So what can we take from this?

The one thing I get is that survival is about staying alive; survival training is about learning how. Code put himself into an actual survival situation starting with his first step into deep snow. That may have been his intent, but by sticking to his plan of getting to that specific survival training location on the first night, he quickly got behind a survival schedule. He probably didn't realize he was in an actual survival situation from his first step into snow.

Survival is not a race. By attempting to stay on schedule, Code made it a race when he should have found a good spot and started surviving.

$.02 w/ 20/20 hindsight

From the article it seems that none of these other trips were in deep snow, or that's at least what I deduce from them.

His previous trip was in a very shallow layer of snow. Lesson learned 1: It is pretty hard to pick firewood from the ground when it is covered with snow (not that picking wood from the ground is your best source of firewood anyway, unless it's very dry).
Lesson learned 2: The limitations of a knife when it comes to producing lots and lots of firewood from standing trees. He aborted that trip after a very cold night and promptly bought an axe.

A lot of skills are transferable across the seasons. Still, winter, snow and low temperatures makes for a totally different ball game than the other 3 seasons. You need some additional snow specific skills, and your margin for error are much, much smaller. Not to ignore the lack of gear.

I'm sure he learned a lot from his previous trips. Unfortunately, he did not learn the most important lessons of all: Never underestimate what Mother Nature throws at you.

That was an informative and sad article. Thanks for the link.

My guess is that he had a plan and stuck to it, and that is what really got him killed. Surviving is about doing what you need to do to survive, not about sticking to the plan.

It seems unfathomable to me that anyone who has ever walked in snow more than a few inches deep would just wander out in the woods in deep snow without snow shoes. I have done it but after a hundred feet or so realized how stupid it was and turned back (I think I was about 19 at the time).

Its hard to know with any certainty what really went wrong, because the only guy that knows for sure can't tell us. It does appear it was a judgement problem. That's often a problem for certain personality types who just cannot admit to themselves that the course of action they have laid out might not be ideal and perhaps a different course of action is warranted.

To me it actually sounds like a planned suicide in the guise of a survival trip.

I'm struck by a couple of things:
First is that he had 'studied' survival but obviously he didn't cover some areas or he didn't incorporate that knowledge.

Basics like, how to dress. The classic Three-layer system of dressing: an under layer of sweat removing and insulting clothing tight to the skin, with a mid-layer of insulation, and a outer layer to block water and wind. Worn and well managed the outer layer would have made sure he didn't get so wet or been so exposed to the wind. A simple Stearns rain suit, about $17, might have done the job. It isn't breathable so you need to drive it more actively, opening vents to keep sweat from building up and closing them down when you cool, but our ancestors did more with less. That alone might have saved him.

It's generally a cold, miserable night without extra insulation to sleep in. A sleeping bag, and perhaps a tent and pad is the classic answer but a simple wind and water resistant bivvy bag can make a lot of difference. Even the simplest sleeping system, a tarp done up in a 'burrito roll' is a huge improvement over sleeping exposed.

The burrito roll, essentially rolling yourself into a tarp, is a great survival technique. In part because you can do it in the worse possible conditions of wind and rain and you don't need working fingers or a lot of brain power. Your hands are incapacitated by cold, your brain non-functional, shivering uncontrollably, if there is any life left in you you can still shake out a tarp, grip a corner (use your teeth if you must), and roll. Drunks, mindless and unable to stand, do it on cold beaches. Learn it, practice it a few times, carry a small tarp.

In an urban environment, or a dump site, you can burrito in a piece of carpet, between discarded mattresses, in old plastic sheeting, or climb into a cardboard box. The idea is to save your life by putting something between you and the wind/rain/cold.

In other words a $7 hardware store tarp or salvaged shower curtain might have saved him.

I didn't notice if he had any water. Did he eat snow? Waking up after a hard slog the day before and a miserable night I imagine he was thirsty. There are few better way of losing heat than eating snow. That's one of the classic survival manual lessons. If he did perhaps he felt he had no other choice.

I'm also struck by how rigid his thinking was. He planned a certain route and when he encountered deep snow he didn't go around it. Clearly he was working to a plan he had in his mind. He was rigidly set on carrying out his plan. IMO survival demands flexibility and an acute awareness of your environment. Nature is bigger and tougher than you are so you don't go toe-to-toe with it and try to bull your way through.

