Biome · altitude decides everything
Mountains
The one biome where the ground itself changes your conditions within hours, with no change in the weather: the temperature falls by about 6 °C per 1000 m (3.5 °F per 1000 ft) of climb in dry weather, half that when it is raining or snowing. Clothing that was enough at the foot of the slope may not save you higher up the same route by evening.
Если вы оказались в горах
- Остановитесь на устойчивой площадке. Не под нависающими камнями, не в кулуаре, русле, у края обрыва или на лавинном склоне. Зафиксируйте координаты и высоту.
- Не спускайтесь наугад. Возврат допустим только по точно известному безопасному пути и засветло. В темноте оставайтесь на месте, если нет камнепада, воды, пожара или другой непосредственной угрозы.
- Уйдите с гребня до грозы. Палатка не защищает от молнии. Лучшее действие — заранее добраться до капитального здания или закрытого автомобиля; если их нет, избегайте гребней, воды, одиноких деревьев и металла.
- Проверьте высотные симптомы. Головная боль вместе с тошнотой, слабостью или головокружением — прекратить подъём. Спутанность, шаткость или одышка в покое — немедленно ниже и за помощью.
- Устройте малый лагерь. Ветрозащита, изоляция от камня, вода и сигнал важнее костра. Не разводите огонь под скальным навесом и не нагревайте мокрые камни.
- Нарастающая шаткость, спутанность, одышка в покое, боль в груди, тяжёлая травма или внезапный подъём воды требуют эвакуации. Не оставляйте пострадавшего одного.
Hour 1 — assess altitude, weather and time until dark
⏱ 20–30 minutes, and it is the only reconnaissance worth doing up highThree questions: how much daylight is left, which way the weather is coming from, and where the nearest descent is that is not a couloir. Darkness comes suddenly in mountains — the sun goes behind the ridge long before actual sunset, and you lose the hour and a half you were counting on. Assume dark will arrive sooner than it does.
Day 1 — descend below the tree line
⏱ All the daylight you have leftThe aim for the day is to get below the tree line. Everything that does not exist higher up appears there at once: firewood, plant fibre for cord, conifer boughs for bedding, shelter from wind. If you cannot make it, do not walk over scree and rock in the dark — that is the main cause of injuries. Camp where the dark catches you, but be sure to get off the ridge and out of the couloir: a ridge is scoured by wind, and a couloir is the route rocks and avalanches take.
Cordage below the tree line, as in a forest. Above it there is no plant fibre at all, only sinew from animals you take. If you are up high and plan to stay, gather material in advance while it is still available.
1. How to choose where to go down
Looking up a slope deceives you, and looking down deceives you more: the slope looks even right up to the point where it drops away. There is one rule and it is simple.
Descend on ribs, not in gullies. A "rib" is a convex line on the slope — a spur, a small ridge. A "gully" is concave: a stream bed, a washout, a narrow cleft between rocks. From a rib you can see what is ahead and you can step sideways off it. In a gully you see nothing, there is nowhere to go, and everything falling from the slope above comes down exactly there.
- Do not follow a stream bed down. A mountain stream turns into a waterfall sooner or later, and you will discover this standing at the top of a drop, from which going back is now harder than going on was.
- Descend diagonally, in zigzags, rather than straight down. A straight descent is quicker right up to the first slip.
- On loose ground put your foot down heel first, side-on to the slope, slightly crouched. Fine scree slides with you and that is normal — what is dangerous is head-sized rocks sitting unstably.
- If you are not alone, do not go one directly below the otherbut staggered. A stone dislodged by the person above goes straight into the head of the person below.
- When it gets dark, stop. Most mountain injuries happen on descent at dusk, to people who had "hardly any way left to go".
A dead end is no disgrace. If the route runs into a drop, go back up and take a different rib. Trying to "somehow get through" on tired legs is the moment after which rescuers are looking not for a missing person but for a casualty.
2. A night by the rock: stone warms you and stone drains you
In mountains you do not build — you finish off what is there. A rock overhang, a niche under a boulder, a hollow behind a block already give you three walls out of four, and far quicker than any hut.
