The Signal Fire: Signals fires must be built in a wide-open space. Timing is
everything; they must be ready for the moment when a plane passes over-
head. Stay with a signal fire once you have lit it, in case the pilot attempts
to communicate with you.
During the day, the most visible part of a signal fire is the smoke, so
you will also want to have items on hand that create as much of it as pos-
sible. Rubber and plastic work well (producing black smoke), as do fresh
(green) branches and boughs, which produce white smoke. Moss or punky
wood also work well.
Given the choice, go for black smoke, since it is not likely to be con-
fused with a campfire. Either way, smoke is most effective on clear, calm days.
Wind, rain, snow, and clouds disperse or shield smoke, significantly decreas-
ing the chances it will be seen. In addition, smoke is not nearly as important
at night, when the flame itself will be more easily spotted from above.
Some survival guides say you’ll have a better chance of attracting
attention if you prepare three signal fires and position them in the shape
of a triangle, a commonly recognized distress symbol. I tried this during a
winter survival course. On the day that the plane finally flew over, the tem-
perature hovered near –40 ̊F (–40 ̊C), and I had been surviving for seven
days and had little energy left.
When I heard the plane approaching, I had to run with burning bark
from my survival fire to the signal fire, which was about 60 yards (55 m)
away, in the middle of a frozen lake. When I got the first point of the tri-
angle lit, I had to run the 40 yards (37 m) to each of the other points to
set them burning as well. My hands felt frozen, I nearly put out the bark
I was running with, and I taxed my remaining energy reserves doing all
that running.
The pilot saw my signal fires and came down to rescue me. Once we
were in the air, though, I was shocked to see that the triangle I had made—
which had seemed so big and spread out on the ground—looked surpris-
ingly small from the air. In the end, one very large fire would have served the
same purpose and would have saved me a lot of energy—and firewood.
Signaling | 59