Thanks Bill...

What do you think of polished knife blade? Will that do in a pinch?

The other thing we can do is make a fire.

Camp fires are verboten in the area due to very high wildfire risk factors, so any signal fires would attract attention pretty fast.

Welcome to the forum, buffalohump.

Will you be doing an overnight? under food you mention 4 days but a trip of 2. Will you be camping "sous les belles étoiles", or do you have something else planned?

Let us know if you have any good gear sites. Might be useful info for some here.

Well paracord won't be suitable to safe somebody, who went over a cliff, not because of the lenght, but the strenght. Paracord is way to weak. It's only strong enough to support up to 550lbs of STATIC weight. Knots can take out half of the static strenght and shock/dynamic loads on will easily exceed 550lbs.

Agreed.

The paracord will be for other stuff, like pack repair or broken bootlaces or what have you.

I don't think we'll be able to take proper climbing rope.

Mark

Thanks!

Its two nights. First night we spend in a campsite, second night we spend in a cave which is a 12kms hike to reach. So its around 25 kms two ways.

Its not a major march but its a fair whack plus its mid-winter so it will get to around 2 degrees celsius at night.

We will have food for two days but it can be stretched to twice that in an emergency.

As far as gear sites go... this one here is pretty good! Otherwise I mostly do forums similar to this one for good gear info.

A polished knife blade can/may work in a pinch....you're talking more about overcomming/adapting a shortcomming rather than planning for an emergency though. People have used cd's and the little hologram on bank cards before with sucess, but again it was crap hits fan, what do I have that I can use vs. IF the crap hits the fan, I have brought along this for just such a purpose.
Not trying to discourage you in the least, it is excellent that you have thought it thru and come up with a "chips are down" solution.
And if you guys bring a portable cd player and some cd's now you know you can use that too

-Bill Liptak

I hear ya...

I'll see if I can find a small pocket mirror in the next few days.

Strange, its the one thing our camping stores don't seem to have, they've got pretty much everything else though...

Mark

Welcome Newguy!

If weight is a problem with your PSK, I think that I might lose that Ottorbox. They are great containers, but (in my opionion at least), very heavy for their size.

An old CD/DVD can be better than nothing as a signaling mirror. Nowhere as good as the real thing, but much better than nothing. I would not rely on fire/smoke for signalling, too many reasons why you couldn't get one going when needed.

If you really think that you need some "rescue" rope, there are many ropes in the 7mm size that can function as climbing/emergency ropes. Here is just one. You are probably metric, so the size (7.7mm) and weight (38 grams per meter) isn't tooooo heavy.

You mentioned plenty of water, but do you drink it straight from the source, or treat it somehow? I don't really know what "quality is good" means, when it comes to actually drinking it. I don't see you boiling much on an esbit stove, and if fires are a no-no, boiling that way is out also. So, does anyone in your group have a filter of some type?

Have a good trip! Pics are always welcome...

Camping in a cave sounds a good place to test out firemaking skills whilst not being too much of a risk.

You can get a small mirror in a metal compact in the make up dept of most stores. They are really light and take up almost no room and you could keep a small sewing kit or fishing kit in them. they are real handy and pretty durable. It would also be great for keeping water purification tablets in.