- Having picked a niche, look up. Fresh chips of stone underfoot, cracks and overhanging blocks above mean things have fallen here and will fall again. Move on.
- Make sure you are not in the bed of a dry watercourse: smooth rounded stones and a strip with no vegetation mean water runs through here.
- Close the open side with dry-stone walling — stones on top of one another with no mortar, flat faces inwards, each course spanning the joint of the one below. The height of a seated person is enough.
- Get yourself off the stone. Rock is colder than earth and draws heat out of you all night. Conifer boughs, dry grass, moss, a rucksack — anything at least a palm thick.
- Put the fire right at the entrance, your back to the rock. The stone behind the fire heats up and gives that heat back until morning, which a wooden wall cannot do.
Do not camp on the floor of a hollow. At night cold air sinks and settles in dips: the bottom can be 5–8 °C colder than the slope twenty paces higher. That is exactly the opposite of what instinct suggests.
🌙 Night 1
A natural shelter beats a home-made one: a rock overhang, a niche under a boulder, a hollow behind a block. But check that nothing above you can fall, and that you are not in the bed of a dry watercourse.
Get yourself off the stone. Rock draws heat as well as snow does — conifer boughs, dry grass, a rucksack, anything between you and the ground. At night cold air sinks and collects in basins, so sleeping on the floor of a hollow is colder than on its side, which is the opposite of what seems logical.
Days 2–3 — the critical window
⏱ Keep losing height, or settle in below the tree lineWater is rarely a problem in mountains: streams, snow patches, meltwater. It still has to be boiled, especially below grazing land. Food is the biome's weak point: there is almost nothing to gather, game is shy and mobile, and taking it on a slope is hard work. Hunger comes on sooner here than in a forest, so save your strength rather than looking for food at any cost.
🌙 Nights 2–3
Below the tree line the night becomes an ordinary forest night: fire, a reflector of stones, bedding. A stone wall behind the fire works better than a wooden one — stone gives its stored heat back all night. That is exactly why a mountain camp against rock is warmer than one on an open slope.
Week 1 — settling into the valley
⏱ The rest of the weekCamp goes in the valley, but above its floor: a flood in a mountain gorge rises within minutes from rain falling somewhere higher that you cannot even see. Snares on animal trails — they are particularly clear in mountains, because animals also follow the easy lines of the ground. Containers appear, and boiling, and a permanent shelter.
🌙 Night, week 1
The routine is as in a forest, with one correction: the day-to-night temperature swing in mountains is twice what it is on the plain. In the evening prepare more fuel for the night than the daytime warmth suggests.
Weeks 2–4 and beyond — stone
⏱ No hurryWhere there is little timber, the main material becomes stone: dry-stone walling holds for centuries, and a built wall combined with a rock face gives you a ready dwelling with almost no wood. A stone stove and a hearth with stone mass store heat and give it back at night. This is the one biome where Level 4 is built neither of wood nor of clay.
Ground and weather
Most often by day, when the sun melts the ice binding the rock together, and after rain. Do not walk or camp in couloirs — they are natural chutes for stones. If you hear noise above, press against the rock under an overhang rather than running down the slope. What to do: Press to the rock under a projection, or step sideways out of the gully, and look up. Cross dangerous places quickly, one at a time, early in the morning while it is cold.
Slopes of 30–45° are the dangerous ones, especially after fresh snowfall and during a thaw. Keep to ridges and convex ground, and avoid cutting across a slope. Forest on a slope usually means regular avalanches do not happen there. What to do: Keep off open slopes of 25–45° for a day or two after snowfall; go along ridges and through open woodland. If caught: shout at once, then stay silent, shed anything loose, cover your face with your hands.
Water rises within minutes from rain higher up the valley, which you may not even be getting. Never camp on the floor of a narrow gorge or on a gravel bar. What to do: If you hear a roar or the water goes muddy, get up the side of the valley immediately, not along the channel.
Over a day the difference can exceed 25 °C (45 °F). Dress in layers and take a layer off before you sweat — wet clothing at altitude is more dangerous than it is lower down. What to do: Always carry a warm layer; towards evening lay in more fuel than the daytime warmth suggests.
