I recently had an experience with the nitrile gloves I carry in the FAK in my truck.   I faithfully change out the contents of my truck and hiking kits around my Nov. birthday every year.

However, I never really thought about changing out my nitrile gloves.

Last week I was working in my garage.  The  young man that was trimming my neighbor’s yard came across the street and in a very shaky voice asked, “Sir, sir, can you help me”.  
He was bleeding BAD from a 4” laceration on the top of his wrist.  Blood wasn’t spirting (arterial) but was seriously running between the fingers of his glove and dripping all over the street.

I grabbed the FAK from my truck and sat him down on the tailgate of his truck.  I immediately grabbed a couple 4x4s and had him apply direct pressure to the wound.   At this point I grabbed some gloves out of my kit for protection to continue to dress the injury.

Two of the first three I tried to put on ripped!  
I finally got a pair on, applied a pkg. of compressed gauze to the soaked 4x4s, and secured everything in place with vet wrap.  
I had him continue to apply direct pressure and took him to a near by urgent care. ( He begged me not to call 911)

Urgent care stopped the bleed and told him to go to a hospital and have the tendons checked.

Long story just to say from now on I will be changing out my medical gloves during my yearly restock.

Worst bleed I’ve ever encountered and I really felt the need for protection in this case.

On the same note.  This is the dressing I applied on top of the 4x4s.

I bought a few of these dressings to use in my hiking kit and was glad I put one in the truck kit.
They give you an impressive amount of material in a very compact package.  
In the above case I applied about 2/3s of the material on the wound and wrapped the rest to hold it in place until I could grab the vet wrap.

These were purchased from  https://rescue-essentials.com

this is a chinese built winch, but so are the new entry level ones from Warn.

for the type of wheeling i do and my typical terrain, a winch is a luxury item - so i'd just never pay a ton to have one. if i wheeled back east or in the midwest where nearly every trip involves some bottomless mud hole, i'd probably feel differently.

this is mainly for difficult rock crawling trails where i might get in over my rig's capabilities and asking the guy in front of me to pull me through obstacles constantly would get annoying.

a couple issues came up when researching these, which may have been addressed in the current generation. they've also upgraded the warranty to lifetime mechanical and 5 year electrical.

the switch on the control box to enable wireless control was a common failure. it looks like Smittybilt now uses a different switch, similar to the waterproof one that people were swapping in as a fix.

also, on another forum a guy had a mounting bolt fail, letting one side of the winch go and twist up. mine did come with supposed grade 10.9 bolts for the winch mount, and grade 8.8 for the farlead. but, i'm going to swap them out with some locally sourced bolts anyway - cheap insurance.

also, you used to have to disassemble the entire remote to change the battery for the wireless portion. they now have a little door on the back held tight with a single screw.

i went ahead and replaced the included no-name battery with an Energizer, and then wrapped the original up in some foam and stuck it in the dead space inside the remote for a spare.

so has anyone else had experiences with Smittybilt winches - good or bad?

the "HOSS" fairlead sticks *through* the hole in the bumper and provides and internal radius for the synthetic line to protect it from the sharp metal of the bumper.

on my setup, the outer most wrap of on the drum would scrape across the bottom edge of the bumper's fairlead cutout. i had rounded-over that inside edge with a die grinder when i first installed it, but this is a much better solution IMO.

the protrusion also "locks" the fairlead in place so you aren't just relying on the shear strength of the mounting bolts on a severe side-pull.

i like the minimalist design and that it's as small as possible while still allowing for a full 3/4" external radius. 

So I would like to throw in a few numbers into the cell now while I'm not in need so that later if I have a need I'm not trying to squeeze in some bars out on a ridge somewhere to start googling.

Does anyone have one they would recommend?  Any you would recommend I avoid so I don't get screwed in the wilderness?

my jeep bug-out-bag is a combination of true emergency items and items that just can make the difference between a good time and heading home early. whether it's a day trip or a camping trip... forgetting things like sunglasses, extra socks, or sunscreen might not be an emergency, but it can certainly ruin the day. this thing stays in the jeep no matter what so i know i am always ready to head off on an adventure at moments notice.

so i just ran through the pack again to see if i was missing anything and decided to take a picture of the whole thing to share... so what's in my pack?

