfect everyday carry set up that is very practical, affordable and really looks nice as well. This set up has a combined retail value of  $ 72.00 Check out our kit at the bottom of our survival kits page for the price of $ 55.00 with free shipping for a limited time.

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