Animals
Alpine and Himalayan marmots are the same genus and the same plague risk as in the steppe. Infection comes through cuts while butchering. Do not hunt them at all, however hungry you are. What to do: Do not take them and do not butcher them, however hungry you are. The burrows are useful only as a sign that water is close.
Snow leopard, puma and the like very rarely attack first and avoid people. Do not approach a predator's kill. On blind bends of a narrow path, announce yourself with your voice — the worst thing is catching an animal by surprise. What to do: Do not crouch and do not turn your back; look it in the eye, make yourself look bigger, back away slowly. If it attacks, fight, aiming at the face and eyes.
Water is the biome's strength: streams, snow patches, meltwater, dew. Above grazing land the water is cleaner; below it, contaminated by livestock. Boil it either way. Melted snow and ice, as in the taiga: melt it, do not eat it.
Food is the weak point. Растительной пищи мало, выше границы леса почти нет вовсе. Погоня по склону и подъём к гнёздам создают риск падения, который несоразмерен добыче. В первые дни экономия сил, укрытие и вода важнее рискованного поиска еды.
What you can eat without risk of a mistake
Below the tree line the list from the "Forest" chapter applies. Above it there are effectively no reliable plants, and we give no list that could not be trusted.
They grow on a low woody dwarf shrub, not on a soft green stem. That is the identifying feature: the growth form, not the colour of the berry.
The leaves sit strictly in pairs opposite each other, and it stings when you touch it — that sting is the check. Boil 5–10 minutes.
An umbrella of small white flowers, a smooth hollow stem with purple blotches. Lethal. Forbidden entirely.
assess the altitude and the weather · decide to descend
a natural shelter · get off the stone · fire · cord (only below the tree line)
containers · snares on trails · a stone reflector by the fire
tanned hide · smoking · a bow (below the tree line)
dry-stone walling · a stone hearth with thermal mass
Where to put it: here a mistake costs more than anywhere
- Not in a couloir and not in a channel. A gully on a slope is a road for rocks, avalanches and mudflows. The signs: a strip with no vegetation, rounded stones, fresh chips of rock.
- Look up at the whole slope, not just at what is directly above you. Overhanging blocks, cracks, "live" stones on scree — move on.
- Not on the valley floor. A flood in a mountain gorge rises within minutes from rain you cannot see. Build at least two of your own heights above the floor.
- Not on a ridge — that is where the wind is, and the lightning, and no shelter at all.
- The ideal is a rock ledge or shelf halfway up the slope, back to the rock, facing the sun, below the tree line.
- Picture it in winter: where will the snow come down from the slope above you, and where will it drift.
- 1 The rock face. Build against it. One ready-made wall is a third of the work, a third of the warmth, and all your shelter from wind on that side.
- 2 Dry-stone walling. The stones are laid flat faces horizontal, long side into the wall, and bonded: every stone spans the joint between two below it. No mortar is needed — weight and friction hold it.
- 3 Rubble fill. The wall is built double: two courses of large stones with small stuff and rubble between them. Such a wall is twice as warm as a solid one and three times as stable.
- 4 The roof. The one thing you will have to carry up: beams from the forest, branches across them, turf or overlapping stone slabs on top. The fall runs away from the rock face.
- 5 A hearth against the wall. The mass of stone behind the fire takes up the heat and gives it back all night. This works better in mountains than in any other biome — there is as much stone around as you like.
- 6 A sleeping platform and bedding. Essential: stone is colder than earth and pulls heat away faster. You cannot sleep straight on a stone floor even in summer.
- ! Do not use round stones. River cobbles roll and the wall will slide. You need broken stone with flat faces — take it from scree, not from a stream bed.
How to build a stone house without mortar
- Gather the stone in advance and sort it: large flat ones for the footing and the corners, medium for the wall, small stuff for the fill and for wedges. Carrying it takes longer than laying it.
- The footing: strip the soil down to firm ground and lay the largest flat stones. How level the footing is decides the fate of the whole wall.
- There is one rule and it is the main one: one stone on two, two stones on one. Vertical joints must never run one above the other — that is the line the wall will crack along.
