What Should I Have in My Daypack ? - Survival Kit 101 (3/8/2011)

What should I have in my daypack? Well I am glad you asked. It depends on your activity, the time of year, where you are, are you the leader of the group or a loyal participant and a few other things.

Join me for a hands on demonstration and PowerPoint lecture on the subject of "What Should I Have in My Daypack" and find out what I have in my daypack. The lecture will follow last years successful lecture format held on March 2, 2010.

For the most part, everything on a typical day hike, usually goes as planned. But what if something happens? Something breaks on your gear that you need to fix? You or someone gets injured? The group or just you get’s lost and have to spend the night in the woods? Are you prepared?

If you are looking for an answer(s) to these questions, then this presentation is for you. If you know the answers to these questions then, I invite you to share your advice with the group.

The audience is asked to bring their daypack to the meeting, as if they were going on a typical TOC day hike along with a note pad and pen.

Lets imagine something happens. Now what the “s#$&@” do we do? Smart people plan before “s#$&@” happens. So when “s#$&@” happens, you deal with it in a pre-determined manner. So why are we here? You’re SMART! And we’re thinking about what we should do now to prepare for the “what if” scenario.

I will show you what I have in my Survival Kit and how you can build your own and use it to get out or at least improve your situation you find yourself in. The contents of my survival kit will focus on the following areas; first aid kit, repair kit, navigation, water, emergency clothing, shelter, fire, signaling and food.

We’ll touch upon the human emotion of fear and panic and group dynamics in these situations and what you should do as a leader or member of the group to help the situation you find yourself in.

See you then.

This lecture feeds directly into Gary's Survival Series. A series of 5 events were held last summer. They were designed to try out our survival kits while building our skill in different challenges and weather conditions.

Check out who was on previous Gary's Survival Series events;

Gary's Survival Series # 1 May 15/16, 2010

Gary's Survival Series # 2 June 5/6, 2010

Gary's Survival Series # 3 July 24/25, 2010

Gary's Survival Series # 4 Aug 21/22, 2010

Gary's Survival Series # 5 Oct 2/3 tbd, 2010

If they SURVIVED, I am sure you will too!

• TTC:
  1. Take University line to Glencairn Station
  2. Take south exit from Glencairn, turn right on Viewmount and walk about 300m
  3. Turn left on Marlee and walk about 2 blocks
• Car from 401:
  1. Head south on Allen Expressway
  2. Exit at Lawrence Ave
  3. Turn right at the top of the ramp and IMMEDIATELY get in the left lane
  4. Turn left at the traffic light, onto Marlee and drive approx 2 km
• Chalkers will be on your left, upstairs in the shopping plaza - look for the Chalkers sign over the parking lot
• There is limited parking at the plaza; there is some parking on local side streets but it is recommended that you come by TTC