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In wake of Mount St. Helens rescue, expert tips on surviving in the wilderness

Here's some tips to keep in mind in case you get lost in the wilderness.

ARIEL, Wash. — Survival and wilderness experts say an Ohio man who survived on bees and berries, while lost for a nearly week on the flank of Mount St. Helens, did some things right.

“Like crickets… I’ve cooked slugs. I’ve done snails, termites, ants,” said Tyler Doyle, a survival skills instructor with Trackers Earth Portland.

He admitted, he’s never thought to eat bees.

On Thursday, 24 hours after crews rescued 40-year-old Matthew Matheny, a nurse and former Boy Scout, Doyle and others also said his story pointed to the need for people to educate themselves about the risks of the environment they’re venturing into, even if they’re only planning a short trip.

In Matheny’s case, he’d only planned on sightseeing for a short while. He entered the Mount St. Helens wilderness last Thursday, by way of the Blue Lake Trail, wearing flip flops, a T-shirt and shorts.

Previous coverage of Matheny's rescue

Quickly, his friends say, he wandered off trail and got turned around. For the next six nights, he was on his own with no food, water or source of warmth readily available.

“We take for granted, being in the city, that if we twist an ankle or suffer an injury, it’s not a big deal,” said Shawn Mullen, instructor with the Northwest School of Survival. “Out here it’s a big deal.”

While walking through a patch of dense, dry woods off of Interstate 84 near Hood River, Mullen talked about what people can do if they find themselves lost in the wilderness.

He pointed out food sources, visible to the naked eye, were scarce.

“The best you can do is the inner bark on some of these trees, but that's about it as far as what I'm readily seeing here that I would eat,” he said.

Doyle also suggested cambium, the soft, inner bark of a tree.

“A lot of the evergreens, you can do that with,” he said. “Ponderosa pine is one that comes to mind. That, even historically, has been turned into a powder.”

On a walk through the woods, he also pointed out most berries native to the Pacific Northwest, like the ones Matheny ate, are non-toxic.

“Just where I’m at right now, looking around, I can see tall Oregon grape. Oregon grape grows definitely all over the state. But it has blue berries. A lot of people don’t like them. They’re a little bit bitter, but they’re like falling off the bush right now,” he said. “Salal is another one that’s all over, especially the woods…it grows well in shade.”

Mullen added the same doesn’t go for everything growing out of the ground.

“Eating plant-life can be sketchy because, unless you know what you’re doing, you can be dead pretty fast,” he said.

On top of that, he said, too many people mistakenly focus on food. A person can go without it for weeks.

“Your biggest priority out here is hypothermia, and second to that would be dehydration,” he said.

Regarding the first, he encouraged people to learn the skills of building a fire from raw materials and carry a thermal blanket. Regarding the latter possibility, he said there are tricks to finding water. The first is realizing land often slopes downward toward water sources.

“You start to look for areas of green, lush green, cedar trees, skunk cabbage, stuff like that,” said Mullen. “That will tell you there's moisture in the area.”

But he urged people to weigh such a pay-off against the inherent risks off wandering off.

“People tend to panic, and we want to react, and we want to do something right now,” he said. “The biggest thing is take a breath…sometimes by doing something, by acting and traveling further from where you are, you’re going to make things worse.”

Both men said all that advice comes secondary to preparing before you head out. They stressed the importance of packing water, food and extra layers or a space blanket. People should both study the details and risks of their planned route ahead of time, let others know where they’re going and by what time they expect to be back.

All that aside, said Doyle, the outdoors are unpredictable, and no plan is foolproof.

“Sometimes I read through what they did, and I’m like ‘Wow, they just did absolutely everything wrong, and they nailed it. It worked,” he said. “And then I’ve also read stories about people who are highly trained, and they want to go out. Like it’s an intentional thing, like ‘I’m going to go out on a survival trip.’ And then they get all turned around, and then their thing ends up being a true, real-world survival trip.”

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