Pathfinder Basic Survival Class Review

Throughout the past couple of years and going into the next year, I have taken and will continue to take classes from Dave Canterbury and the pathfinder survival team. As of December 2022, I have taken both the Pathfinder Survival Basic Survival class as well as the Ropes, Riggings, and Knots class. Within this article, I want to provide a Pathfinder Basic Survival Class Review and write about my experience and some of the main takeaways and skills that we practiced in these courses. 

This article does not replace in-person instruction by any means. Written content can not take the place of getting out in the bush and putting yourself to work. My goal is to give you an idea of what to expect if you decide to take one of these courses and to get you excited about what there is to learn. 

Preview: It is impossible for me to cover an entire 3-day course into one written article. Taking these courses will surely teach you something new regardless of your previous experience. Also, it is worth noting that Dave changes up these courses all the time so no course is exactly the same. 

This course is located near Jackson, Ohio, and is a 3-day, 2-night course that is designed to teach you basic skills and put you in a survival mindset. You will read about all of my experiences in this course. Also, if you stick to the end, I have a few extra resources for you.

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My Pathfinder Basic Survival Course Review:

Here are the main key points that the course went into detail about, which I will speak upon:

• Survival Priorities and your “Kit”
• Knife Safety
• Navigation and signaling for rescue
• “Main” trees and their uses
• Fire creation methods using a ferrocerium rod
• 3 different types of survival shelter setups using a tarp
• Basic camp knots
• Pathfinder survival resources

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Survival Priorities And Your “Kit”

From the most critical to the least, your survival priorities go from:

1. Self Aid
2. Shelter
3. Fire
4. Water
5. Signaling and Rescue/Navigation

The most important survival priority is to make sure you are taken care of and healthy because if you are bleeding out, you will have minutes to survive whereas without water you will have days and without rescue, you will have weeks.

Actually, interesting enough, Dave does not carry any form of a (traditional) first aid kit as he emphasizes smaller things like bandages can be improvised from the land or what you already have. Instead, he always carries a more critical item, a tourniquet.

A tourniquet is something that is more difficult to reproduce and can be much more necessary in a real-life legitimate emergency, whereas a bandaid and some ointment might not cut it. 

In terms of the kit that you will want to carry, you will learn about the C’s of survival which has multi-functionality pieces including:

• Cutting Tools: Belt knife, folding saw, Swiss Army Knife
• Cover: tarp for under, wool blanket for being in, and trash bags filled with leaves to sleep on (In, on and under)
• Combustion: Bic lighter, ferrocerium rod, magnifying glass
• Container: 2 Metal single-walled water bottles and one nesting cup (to be used directly in a fire, or creating )
• Cordage: Bankline and paracord (Bankline is used for lashings as you can fit much more than paracord)
• Cotton Material: Schmagg (for warmth and char cloth material if needed)
• Compass: Should have a mirror, moving bezel, and a magnifying glass
• Candling Device: Headlamp with batteries
• Cargo Tape: Gorilla tape- to be used as a fire starter and stickier than duct tape
• Sail needle: #14 sized needle

As you will see during the course, all of these above have multiple uses other than the obvious. For example, a stainless steel water bottle can be used as a char container. In the class, we put punk wood inside the metal container and then put a metal nesting cup upside down over the opening of the container.

This created a seal good enough to make charred material while also allowing the gasses to escape. Dave preaches about the multi-use mentality and highlights that every piece of gear should have more than one use. 

Knife Safety

In terms of knife safety, it is important to note a few things to keep yourself safe. First of all, a dull knife is a dangerous knife. A dull knife causes the need to add pressure when using and that can cause problems and slippage of the knife, resulting in possible injury. Keep your knife sharp and ready at all times.

Another essential wilderness living skill is how to safely handle a knife. There is a specific area of your body that you should always avoid cutting towards and that is a triangle from your right and left thighs up to the center of your chest.

Your body has major arteries and organs in this area that could lead to quick bleeding out when out in the wilderness, so it is extremely important to avoid the triangle of death when handling a knife.

To avoid cutting into these areas you should use techniques like the chest lever or knee lever when cutting wood. It’s also best to move the wood and not the knife when cutting materials. Never cut while sitting down with your thighs at the release point.

Knee Lever: The knee lever puts your knife in your hands and rests in front of your knees. if you are putting pressure on the knife, this ensures that a slip will not cause an injury.

Chest Lever: The chest lever acts in the same way as the knee lever as it simply puts more control on the blade to avoid mishaps during use. When you use the chest lever, you will find yourself with “chicken wing” arms.

