Surviving a northern winter in the woods requires more than just sisu and perkele; you need proven wilderness skills and proper clothing and gear. In Arctic conditions, you will be finished quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing and are ill-equipped. This guide offers a glimpse of the skills needed to survive in a snowy, northern environment.
We recommend training these areas thoroughly with an expert before getting yourself into a situation where you need them to survive. There are good courses that teach these skills far better than a simple article can.
1. When do you need winter survival?
If you live in the city and never venture anywhere outside a subway line, you probably won’t need these skills as long as the world around you stays up and running. However, if you venture away from that comfort zone, something unexpected might happen.
- Your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, and you need to wait for help or go and find it.
- You stray way off the course when hunting/hiking/skiing, and might need to stay overnight in the bush.
- You deliberately go into the woods and plan on staying there for a few days.
2. The winter survival kit: What to pack
Different scenarios require different packing lists. Thus, it is impossible to create a single list that covers all possible needs. The one we provide here is the absolute basic kit list for wilderness survival in winter. Add more based on your experience level and what you actually plan on doing in the woods.
Ideally, you should have a survival pack in your car for emergencies, and also bring along these items when you venture into the woods in the wintertime.
- Warm clothes: Extra layers for breaks and camping and spare baselayers to replace sweaty ones.
- Cutting Tools: A fixed-blade knife, axe, and/or a saw
- Firemaking: A ferro rod and some matches in a watertight container
- Container: A stainless steel bottle or cup (for melting snow)
- Cordage: At least 15 meters of Paracord
- Shelter: A heavy-duty space blanket and a sleeping bag
- Food acquisition: Fishing hooks + weights
- Navigation: A physical map and a compass
- Illumination: A headlamp (fully charged or with enough fresh batteries)
- Food: Lightweight snacks, such as chocolate, jerky, licorice
- Power: A power bank for your phone and headlamp
- First aid: A compact yet versatile first aid kit
3. Winter survival clothing: Move cold, sit warm
A major threat in winter is sweat. Moisture on your skin leads to rapid heat loss. Therefore, don’t wear too much clothing when you move and put more on when you stop. Ideally, you should feel cold before you start moving. Then you usually won’t get overheated that easily.
Unlike synthetics, Merino wool retains its insulating properties even when damp. It is also super comfortable and breathes very well. Therefore, it is an ideal material next to the skin. Avoid cotton at all costs; it absorbs moisture and makes you freeze to death far more easily.
Add thicker mid-layers when you stop moving. Merino wool and regular wool are very good options.
Your outer shell should be breathable to avoid sweating. Ventilation zips are good for the same reason. Windproof materials are very good when you are out in the open, but thick forests aren’t usually super windy, and breathability is more important when you move. You might want a thicker, warmer windproof jacket/anorak for breaks when it is really cold. However, you can also use even thicker midlayers instead.
4. Land navigation without a compass
The main point of survival is to get the hell out of wherever you are. Even in this day and age of satellite navigation, you should know how to use a map and a compass. They will work even when your GPS battery runs out. With just the compass, you can maintain your course and avoid walking in a circle.
If you end up in the middle of nowhere without any navigation tools, you still have a possibility to figure out the compass points:
- The watch method: Hold your analog watch flat. Point the hour hand at the sun. In the Northern Hemisphere, the point halfway between the hour hand and the 12 o'clock mark is approximately South. Obviously, you need thin enough clouds and an early enough day to see the sun.
- Snow melt patterns: Observe large rocks. Snow typically melts faster and more thoroughly on the South-facing side due to increased sun exposure. This, of course, won’t work when the snow hasn’t started melting yet.
- The stars: Locate the "Big Dipper" i.e. the Great Bear. Follow the two stars at the end of the "cup" (the pointers) straight out to the first bright star—that is Polaris (The North Star), which always indicates true North. This is tricky to explain in writing, but there are tons of images online that will help you with it. You, of course, need a starlit sky to find it.
Land navigation without a compass requires certain conditions; your compass works all the time. Thus, learn to use one and keep it with you.
5. Firecraft: How to use a ferro rod to start a fire in winter survival
A fire is your most critical asset for heat, water purification, and morale. It is vital for staying alive if you end up in the woods without a proper sleeping bag. And you need it for cooking if you plan on catching something wild. You can also use it for signaling.
Your most common options for starting a fire in the wilderness are:
- Matches: Easy to use, but once they are out, your fire won’t start. And unless you get storm matches, they aren’t very good in wet and windy conditions. Nevertheless good to bring along a pack or a few and store them in a waterproof bag or such.
- Lighter: Once you are out of juice, you won’t start fires. These are also prone to malfunctioning. Unless you get e.g. a plasma lighter, these also don’t work that well in windy conditions.
