Taiga is a very dense and difficult forest that holds a certain charm for lovers of hiking. Mystery and twilight create an atmosphere of complete unity with nature, and while relaxing in such a forest you can get a lot of impressions. The main thing is not to get lost, because getting out of the taiga is very difficult. In this material we will talk about what dangers can await a tourist in the taiga, and how he can survive if he suddenly gets lost in this impenetrable forest.
Dangerous insects
Poor conditions for navigating the terrain: due to the fact that all areas are similar to each other, a lost person begins to walk in circles, panics and quickly becomes exhausted.
Natural hazards where you can get hurt
Read: How to properly set up camp on a hike: tips
Few safe food sources: Poisonous plants and berries can cause serious health problems and even be fatal. In order to survive and get out of the impenetrable thicket, a person, first of all, needs food. We will talk about methods of obtaining food in the taiga below.
Communication
There is another good rule of conduct in the Siberian taiga, which goes back to the times of convicts: if you hear people or a group of hunters nearby, you should try to avoid contact with them.
This is done out of caution, because in the taiga most people you meet are armed, and it is not known how friendly they are; they may be in trouble with the law or have problems with drinking.
In the society of real taiga dwellers, any city person is perceived with caution. There is a good sign by which you can determine whether a newcomer has been accepted into the team. If they start to intimidate him, it means they consider him a stranger, and if they make fun of him, then, most likely, they have already accepted him as one of their own. All he has to do is prove that he really is not a failure.
Edible plants
Edible berries are very common in taiga areas: raspberries, strawberries, blackberries and blueberries. The most important thing is to be able to distinguish them from poisonous fruits that can harm your health. In summer there are a lot of berry bushes, and finding them is not difficult, but in winter they freeze right on the branches or under the snow.
Cedar, pine and larch cones are good food: they should be knocked directly from the trees, and not collected from the ground (fallen cones will most likely be empty, since in the taiga there are many animals that eat them).
Cattail is an excellent food for humans in taiga areas. This plant grows on the banks of forest reservoirs: its roots are rich in starch, which is easily absorbed by the human body. The dug up roots can be eaten even raw, but it would be preferable to bake them over coals.
Read: How to protect yourself from mosquitoes in the forest
In addition to plant foods, a person definitely needs protein, otherwise there will be nothing to reinforce his strength, and getting out of the forest will become even more difficult.
SURVIVE IN TAIGA
Taiga attracts a huge number of hunters, mushroom pickers, travelers and simply thrill-seekers. And it’s logical, because this is a beautiful, mysterious, attractive forest, but you need to keep in mind that wild nature can sometimes be very unpredictable and unsafe for life.
It will be difficult for a person who finds himself alone in the forest. It is clear that there are many cases when experienced people, having gone on a hike, lost their way and got lost in the thicket of the forest.
Even if it is a small forest, surrounded on all sides by steel roads and highways, a person will have to go through many tests until he gets out to people.
What can we say about the townspeople getting lost in 3 pines. They are the main ones who become clients of the search and rescue service. Especially in autumn, during mushroom season.
If someone happens to go astray, he will definitely need the advice of rescuers. Knowing just a few principles and rules of behavior in the forest, all these problems can be avoided...
What to do if you get lost in the forest?
The first thing to keep in mind is never give in to panic. Often, a person, realizing that he is lost, finds himself in the grip of horror and confusion. Neither age, nor experience, nor strong nerves can help him. The release of adrenaline into the blood is so great that a person either rushes somewhere headlong, or may wander even deeper into the thicket.
Terror takes over your mind. Already on the second day a person cannot explain his own actions. There is a recognizable case: rescuers found 3 women lost in the mountains adjacent to Lake Baikal. When they were found, they were moving up the stream. Why up, the rescuers did not understand. It seems clear to a child that all the streams flow into Baikal and, walking downstream, at some point you will come across a lake where you can meet people. But all their questions remained unanswered. The girls by that time were inadequate.
So the first piece of advice, when going into the forest, always have three things with you: a knife, matches and a compass (or watch). The most basic device here is a compass; its presence eliminates the possibility of getting lost. With its help, you can even find the way to the same tree or bush from which you started moving. If you don’t have a compass, in other words, another option is an ordinary dial wristwatch: point the hour hand at the sun, and divide the angle formed by it and the number 1 on the dial in half. This division line will always point south. If this is impossible to do, then the best thing that can be done is to arrange a stop: build a hut, make a fire, replenish food supplies and wait for rescuers.