Had he gone around the deep snow he might not have got wet from exertion and/or melted snow. If he was dry, or at least drier, he would have had more energy to find proper wood, maybe a fire. At the least he would have had a warmer night and seen daylight with higher energy reserves. He might have made the trailer park.

It is hard to characterize the guy. I see a lot of your typical internet 'Google expert' sort of personality. But most of your people with Google PhD's don't actually go out and pit their expertise against nature. I'm not sure if it makes them better or worse. The guy had guts.

I suspect that he fell victim to a psychological trap known as the Dunning–Kruger effect. It is a case where a person knows so little about a subject that they have no way of knowing how much they don't know. Because of this they vastly overestimate their competency.

Imagine you don't know a thing about writing. You see people pick up a pen and make funny marks. So you pick up a pen and start making marks. Man, this is easy. Someone asks you if you can write ... and you say yes. They made marks and you make marks. You are completely unaware that the marks have meaning both by themselves and as groups. That it is a means of communication. As far as you can tell, you're writing, and doing a fine job of it.

You can see this when kids scribble imitating adults. The difference is most kids know it is make believe. Adults are often far more talented at fooling ourselves. A little confidence and anyway 'how hard could it be?'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

I suspect that the man didn't know enough to know that he was a novice. By the time it was perfectly clear that he was in over his head it was too late. Sad.

I strikes me that a single weekend spent with someone with experience could have seen the many small problems corrected and vastly increased his odds.

Edited for spelling.

I was snowmobiling one time with 3 others, and one of the sleds went a little off the packed trail and dumped over in 4 feet of snow. We had to stop and help. It would be hard to overstate the difficulty in moving around in snow that deep. Even though we could see the trail 20 feet away, it was all 4 strong men could do to get to the sled, tip it up and push/pull it back to the trail. We were all sweating and our hearts were thumping. Even in 2 feet of heavy wet snow, it takes a monstrous amount of energy to travel a relatively short distance. Like someone else mentioned, if he really wanted to stay out in those conditions, he should have camped early just off the snowmobile trail, and made a fire and a quinzee in a sheltered area near standing deadwood. Because he was wearing cotton, and had no blanket or tarp, he would still have had difficulties, but might have made it through the night.

Some years ago, I was trying to do a winter ascent of Mt Humphries in Arizona with two companions. We encountered deep, loose snow and I was the only one with snowshoes. I continued on, while my ocmpanions wisely turned back. Arriving at timberline, I stashed the shoes, as the summit ridge was blown clear by high winds. I literally crawled the last few steps to the summit.

Descending, I got to my snowshoes, and decided to leave them behind, since I was "going downhill." I plowed ahead, and soon a setting sun indicated that I would have to spend the night out, since I could see that I had progressed maybe about 200 yards in the last half hour.

I made a little burrow, roofed it with a tarp and went through a cycle of snooze, wake up, light the stove, make a hot drink, wriggle toes to avoid frostbite, and sleep again. In the morning I made much better progress and reached the parking lot at the Arizona Snow Bowl, nothing frozen.

I was a strange animal, a combination of turkey and hot dog, who managed to make enough decent decisions to offset the bad calls and to avoid disaster. I learned not to try postholing snow ever again.

The excursion was a training climb for the Mexican volcanoes in a couple of weeks later. Orizaba and Popo were much easier since the snow was harder and we had crampons and axes.

A few years later, I would often climb Humphries on a summer morning and mow my in laws lawn in the afternoon. It is a routine hike in the summer.

Living in the bush can be tough. Many people continually underestimate the amount of calories burnt and the tough task master that the bush is. hopefully his example will help others from wondering into the bush without proper equipment and training.

I came across the news story this morning and then tabbed over to ETS. No surprise, there was already a link.

I liked the news story because it was obviously unfinished, i.e., all over the place. It was trying to figure out what angle to take on this story. And I think that is much more revealing than a stock, fill-in-the-blanks story.

We're all trying to figure out how someone could perish so quickly. The circumstances were challenging but by no means insurmountable to a person with a bit of experience. So I begin to agree that some sort of "personal dynamic" may have been a very significant factor here. Something is out of kilter, but without real evidence I would not go further than that.