1. mid-weight rei fleece jacket with hood
   
2. extra pair of shorts, sweat pants, shirt, socks, underwear
   
3. adventure medical kits fundamentals kit (first aid pack)
   
4. sawyer snake bite kit, primatene mist, and misc other medicines added to the first aid pack
   
5. individually packaged emergency water ration packets
   
6. individually packaged emergency food rations
   
7. (2) adventure medical kits emergency bivys
   
8. katadyn water purification tablets
   
9. chlor floc military water purification tablets (works with muddy water)
   
10. coughlans survival kit in a can (tons of useful stuff in small space)
    
11. sunscreen, bug repelant, chapstick (be sure to put in zip lock bags to prevent leakage, especially due to heat in the car which makes things expand and explode sometimes, plus the bag can be used for lots of situations)
    
12. emergency rain poncho
    
13. mini hand warmers
    
14. arizona recreation map
    
15. SAS survival guide mini book (as much to keep the mind busy as for actual survival info)
    
16. storm proof matches
    
17. petzl e+light (headlamp)
    
18. metal trowel
    
19. sunglasses
    
20. glow sticks
    
21. compass
    
22. wire saw
    
23. toilet paper
    
24. multi-tool
    
25. bucklite max large (decent size and quality fixed blade knife with solid tang and gut hook)
    
26. nalgene bottle
    
27. 50' parachute cord style rope
    
28. fenix e20 flashlight (not pictured)
    
29. pro bar food bars (not pictured)
    
30. an unread jeep magazine (not pictured)
    

realized i need to get still

1. quickclot
   
2. extra lithium AA batteries
   
3. cigarette lighter
   
4. flat-pack duct tape
   

the bag i put it all in is the tacops modular 1.5 day pack. here it is all full, a little bulky, but again this isn't meant to be a pure survival-only kit:

so let's see your setup, i'm sure everyone has some great ideas on other items to carry!

For us, we needed to recover a Jeep that rolled recently. I first tried calling the highly recommended Arizona Offroad Recovery.  This used to be Joe Ousch's company. He passed away, and another man took it over.  I called twice and texted, and there was no response.  Turns out he was doing a recovery in an area without service.  He did text me back at 1am.

This is where I think they were sourced.  $7.50 right now

https://www.rescue-essentials.com/rescue-essentials-woundpack-bandage-system/?omnisendContactID=5e2df0b3ab617143f0fd31a4&utm_campaign=campaign%3A+Stocking+Stuffers+(6579e9a7775aa810fd88bf4d)&utm_medium=email&utm_source=omnisend

Given our use of saws, both hand and chain, i was happy to receive this.

I think this is a great, space saving, improvement over the individual, bigger bleed stuff I had been carrying.

BTW:  It’s past time to check out your FAK and replace anything that needs it.  
Something I’m sure  should be replaced after being cooked during our wonderful summer. 

Best info if you’re able to open the link
https://www.facebook.com/100067787659206/posts/injured-hiker-kanab-creek-grand-canyon-national-park-north-rimabout-6pm-friday-9/637813388488244/

A bit less detail but same info in an easier to open link for some

https://www.azfamily.com/2023/09/17/man-with-traumatic-injury-rescued-after-friends-left-him-alone-grand-canyon/

Some pretty cool footage from the rescue helicopter approaching the injured hiker.  God bless these first responders.

https://fb.watch/n8aHFsleWX/

Don’t let the length of the video throw you.  It goes fast because you can skip 6+ minutes of adds.

It got me to thinking about if I managed to get stuck out on a trail overnight in the cold, and the hypotheticals around being forced to sleep in my Jeep overnight in sub-zero. How long can my specific rig run to keep the heat on?

I came across this pretty nice article that pretty much answers the question for you. Through a Canadian agency, they were able to determine the average vehicle has a burn rate per liter of displacement of 0.6 liters per hour. 

You can do the math manually, but I put together a quick little calculator on Google Sheets to help out. 

I also added in a "fuel level" input to help you guesstimate your approximate idle time at different tank levels.

In my particular case, my 3.6L 2018 JLU has a 21.5 gallon tank. If it was 100% full, I'd get about 37 hours of idle time out of it.

Note that these are just "guesstimates". Your actual idle fuel consumption might be different based on a variety of factors such as modification, fuel types, programming, etc...