If you don’t have a compass, use the sun or moss to guide you. Also sharpen your hearing, listen to the smallest rustles. Everyone understands that in the forest you must hear and create everyone, but no one should create or hear you. You also need to know that in the late evening, audibility increases - the noise of the train can be heard 10 km away.
Rules for walking in the Taiga
Anyone who has been to Taiga knows how difficult it is to move among rubble and windbreaks, in dense forest overgrown with bushes.
Highlights
Raise your legs higher, do not step, and step over lying branches and logs as best you can. This is so as not to create additional noise and not expose yourself to the threat of cutting yourself or falling into a hole.
Always keep your bearings and the given course of movement under control. A particularly important point is to mark trees, for example, tie pieces of fabric around trunks or branches. Every 100-200 meters is better. This is especially important if the path is obstructed by rubble or dense bushes, which force you to deviate from your chosen path, and can worsen the situation.
swampy area
Swampy areas are no longer safe. Swamps are connected to hard soil and it can be difficult to distinguish where it is safe and where it is not. The so-called “windows”—areas of clear water on the grey-green surface of the swamps—are extremely dangerous. They are indistinguishable from sushi. From time to time their sizes reach 10 meters. More tricky is the “charusa”, which resembles a bright green clearing in the middle of a swamp, covered with decorated grass and colorful flowers.
You need to overcome the swamp with the greatest caution and certainly armed with a long, strong pole - a pole. It is held horizontally at chest level. Having failed, under no circumstances should you flounder. You need to get out slowly, focusing on the pole, without making sudden movements.
Rivers
It's better not to mess with water. 20 5 think about it, it’s worth taking such a risk. Cross rivers with fast currents and rocky bottoms without taking off your shoes. Before taking the next step, check the bottom with a pole. You need to move obliquely, sideways to the current, so as not to be knocked off your feet by the current.
How to survive winter in Taiga
It’s better not to go to Taiga in winter. The snow cover is indescribably deep and loose and cannot support the weight of a person.
Snowshoe skis
You will definitely need snowshoes. They are easy to make. They are made in the form of a frame from two branches 2-2.5 cm wide and 140-150 cm long. The front end of the ski is steamed in hot water, folded upward, and the frame (the width in the center should not be less than 30 cm) is braided thin, flexible branches.
In the front third of the ski, 4 transverse and 2 longitudinal slats provide support for the feet according to the shoe size.
How to get around
In winter, it is better to move along the beds of frozen rivers, while observing the necessary precautions. So, you need to keep in mind that the current usually destroys the ice from below, and it becomes especially narrow under snowdrifts near steep banks. In river beds with sandy banks, sagging often forms, which, when frozen, transforms into typical dams.
With all this, the water usually finds its way out along the shore under snowdrifts, near snags, rocks, where the current is faster. In cool weather, the deposits float, reminiscent of the smoke of a human home. But much more often the deposits are hidden under the deepest snow, and they are difficult to find. Therefore, it is better to bypass all obstacles on river ice; in places where rivers meander, you need to stay away from the steep bank, where the current is faster and the ice is therefore thinner.
Often, after a river freezes, the water level decreases so rapidly that pockets form under the narrow ice, posing a huge danger to pedestrians. On ice, which seems not strong enough, and there is no other way, they move by crawling. In spring, the ice is thinner in areas overgrown with sedge and near flooded bushes.
Huts and other temporary housing
People stuck in the taiga are not always found on the same day. It happens that rescue work drags on for weeks, or even months. You cannot do without temporary housing here. This is not only a matter of weather conditions, but also insects and predators can be unsafe for humans.
Having made this decision, you need to find a suitable site for the upcoming camp. The right choice of location will allow you to avoid many unnecessary inconveniences in the future. It must be dry first. Although it is not easy to find such a site, especially in moss forests, where the ground is covered with a continuous carpet of sphagnum moss. Find a place where it is practically absent, otherwise every now and then you will have to constantly dry your clothes. It is best to locate yourself close to a stream or rivulet, in an open place, so that you always have a supply of water at hand. In addition, the cold breeze that constantly blows at night will be the best protection against attacks by hordes of midges than repellents and smoky fires. A canopy, hut, or dugout can serve as temporary shelter. But the more severe the weather, the more reliable and warmer the housing should be. Future housing should be quite spacious. There is no need to adhere to the principle of “too hard, but not to be offended.” When calculating its area, we can take the norm as 2x0.75 m per person.
