Let me begin this post by saying I have lurked here for a
few months and found it to be a pretty solid group of folks
giving out advice (in my opinion).
I want to re-enforce the absolute fact of your "head" or your "will to survive" as being the single most important tool you possess in any struggle to survive. In the past 5 years I have had two "survival" situations during mountaineering trips in New Mexico and Colorado.
The New Mexico episode involved an un-intended overnight stay in a snow cave located in a remote bowl behind the Taos ski area at 12,000 ft. It was March 15th 2002. Caused by weather (high winds on a high ridge) which slowed my progress and separated me from my teammate (the wind was so loud I couldn’t even hear him on my gmrs radio).
I had day-trip mixed alpine climbing gear, 2L platypus in an insulated
sleeve and insulated hose, helmet, etc,. No overnight gear.
I dug a snow hole into the vertical bank of a tree well and slept as best I could while seated on my pack and placing my boots on the insulating sleeve from the platypus. I never got cold… It was so warm in fact that I took off my gloves. I don’t think I even saw my breath all night. One thing I would do differently was to put my gloves in my pockets or better in a plastic bag and then in an inside pocket of my jacket. I did end up with a little frost nip on my finger tips from wet/frozen fleece gloves. Otherwise I walked out unhurt and met Taos Search and Rescue coming up the snowmobile trail towing a sled with a body bag in it! I was profusely apologetic about them having to come and get me (mountaineers sense of proper ethics and all).

My main point is that if you can execute following points you will
astronomically increase your chances of survival. If you can't execute these points (especially the first three) then no amount of whiz bang, high tech, high quality gear will save you.

1. keep your calm (I find humor helps)
2. make "reasoned" desisions
3. execute on your decisions in a calm and deliberate manner (you don't need to get hurt or get hurt more)
4. keep spirits up with "posistive self talk" or "thought"
5. relax!

Conversley, if you can execute the above points you will no doubt
appreciate fine equipment, such as the RSK MK1 (of which I own big and small)

Perhaps I will tell of the Colorado 14er trip which left me quite battle scarred... Some other time, my carpal is kicking in...

Sangre_NM

Welcome aboard, looking forward to hearing more from you!

Troy

Welcome aboard Sangre.

You made some great points.

Thanks for sharing your story, and I'm hopeful you'll share the other one you mentioned.

Nicodemus,
All,
Thanks for the warm welcome. I will certainly make a point to share my other storied adventures with the forum. I am somewhat surprised by the lack of climber/mountain sport/backcountry types in posting in here. There is certainly a wealth of seriously hardcore, ruthlessly analyzed, extreme survival information out there being published by mountaineering organizations. Take "Accidents in North American Mountaineering" for instance. They help discover and analyze what made the differance between survival and death. In many mountain sports a "survival" situation is not some distant and romantically remote possibilty, but merely a poor decision away. There are many who go out time after time and beat the odds, paring down the kit until they are almost naked. When things go bad I have learned however that having a "Margin" is better even if it means slower. I did not fully understand this until the ill fated 14er... I don't want to give mountaineering a smear... I climbed rock and mountain (still do) for 15+ years before ever getting in overnight trouble. But now my alpine speed climbing years are over and I like to plod up "easy" day trip stuff.
Off to feed the servers...

Welcome!

Thanks for that info, as well as your story. I just ordered one.

Welcome!

Amazing story -- glad you made it though.

How did you get separated from your teammate?

Stupidity
Not sticking to plan
Overestimating my fitness level
Underestimating enviromental impacts on physiolgy
Very poor visiblity
More?

To be fair, I had informally studied alpine survival skills and techniques before I was ever in need of them. If you know you are going to be travelling in or through a certain type terrain it would really be prudent to make a study of what you might need to know to CYA. I also had tools which were in effect the perfect survival tools for the environment (ice axe and crampons; BD Raven axe and grivel g12 newmatic crampons for you gear geeks) but nothing else in the way of fire start / blanket / etc. I did have mass quantities of goo in choclate flavor. I also had an additional nalgene 1 L wide mouth filled with hi test cytomax (apple ice tea). The nalgene came in handy to melt snow in and dilute the cytomax.. I planned that though... It's not like I was out for a stroll and got lost, I knew where I was but night with a weak headlamp, high wind, avalanche conditions, etc was enough to make me burrow in like a scarred rodent. Ice axes make poor shovels, they break up the snow well but don't move much. They do work good for shaping the inside so its smooth and curved and doesn't drip off a peak on the roof straight onto your head...
For what it's worth...