As this is a hypothetical "survival scenario" its worth mentioning that you can run the risk of engine damage as well by idling for extended periods.

CLICK HERE for the calculator

(You can only edit the white cells, anything in blue is locked/formulae)

the fsastore.com site even carries the high quality Adventure Medical brand, which made it easy to burn our leftover FSA money on something useful. the Adventure Medical Sportsman or Mountain series are great for an overland vehicle or bug-out-bag.

- https://rotopax.com/rototrax-black.html

you can even stack them on top of a 4 gallon container with their mount extensions. seems like a pretty cool idea and at a reasonable price. hopefully they turn out to be built well and can hold-up to real world use.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/40873/off-road-recovery-facebook-groups-help-find-5-year-old-missing-in-mojave-desert

👍 to all who volunteered their time

https://unofficialnetworks.com/2020/10/12/wild-footage-of-a-cougar-following-and-charging-a-hiker/

https://expeditionportal.com/death-in-the-desert/

This is a decent article on the subject.  Even if he talks about checking kits at the BEGINNING of summer.  Ha!

 https://www.4x4training.com/w/refresh-your-first-aid-kit/

While you’re at it, replace the batteries in anything that spent the summer in your vehicle.

fortunately a happy ending it sounds like for this guy and his pups, but he was just very lucky that someone came across him in time: https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/07/southern-oregon-man-72-walked-14-miles-over-4-days-before-mountain-biker-from-portland-found-him.html

it's a good reminder that if you're going out alone:

- be sure someone knows WHERE you are headed and WHEN to expect you back

- take plenty of WATER above all else

- if you break down, 99% of the time you should just STAY WITH YOUR RIG

I tried to get a policy with Haggerty's for a Guaranteed Value policy. They declined and was told 2 times that they refuse to cover off-road vehicles. I tried with several other companies and same thing either they didn't offer coverage to vehicles that went off-road (including just forest service roads) or just didn't offer a guaranteed value policy.

Progressive would only add 5k in aftermarket coverage and that won't cover enough for either of our Jeeps. So I stumbled across an insurance broker on AZ Virtual Jeep Club. He is a representative for Farmer's Insurance. This agent was awesome and knows off-road vehicles. He was able to recommend the best policy for our Jeeps. They also helped us get better home owner's coverage.

For our Grand Cherokee we had to get an Appraisal done. Then the insurance company is insuring our Grand Cherokee for the full appraisal amount. If something bad happens, god forbid, we get a check for the agreed appraisal price. I was surprised that the total policy isn't that much more than what I was paying Progressive.

This agent has plans that cover "normal" vehicles, classic vehicles (with no mileage restrictions or use restrictions), after market parts coverage, or for the crazy folks who really modify their rigs "Appraised value" policies. They offer discounts to military, law enforcement, multi-policy, etc.

So word of advice is to go read the fine print in your auto insurance policies and do your research. You likely will not get enough money back if something awful happens.

This is who we used:

Farmer's Agent Recommendation:

Office of Allan Connor

Farmers Insurance

13634 E Williams Field Rd # 6

Gilbert, AZ 85295-5214

480-308-1498 (Office)

https://agents.farmers.com/az/gilbert/allan-connor

Auto Appraisal Company we used:

https://autoappraisalnetworkaz.com/

Auto Appraisal Network AZ

7831 East Greenway Road

Scottsdale, AZ 85260

Phone. 480-939-5053

Additional reading:

From Haggerty's website:

An Agreed Value policy -- the same as Hagerty’s Guaranteed Value™ policy --guarantees that you will receive the full insured amount of the vehicle (with no depreciation, and including all sales taxes), in the event of a covered total loss.

In contrast, a Stated Value policy (sometimes called “stated amount” or “maximum limit of liability”) does not promise to pay the full vehicle value that’s indicated or “stated” on the policy. With regard to a covered total loss, you may receive less than that stated amount, because the insurer has the right to pay either your vehicle’s depreciated actual cash value OR the cost to replace your vehicle -- whichever is less. Also, many insurers that offer stated value policies (typically standard insurers) require periodic appraisals to affirm the insured amount, adding cost and inconvenience to the client.

More info:

https://www.lelandwest.com/stated-value-vs-agreed-value-classic-car-insurance.cfm

https://elementfire.com/

https://photos.app.goo.gl/v7RtsT178owB15aV7