- Lay it leaning inwards: the wall should tilt very slightly towards the centre of the house, and then it holds itself.
- Every few courses put in a "through-stone" — a long stone crossing the whole wall and tying both faces together. Without through-stones a double wall spreads apart.
- Wedges. Wedge every rocking stone with a small one until it is completely still. If one is loose, in time the whole wall moves.
- Openings are spanned with a long stone slab or a wooden beam. Build the corners of an opening out of the largest and most regular stones.
- Point the gaps from the inside with clay, moss or turf — dry-stone walling carries weight but the wind goes straight through it. This is a required step, not a finish.
- The roof: beams running from the rock face outwards with a fall, poles across them, and overlapping stone slabs on top (laid from the bottom up, like tiles) or turf.
The check. A finished wall must not move when you lean a shoulder on it. If it does, take the top courses down and lay them again. A stone wall does not forgive "I will fix that later".
The quick version for the first winter: close off the open side of a rock overhang with dry-stone walling, roof it with poles and turf, and put thick bedding inside. Three days' work instead of three weeks, and it is already proper winter housing.
Warmth in a stone house
Smoke, air and the door
Door
Most often morning and evening, when ice in the cracks thaws and freezes, and after rain.
Signs: fresh chips of rock, dust on the slope, clattering, a strip with no vegetation.
What to do: if you hear "Rock!" or a clatter, do not run downhill— press to the rock under a projection, or step sideways out of the gully. Look up rather than searching the ground for the stone. A rucksack on your head will stand in for a helmet.
Prevention: cross dangerous ground quickly, one at a time, early in the morning while it is cold.
The most dangerous slopes are 25–45° — that is to say, exactly the ones that are comfortable to walk on. After heavy snowfall the risk lasts 1–2 days.
Signs: recent heavy snow, a "whumph" and the snow settling underfoot, cracks opening, cornices on the ridge, traces of past slides.
What to do: go round by the ridges and through open woodland rather than across open gullies. If you are caught, shout at once and then keep silent, throw off anything loose, "swim" towards the edge of the flow, and as it stops cover your face with your hands and make a space in front of your mouth, taking a breath.
Put the house and the camp not under an open slope but behind a rock buttress or in the trees.
The rain falls somewhere higher, and a wall of mud and stones reaches you down the narrow valley within minutes.
Signs: the water suddenly goes muddy, or conversely disappears; a rising roar; a smell of wet earth.
What to do: immediately up the side of the valley, not along the channel. You need to gain tens of metres in height, not move tens of metres sideways.
In mountains you are often inside the cloud. The sign of an imminent strike: a humming, crackling, hair standing on end, a tingling in metal — those are the last few seconds.
What to do: немедленно уйти с гребня и продолжать движение к капитальному зданию или закрытому автомобилю, если путь безопасен. Не останавливаться под одиноким выступом, в нише, у мокрой стены, воды или металла. Если безопасного укрытия нет, избегать самых высоких и открытых точек и разойтись группой.
The commonest cause of death in mountains is not a rockfall but weather that changed within an hour. Warm and clear becomes wet snow and wind, and the clothing was chosen for "how it was".
What to do: assume the weather is worse than it looks, always carry a warm and windproof layer, and go down at the first signs. Down is the universal answer to almost any mountain problem.
In mountains the shaking is not the danger; what it sets off is: rockfalls, landslides, and dammed lakes that later burst.
What to do: get into the open, well away from slopes and cliffs, and wait. Do not go under overhangs or into caves until the aftershocks have finished. Afterwards, do not walk up gorges: water may be building up behind a new blockage.
Besides rockfall, mountains have things that do not fall on you but open under you: karst cavities, crevasses under a snow bridge, abandoned adits and prospecting shafts.
Signs: craters with no outflow, snow bridges that sag, spoil heaps and suspiciously level platforms — the mark of an old working. What to do: on snow-covered ground, walk with a pole, probing the crust ahead. Never go into mine workings, whatever the weather: the timbering has rotted and carbon dioxide collects in the dead ends — the best-looking and worst-in-fact place to spend a night in the mountains.