Navigation And Signaling For Rescue

Navigation is one of the top skills taught at the pathfinder survival school. And for good reason. In true survival, most cases can be avoided if someone knows how to properly navigate the terrain. So, the pathfinder basic survival class went over basic navigational skills from shooting an azimuth, to reverse azimuths, pace counting, and the different functions of a compass. 

We used pace beads to count our pace in case we needed to backtrack during the navigational section, we would know how far back we would need to go before we would hit our target.

We also went over some basic terms and information such as the difference between magnetic and grid north (as followed).

Magnetic North: Where the needle on a compass point.

Grid North: Where North is on an actual map.

“Main” Trees And The Uses Of Them

Because Dave and the school runs courses primarily in the eastern woodlands, the pathfinder survival school focuses on the trees that prove to be the most useful in this region, and for different reasons.

While each of these trees has many uses, I am just going to list what resources we used during the course from these trees. Eventually, I will create a more in-depth article on edible, medicinal, and practical uses of them too, but it would be way too much to add to this article!

Red and White Pine: During a “resource walk”, we located a dead pine tree that had fallen over and managed to saw off chunks of fatwood from the roots. The resin actually follows gravity down the trunk of the tree, so if you are looking at finding a good piece, start with the base. This become one of the many resources for fire creation using a Ferro rod.

Birch: We collected the papery material from a river birch which aided in the fire-starting portion. This is a highly resinous and flammable resource that will burn in any condition with an open flame.

Poplar: Tulip Poplar, although not a true Poplar, was a very popular tree discussed in the class. You can process the inner bark into tinder bundles and it can be used as a dry fire resource, which we did a lot of. This tree has many other uses as well.

Fire Creation Methods Using A Ferrocerium Rod⁣

During the course, because it was “basic” survival, it was still reliant on some modern(ish) gear such as using a ferrocerium rod to start fires. We made many fires during the 3 days, but most of the time the process went like this:

Step One: Gather a bundle of dry grass about the size of your arm, then fold it over to create a bird’s nest “tinder bundle”. 

Step Two:  Collect “smalls” about 18 inches long of pencil thickness, finger thickness, and then thumb thickness. You want to have an equal division of all three of these.

Prioritize the trees that are dead and fallen over as this will provide all three levels of thicknesses. These will be in greater amounts as well.

Step Three: Process the bird’s nest down to get the finest hairs that will ignite with sparks from the ferrocerium rod. Do this by aggressively grinding the bundle together.

Step Four: Use either punkwood, shaved birch bark from a birch tree, tulip poplar inner bark, or fatwood shavings from a pine tree to aid in the fire lighting process.

Step Five: While anchoring your knife knuckles down on your boot, pull back the ferrocerium rod to produce a shower of sparks into your bird’s nest material. If you don’t get it within three tries, you likely need to change something up.

Survival Tip: Aggregate berries such as Raspberry, Blackberry, Thimbleberry, Dewberries, etc. are known to be 99% edible. Aggregate berries basically mean fruits that are made up of multiple connected berries. This could be important to know if ever in a survival situation!

3 Types Of Survival Shelters Using A Tarp

We went over three main types of shelters that are quick and easy to put up, yet highly effective in different environments. Here, we will go over all three of those. During the class, we set these up using a tarp.

A-Frame: Cold and rainy conditions

This is the shelter that I chose to use during my overnight shelter project during the course. The reason is that this is a better shelter for colder conditions and it got near freezing during my time on the course. Some key main point when using this style of shelter in colder conditions is to create it at about knee height. If you leave it higher than that then it will not lock in that warmth as well. Another thing to note is that you can take leaves and pile them on the sides of the shelter to further insulate this style. 

Plow-Point: Summer conditions

Similar to a lean-to, this is going to be a quick setup designed for maximum airflow while maintaining protection from the elements. 

Lean-To: Summer conditions

A lean-to shelter is a popular option in many conditions and it is an easier shelter to create off of the landscape. Although this is a better option during warmer weather, it still does an excellent job of blocking yourself from the wind or rain during a rain storm. 

Basic Camp Knots

During the pathfinder basic survival course, we went over a few necessary knots, mostly for the sake of shelter setup. We were timed on our shelter and fire building so it was these knots that we were required to know for basic shelter setup.

• Bowline: An all-around camp knot that we used to create an anchor point around an object.
• Truckers Hitch (Improvised): Used to pull a line tight and reduce the slack. We used this to secure our ridge line and create a taught line.
• Fisherman’s Knot: Used to tie two ends of a rope together.
• Prussik Knot: Used to create an adjustable hitch around a rope of a larger diameter.

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