A little light relief from the endless TSA horror stories <img src="/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

A snippet from the news item linked below::

In November 1994, Peter DeLeo took his light plane and two friends on a sightseeing trip in the Sierra Nevadas and crashed into the side of a mountain. He broke 16 bones, but survived the impact, as did his two critically injured passengers.

Fearing they would never be rescued in their remote location, DeLeo, then 33, decided to hike out of the snow-covered mountains to get help.

"As injured as I was," he says now, "I came out of the crash in the best shape. I was the strongest and the youngest. I was the only one who had a chance to make it."

He figured getting to civilization would take him two or three days.

It took 13.

http://tinyurl.com/5q6w2

I remember when this happened. I've kept some form of gear on me ever since my service days. Stories like this make me instinctively pat my pocket for the knife and mteal match.

I found it interesting that caves are colder to sleep in than tree trunks. Maybe useful to know, but how and why did our cave dwelling ancestors manage to find them so comfortable?
The book isn't available in the UK yet, but it sounds like a good read.
Regards

Archaeological evidence indicates our ancestors built structures within the caves, probably of wattle and daube. Sadly, european archaeology concentrated on the spectacular; bison murals, Elgin Statues etc. and often removed vast quantities of refuse to improve public access! Some ancient floor fragments display engraved portraits of individuals and remaining floorplans of small pole structures and scaffolding to reach the then out of reach mural walls.

Joblot:

It is pretty basic logic.

Your body produces heat which is siphoned off by the air, water, or solid you are in contact with. Water, rock, dirt, etc. have greater density than air and will siphon more heat faster. Wood has less density with some air trapped in the fibers and siphons heat from you at a slower rate. Moving air which causes faster heat loss than still air is impeded by the wood in whose cavity you have taken refuge. The tighter the fit in the tree cavity you are in, the less bodily heated air that can escape to the open air and the less energy your body needs to maintain core temperature. A cave does not wrap around you and do as good a job of radiating heat back to your body because it is larger than your body and ground or rock contact causes faster heat loss.

Bountyhunter