- Ferro rod: Requires some training, but very reliable and works in all conditions. The ideal firestarting tool for survival situations.
We recommend learning to use a ferro rod, carrying one with you, and bringing matches just in case you lose your firesteel. Store the rod and matches in different places. Remember that the ferro rod requires a striker. One often comes with the ferro rod, but not always. You can also use the spine of a suitable knife as a striker, for example, our Varusteleka Jääkäripuukko works very well.
In addition to the firestarting tools, you need tinder, not the app, but something that catches fire easily. The app is only useful if your potential match can rescue you from the wilderness.
It can be wise to bring suitable tinder along and keep it in your firemaking kit. However, you can also find tinder in the woods. Here in Finland and also in many other northern countries, the ultimate tinder is birch bark. It works well even when wet.
- Scrape the white layer on the top of the bark with the tip of your knife into a small pile of dust and scraps.
- Place the firesteel directly on top of the bark.
- Scrape slowly and firmly with the striker to shower the pile of very flammable white stuff with sparks.
- Once you have successfully lit the birch bark, it will burn out very quickly. Have kindling ready to use those precious flames well.
Good kindling is dry, thin, and small enough to catch fire easily. Unfortunately, dry stuff might not be easy to find. Here are a few possible options:
- Birch bark: Birch bark will catch fire easily, but also burn fast. Therefore, you need a big pile of birch bark if you want to use it as kindling.
- Fatwood: This is your ideal kindling. If your region has pine stumps rich in fatwood, use them. Works when wet, catches fire very easily, and doesn’t burn out too quickly.
- Lower branches of spruce trees: These are often dry.
- Some dead trees: For example, pines sometimes die standing and become dry. You can split these into kindling or whittle feather sticks from their dry branches.
Feed the fire slowly with small kindling, and gradually increase the size. If you find dry dead trees, split enough into firewood that you can use once your fire is big enough. If you only have wet fresh wood around, you might have to keep using the dry dead sticks.
There are many ways to build and maintain a fire in the woods, and it is impossible to cover them all in a short article. We recommend training firestarting with an expert. There are also good video tutorials online. Don’t start practicing it when you are in a SNAFU in the woods.
6. Hydration: How to find and purify water in winter
You need to drink often to survive. Luckily, a snowy forest can provide you with lots of water:
- Melting snow: Bring along a metal container for gathering the water. Either place the snow in the container and put the container close to your fire. Or skewer a big lump of dense snow on a stick and position it close to the fire and put the container under it to catch the dripping water. If you didn’t bring a container but brought beer (because why not), you can make a container out of the can.
- Finding liquid water: Rapidly running water might not have frozen at all. So there might be streams, small waterfalls, and such that can give you water quite easily. However, only use streams that you can easily reach from the shore. Don’t walk over ice to access unfrozen water. You will just end up in the Darwin Awards.
- Sourcing snow under ice: If you plan on making a hole in the ice for fishing anyway, you could use the water from the lake for drinking, too. Just making a hole for water usually consumes too much energy. And if you don’t know how safe the ice is, it isn’t smart to go there.
Snow and northern Finnish lakes are usually clean enough so that you technically don’t need to purify your water. However, in a survival situation, you shouldn’t take any risks that you can easily avoid. Having a messed-up stomach and your own Exorcist simulator isn’t the best way to improve your odds of survival. Water purification eliminates this risk.
- Water purification tablets: Easy to carry along and use, but they make the water taste like crap.
- Water filter: Takes a bit more space, but easy to use and doesn’t ruin the flavor. However, some filter types can freeze and break when it is really cold.
- Boiling water: Takes some time and requires fire, but gives you a warm drink and doesn’t ruin the flavor. If you add some spruce/pine twigs in the water, you also get some extra nutrients.
7. Procurement of Food
In a short-term survival situation, food is a lower priority than shelter, water, and finding your way home. However, food provides essential calories to keep you going. For shorter survival situations, the easiest option is to keep enough snacks, such as chocolate, jerky, nuts, and/or licorice with you. You can also bring along a freeze-dried meal or two just in case your stay becomes longer.
If you have to stay in the woods for a very long time, you need to consider catching your food:
- Hunting: Active hunting requires a gun, a bow, or another suitable weapon. These you usually don’t have with you in a survival situation. If you do and know how to hunt, this is a good way to get lots of protein. However, it can also consume way too much energy.
- Trapping: You can use wire or the inner strands of paracord to build snare loops on small-game trails. Successful trapping requires knowledge of how to build successful traps and an understanding of where the game animals move and how in your area. There are good videos and books on this, but it requires a lot of practice to be at all useful.