- Time — leave straight away, not after packing.
- Distance — every step away from the source cuts the dose.
- Shielding — any mass between you and the source: earth, stone, water, a wall.
Nuclear
A stone house with a thick wall and rock at your back is good protection in itself. A cave, a niche or an adit gives you mass you would otherwise have to pile up.
- Get out of the valley onto its side: water runs along the floor, and everything it carries runs with it.
- Outer clothing and boots stay outside. A day indoors at minimum.
- Water: a spring straight out of the rock beats a stream, and a stream above a snow patch beats surface meltwater. Melted snow and glacier ice are the worst option: they have been storing what fell for months and release it all at once as they melt.
- Food: avoid moss, lichen and the meat of animals that feed on them. That chain works the same in mountains as in the tundra.
Chemical
Heavy gases run down the slope into the valley and settle on the floor. Go up, and across. In mountains this rule agrees with the biome's general logic, only the direction is the opposite of the usual "always down".
Separately: mountains have natural gas seeps — carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide, in caves, near volcanoes, in deep pits. The sign is dead animals and insects at the bottom with no marks of violence on them. Never go down into such places.
Biological
There are few people and the risk is low. The main thing is water: a mountain stream below grazing land or a camp is no cleaner than one on the plain.
- Boil all water, including "the purest glacier meltwater".
- Do not go into shepherds' huts and folds, and do not take things from them.
- Isolate anyone who falls ill; at altitude illness is harder to bear because of the lack of oxygen.
Path A — with bare hands
You know everything humanity knows, but you have nothing except your hands and what grows around you.
The first year
- Descending below the tree line — day one, and it is the decision that matters.
- Shelter against rock, fire, water — the first week.
- A dry-stone house — 3–8 weeks, the lowest barrier to entry in the guide.
- Snares on mountain trails: animals follow the easy lines of the ground just as you do.
Three years
- Dry-stone walling grows into a holding: house, pen, retaining walls, terraces.
- Terraces — the mountain technology of farming: a level platform on a slope held by a stone wall.
- A stone stove with mass, fired clay, lime.
- Making hay and drying meat — altitude and dry air help.
The ceiling, and an honest limit
- Achievable: a dwelling that lasts, terraced farming, pottery, lime, a water wheel on a stream — the fall of water here is free.
- Out of reach: steady hunting as a basis. Game is shy, the slope takes your strength, and you burn more calories in mountains.
- A peculiarity: mountains reward patience and punish haste more than any other biome.
The bottleneck of this biome
Food and altitude. There is almost nothing to gather, and every journey costs double. Plan around "spend less" rather than "get more".
Path B — on what is left
The same place, but within a day's walk there is something people abandoned. That does not cancel self-reliance — it only speeds it up.
What to look for here specifically
- Shepherds' huts, refuges, weather stations — stoves, cookware, salt, tools, sometimes supplies.
- Mountain roads and hairpins: abandoned vehicles, cable, jerrycans.
- Adits and mines: rail, timbering, tools. Do not go inside — collapses and gas.
- Cableways and power lines: steel cable is the best find in the mountains.
What that unlocks
- Cable and rope are worth more than food here: they turn an impassable slope into a road.
- A stove and a flue solve the heating problem in a stone house, which is cold on its own.
- Salt and flour from a shepherd's camp cover the biome's weakest point — food.
The trap on this path
Mountain finds lie in places that are dangerous to reach: scree, hairpin roads, adits. Half the risk of path B in mountains is the journey to the find itself.
The ceiling by year
| Timescale | With bare hands | On salvage |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | A stone house, fire, water; food only just enough | The same + a stove and salt from a refuge |
| Year 3 | Terraces, sowing, pottery, lime | Cable and tools: access to the slopes, and water on a wheel |
| Year 10 | A small mountain holding, housing that lasts for generations | The same, but sooner and with fewer losses |
Protecting yourself and your family
Children in the mountains. Three rules, said out loud: do not walk in a gully; do not go down in the dark; if you fall behind, sit down and make noise rather than looking for the way. A harness and a short rope on difficult ground are not over-caution, they are normal practice.