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BWI's 2008 |
The Boreal Wilderness Institute's 100km Survival Challenge will be conducted this summer in the Rocky Mountains west of Sundre. This trek is a once in a lifetime chance to experience the wilderness. Join us in July as we use modern wilderness survival techniques to travel light, fast and safely through the mountains and foothills of the upper Red Deer River.
Life is about choices. You can watch survival on TV or you can live it yourself. This is your choice, but we believe that the only way to truly learn is through experience. The 100km Survival Challenge is intended to be the maximum such experience. It is a wilderness expedition and constitutes the final level in earning BWI's Wilderness Mastery Certification. Join us for a real wilderness survival challenge.
This distance requires and challenges expedition travel skills, tough navigation, light weight travel, and self reliance. We will travel as a group, covering roughly 20km per day. If this does not sound like much, consider that this will be compounded by bushwhacking, steep elevations, difficult navigation, limited rations, and additional time to camp without tents or sleeping bags. Because of this year's difficult location, we will count every 300 meters of elevation gain as 1km. This will still mean a distance of over 80km as a crow flies, but don't expect the route to be this short or straight, and don't expect trails to travel on.
Anything larger than a light daypack means more equipment to slow us down and replace the need for wilderness survival skills. Participants are allowed the items they would normally take on a single day-hike, which is limited to the top 8 critical items (see BWI's 15 Critical Items List), water bottles, and some basic safety gear. Only enough food to cover your BMR for each day of travel (1Kcal/Kg of bodyweight per hour) will be carried. Everyone must submit an equipment list based on the advised equipment and a gear check will be conducted prior to departure.
Anyone can survive a tough weekend, but a week of travel with minimal equipment requires skill and knowledge. It also means we cannot hope to have fair weather for the duration. This is a physical, mental, and interpersonal challenge that you will need to be prepared for. It will also be a chance to enjoy camaraderie, see incredible rarely-visited country, and experience a rare and challenging adventure.