Before starting construction, you need to thoroughly clear the site, and then, having estimated how much building material will be needed, prepare it in advance: cut down poles, chop spruce branches, branches, collect moss, cut bark. The pieces of bark should be quite large and strong; for this, deep vertical cuts are made on the larch trunk right down to the tree species at a distance of 0.5-0.6 m from each other. After that, these strips are cut from the top and bottom into large teeth 10-12 cm in diameter, and then the bark is carefully peeled off with an ax or knife. In the warm season, you can limit yourself to building a simple canopy.
On damp soil you can construct a hammock - a canopy. If the snow cover is very high, you can dig a snow trench or other snow shelter at the foot of a huge tree. The top of the trench is covered with a tarpaulin or parachute fabric, and the bottom is lined with several layers of spruce branches.
If you have army raincoats, you can design shelters of different shapes and capacity:
You won’t die of hunger, you won’t be left without water
As for food, if you handle it wisely in the forest, problems should not arise either.
The main principle: eat only what you know. It is believed that the berry will not go to waste. In particular, it should not be placed on her. Firstly, all berries are low in calories, and secondly, if you don’t eat too much of it, your stomach won’t accept it. The most satisfying food in the forest is mushrooms. It is best to finely chop and boil in two waters. No pot, use a tin can. There is a lot of this goodness in the taiga.
For people who are more undemanding in food, you can eat garden or grape snails. They are scalded with boiling water or fried. They taste like mushrooms. Snails without shells - slugs also need to be boiled or fried in advance. Suitable for food are the pupae of solitary bees in the stems of blackberries, raspberries or elderberries, and the pupae of the lumberjack beetle, which can be found in stumps, logs, and oak logs. The larvae can be eaten by first gutting them, cutting off the back end and rinsing them in water. On the bottom of rivers and lakes in winter there are bivalve shells - toothless and pearl barley, completely suitable for food. In stagnant water there are snails with curled shells and pond snails,
A high-calorie food source is ant pupae, or ant eggs, as they are called. In the warm season, ant eggs, similar to snow-white or yellow grains of rice, are found in large quantities in anthills near the surface. To collect “prey” near the anthill, in an area illuminated by the sun, clear an area 1 x 1 m and spread a piece of fabric on it, folding the edges and placing a few small twigs under the bottom. Then the upper part of the anthill is torn off and scattered in a narrow layer on the fabric. After 20-30 minutes, the ants will drag all the pupae under the curled edges of the fabric, saving them from the sun.
Drinking water
Finding water in the taiga area is not particularly difficult; it is not a desert. Lakes, streams, swamps, and springs are quite common. Only from time to time you have to use natural signs to reach a water source - paths laid by animals to a watering hole.
Bees can serve as a good indicator of a source located within a radius of 1 km. Columns of ants may also indicate that there is water nearby. It is best to finely chop and boil in two waters. No pot, use a tin can. This goodness is a dime a dozen in the taiga...
Unsafe insects: how to fight them?
Ticks and encephalitis
A more dangerous disease in the taiga regions of the central zone of the Eurasian continent and the Far East is tick-borne encephalitis - a viral disease transmitted by the bite of pasture ticks.
It is worth considering that the tick does not dig into the body immediately, but crawls over the body for a long time (about 40 minutes), choosing the desired place. Therefore, a more effective preventive measure in the fight against tick-borne encephalitis is certainly a constant preventive examination at the slightest suspicion of a tick being on the body. But, under no circumstances should you fall into “tick hysteria” when you see ticks, ticks, ticks everywhere on your body... And don’t forget, less than 0.1% of ticks are infected with encephalitis. But don't lose your attention
It is more comfortable to remove an embedded parasite with a thread loop, rotating it counterclockwise.
If you accidentally crush a tick, under no circumstances should you rub your eyes or touch the nasal mucosa until your hands are thoroughly washed.
In the period from May to early September, midges, in other words, midges, mosquitoes, etc., become the “master” of the taiga. It is unlikely that you will have insect repellent, protective nets and the like with you.
Smoker
The only method to expel insects from a hut is to construct a smoker. No special skill is required here: you need to put glowing coals in a tin can, mug, or on a thick piece of bark, and cover it with wet moss on top, then they bring it to the hut, keep it there until it fills with smoke, and then ventilate it well and tightly close the entrance . At night, the smoker is left at the entrance on the leeward side so that the smoke, repelling insects, does not penetrate into the shelter.
