A True Prepper...!

This, my friends, is what being prepared is all about!

The story could have turned out so much worse if the basics had not been taught to this young man! One more reason to practice with the family or even by yourself.

Knowledge is power and it also may be the very tool that saves your life...or the life of a loved one!

Talk about being prepared
Boy Scout found after building shelter to survive night in Utah woods

By MARTIN GRIFFITH
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Aug. 13, 2011, 6:53PM

He was scared, but the 12-year-old Boy Scout still knew what to do when he got lost during a Utah wilderness outing: He built a shelter made of tree branches and wood to get through a cold night and he covered himself in dirt to stay warm.

Jared Ropelato's lean-to — a crude structure the Boy Scout manual advises Scouts to build if they become lost — kept him warm enough so he could sleep after the overnight low in northeastern Utah's Ashley National Forest dipped to 31 degrees in the area, said Daggett County sheriff's spokeswoman Karen Peterson.

The boy was wearing only jeans and a shirt, and had no food or water, when he went missing around noon Friday. He had gotten lost while on his way by himself back to camp from a nearby lake, walking a total of eight or nine miles before searchers on ATVs found him Saturday morning some four miles from where he started, Peterson said.

"He did everything right last night," his mother, Dawn, said. "We said he was smart, and he's smart."

Peterson also praised the boy, saying that building the lean-to was "good thinking" and it saved him from the elements. He told the Deseret News of Salt Lake City that he had learned to build the structure last year at Scout camp.

"We're just so glad that this story has a happy ending," Peterson told the Associated Press.

Jared's mother told the Deseret News that her son's biggest scare came when he encountered a bull moose. He got cold during the night, but not too cold. He fell in a river Saturday morning, "but he's still dirty," she said.

Jared resumed walking Saturday morning before he was found at 8:40 a.m. in good health, ending a search effort that included about 200 people.

"There were a lot of tears not only from family members, but from searchers as well," Peterson said. "Up to that point, Jared had been missing for 20 hours and 40 minutes."

Nicole Ropelato, a third cousin of Jared's, said the family was thankful for searchers and that the boy remembered the instruction about lean-tos.

"At such a young age to be calm enough to think like that is something," she said. "That's incredible what he did. We're just elated that he was found in good condition. We were worried for him and very scared."

The boy earlier had been advised by a Scoutmaster to walk with another Scout from the lake back to camp, Peterson said. The Scoutmaster gave him the advice after finding him going in the wrong direction while returning to camp.

"He never got a buddy before heading back to camp," Peterson said.

Asked if he would still go camping after his overnight ordeal, Jared simply said, "yeah."

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/7696364.html#ixzz1UxnLQFMl

Forget about the end of the world, forget about the apocalypse! Just a camping trip can test your survival skills more than you know!

Let's get some fresh coffee and talk this over, OK? Maybe more training and prepping is in order!