To those of you who think sticking a pencil and paper in your PSk are important, consider this story about two guys who managed to walk away from a fatal plane crash in Montana:

Link to plane crash story

Undersheriff Chuck Curry said he searched, but failed to find any sign that anyone survived the crash.

"There were no footprints leaving the site, no piled rocks, no written message -- nothing indicating someone had survived or left the area," Curry said Thursday.

They were LUCKY, very, very lucky.

Doug posted this story in the survival forum. But I agree those few pieces of rite in rain paper and golf pencil may make a huge difference in your survival.

http://www.equipped.org/ubbthreads/showt...amp;amp;fpart=1

I think a pile of rocks or rocks or sticks or whatever in the shape of an arrow pointing to your direction of travel would have done just as well in this situation.

My Pocket Survival Pak encountered a serious smush under a steel girder recently. The only thing damaged was the slim pencil, snapped in twain. The flaw hurt the eye more than a chip in fine Wedgewood china.

Probably, but in general, the more information you can leave, the better. I think the rescuers would want to know not just that someone survived and was heading downhill towards the road; they might also have wanted to know how many survived (e.g. suppose they followed the arrow and found a body; do they stop searching or not?), whether they were injured, whether they had a compass or orienteering experience, etc. That much information is hard to convey with a pile of rocks, no matter how artistic or creative you are <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />