Wilderness Skills and Bush Craft

You know what?

I don’t even know what “Bush Craft” is… Yet I hold a qualification in it!

For me Bush Craft and Wilderness Skills are the ability to take or improvise pretty minimal kit and stay more than alive (that’s survival training) and even comfortable in remote environments. It’s the amalgamation of basic survival skills and expedition techniques.

With over 15 years of professional national and international expedition work, including sleeping in caves and mines, on mountains in tents, to desert floors, jungle shelters and high altitude huts, to under tarpaulins by lochs and rivers and natural shelters in forests and the occasional snow hole I think I can hold my own 😉

I’ve taken water from streams, springs, lakes and rivers, cave sumps, rainwater and melted snow.

I’ve carried and cooked food on a huge variety of stoves, from the technical gadget ones, to the rustic developing world variety to classic open fires.

I’ve used porcelain toilets, long drop toilets, group dug latrines and a shallow improvised toilet scrapes all as ethically and safely as possible.

I’ve lit fires with and without matches in both dry and wet conditions. Used sparks, friction, embers on a variety of natural and man made materials and cooked on those fires for days on end.

I’ve taught all the above to experienced adults and young children having their first outdoor adventures….

Bush Craft or Wilderness skill is a massive subject.

So what do you need to know to keep moving, comfortable and safe in the wilderness?

Previous experience: Depending on what skill you wish to learn

Duration: Min 1 full day for absolute basics
Min Ratio: 1 instructor to 1
Max Ratio: 1 instructor to 6
Cost: Dependant on size of group and type of course… Its tailor made