- Fishing: This is by far the easiest way to catch food. Since proper winter means ice, your best bet is to make a hole in the ice and fish with a line, hook, sinker, and bait. Carrying a fishing set that includes the hook, line, and sinker is the easiest option. You can also unravel the outer sheath of your paracord to extract the fine inner threads and use either one, or, if you need a stronger line, weave several together. You can either sit and wait with your improvised fishing setup or rig one to do the fishing for you. You can locate suitable bait from inside rotten trees or bring some along in a small container.
Catching food is usually not easy, so it is often far better to spend all that time and energy on trying to get out.
8. Building improvised shelters
If you didn’t pack a tent or other proper shelter and you need to stay overnight, you'll need to build an improvised shelter to protect you from the wind and snow and insulate you from the frozen ground. If you have a good winter sleeping bag and pad, you can sleep in the snow under the stars. However, if you don’t, it is extremely cold, or the weather is crappy, you need to reduce the effects of the weather as much as possible.
You have a couple of improvised shelter options, depending on what you have with you.
Using natural shelters
If you are in the woods with nothing, it is quite tricky to build anything. Then your only option is to rely on what nature has built. These include, e.g., the following:
- Caves
- Sheltering rock formations
- Spruce trees with thick, sheltering branches
You should pay attention to a couple of things. Don’t shove into a cave already occupied by something with big claws and teeth. Don’t huddle beneath something that has an avalanche risk. Don’t shelter anywhere where there are dead trees that might fall on you in a storm.
Building a snow cave
If you have lots of snow around you, you can build a snow cave. However, you need to know what you’re doing. Otherwise, you can have the cave collapse on you, or you run out of oxygen. The best way to learn to build these is to participate in a winter survival course.
Building an emergency shelter from a space blanket
Carrying an emergency blanket and some Paracord is a smart idea. They don’t take up much space, and they are useful for many things. One of these is an emergency shelter.
Make knots at the corners and tie the top ones to trees using the inner strands of Paracord to form a lean-to. Make two pegs, and tie the lower corners to those. Try to keep the lower edge as close to the ground as possible to keep the wind out in case the direction changes. You can also pack snow along the lower edge to make it completely windproof.
Use the silver-colored side as the inside. Now, when you build a fire c. 50 cm from where you sleep, you can add firewood without getting up, and the fire will reflect heat into your shelter and back to you from the space blanket.
Build the first layer of your bed from branches, and layer a thick layer of spruce boughs on top of them. This way, you insulate yourself from the frozen ground. Reserve enough firewood to keep the fire going.
If it is really cold, you need a big fire, such as the Finnish rakovalkea, made from two dry pine logs that burn throughout the night. Since these are somewhat tricky to make and require dry pine, you should carry along a proper winter sleeping bag and a sleeping pad, or risk freezing to death.
9. Signalling for Help
Rescue is your ultimate goal. If you can’t find your way out or use the phone to call anyone, your only option is to signal for help. There are a few options for this, depending on your situation.
- Visual or auditory signals: If there is any possibility of people around, calling for help can draw them toward you. And if you have wide-open areas, such as large lakes, you can use a signal mirror or another reflective surface to flash sunlight at possible distant observers/low-flying planes, or wave a high-vis vest at them.
- Visible signs: You can also create some unusual-looking and clear signs on e.g. the frozen lake to draw attention from low-flying planes. Such as a very big SOS from tree trunks/branches.
- Smoky Fire: Once you have a strong fire, throw green spruce or pine boughs on top of it. This creates thick, white smoke that is highly visible against a dark forest canopy. You can also build a specific signal fire on top of a tripod made from thin tree trunks.
10 Legislation: How legal is it to survive?
How legal all these things are depends on your country’s legislation. Often, laws allow you to hunt. trap, fish, build fires, cut trees, peel bark, etc., on anybody’s land when doing so is necessary for survival. Nevertheless, staying alive is better than dying knowing that your criminal record is clean.
However, training for survival is not an emergency, and thus does NOT give you any extra privileges. So, if trapping isn’t permitted in your legislation, you aren’t allowed to train it in the wilderness. And you cannot practice building a signal fire unless doing so is legal.
Usually, it all boils down to who owns the forest and what that person and your country’s legislation allow you to do there. So, find out before doing anything.
11. Final words
This is such a big topic that it isn’t possible to cover everything in one article. There are many ways to do different things, and some might work better or equally well for you than the stuff mentioned here.
One thing is for certain: you need to learn all the necessary survival skills beforehand in a safe environment and preferably with an expert. And you also need to test all your clothes and gear thoroughly so you know they won’t let you down when you really need them.