And in the end. If you are going to the forest, warn your relatives and friends where you are going..
Then, if you get lost, it will be easier for rescuers to find you.
Nikita Temnozor
Protein sources
Of course, the best source of protein is the meat of wild animals and fish, but they can only be obtained with the help of weapons and having special skills. What to do if you don’t have anything with you?
In taiga conditions, insects can become a source of protein. Suitable food:
- larvae of large beetles (which can be found in a hollow tree or in a rotten stump);
- locusts;
- grasshoppers;
- black ants and their eggs.
It is advisable to bake insects over a fire or prepare taiga stew from them (despite the unusual composition, it will be quite nutritious and will be able to maintain strength during a long journey through the forest).
Red ants are not edible - they contain a lot of acid that can harm the human body.
Hunting traditions
Real hunters do not resort to the use of electronic devices - decoys, night vision devices, and will never hunt an animal from a helicopter or from a car, considering this to be barbaric.
It would never even occur to anyone to raise a bear from its den in winter and start chasing it on snowmobiles, because a real taiga dweller knows that such an act will always have consequences: the bear will become a connecting rod and come to the nearest village to kill.
A true fisherman will never take advantage of the plight of an animal that is drowning or escaping from fire, but, on the contrary, will help it.
The taiga fisher always follows fire safety rules in a dry forest, and this period occurs twice a year: in the spring, when the grass has not yet grown, and in the fall, when huge areas of the taiga, overgrown with tall ferns, are dry. He will definitely pour water on a still smoking fire, rub the cigarette butt with his boot, never throw an unextinguished match into dry moss, and if he sees a fire starting, he will put it out.
And finally, the Siberian hunter will definitely come to the rescue in the taiga, because he knows that according to taiga laws, everything you do to others will be rewarded to you a hundredfold.
Water is the source of life
While moving through the taiga, it is very important to drink constantly: approximately every half hour. Dehydration can lead to rapid fatigue and loss of strength, but at the same time, you should not drink more than three or four sips at a time: due to the excessive amount of fluid in the body, sweating will increase, which will also not be beneficial for a long time. transition.
Read: Child goes camping: when to start
Any water found in the taiga must be boiled over a fire, otherwise you can introduce an infection into the body and get an intestinal disease.
Staying in the wild taiga is really dangerous and can end badly if the tourist does not know the basic safety rules. If suddenly an unforeseen situation occurs, you should never panic: you need to calm yourself down as much as possible and try to remember the theory of survival. Only logical thinking and cold calculation will help you make the right decision and protect yourself from dangers.
Attitude to nature
The attitude of a real taiga dweller or commercial hunter towards nature is the most careful and adopted from the northern peoples, for example, from the Evenks. The book by the authors I.V. Zaitsev, T.P. Intigrinov and I.V. Protopopov “Ecological traditions of the peoples of the north of the Barguzin Valley” indicates that local customs were not only to cause the least harm to the taiga, but also to use all taiga gifts without waste . For example, it took only three spruce trees to make a bark-covered chum, and light sleds were made from the wood.
A true taiga dweller treats the animal with respect. It always restrains hunting instincts and will never kill young animals or pregnant females (deer) and female wapiti. You can’t leave a wounded animal to die; the Evenks even had a saying according to this: “A wounded animal runs—you have to pursue it!”
Siberian hunters have always considered it obligatory to track down and finish off a wounded bear at all costs, otherwise, having survived, it may begin to take revenge on people or, if it happens in the fall, it may not go into hibernation and become a connecting rod.
Traps in the taiga are set so that they quickly kill the animal.
Location orientation:
This section is the most important, because if you know how to navigate the Taiga, you will not get lost, which means that many of the tips and rules described here simply will not be useful to you.
There is only one simple device that everyone knows, which completely eliminates the possibility of getting lost in Taiga and not reaching the designated place, and it is called a compass.
With its help, you can even go to the same tree or bush from which you started moving. Exactly with such precision. I will not describe and teach orienteering using a compass just yet, just answer the questions below and if this is not enough for many, then I will definitely describe different methods of orienteering in the forest, including using a compass.
If you don’t have a compass, use the sun (rises in the east, sets in the west, mid-day in the south), sounds (although this is very deceptive), moss (grows on the north side of trees). I will describe other ways to get out of Taiga if you get lost, below in the section “Actions in extreme situations.”
