9 Uses for Snow to Keep You Alive | Winter Survival Hacks

Winter survival is a very important skill. The cold weather can be brutal and knowing what to do especially when you’re out in the wild can help you survive.

The snow, although it is freezing, can actually help keep you warm in ways you have never experienced. Here are uses for snow to keep you alive in winter survival situations.

RELATED: Winter Survival Kit: The Prepper's Guide To Winter Survival

Different Uses for Snow to Keep You Alive When You're Outside During Winter

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1. Reduce Inflammation

Snow can be used to calm inflammation and treat injuries. If you’ve rolled your ankle and you’re out in the wild, wrapping snow with bandages to your ankles can prevent it from swelling.

Just make sure that the snow does not go in direct contact with your skin since it can damage your skin tissues as well.

2. Snow To Keep You Warm

Have you ever thought that one of the many uses for snow is to keep you warm?

When you’re out camping and the gusts of wind are starting to become dangerous, building a snow wall beside your tent can help prevent cold air from having a direct hit on you.

3. Emergency Shelter

Yes, a shelter made out of snow. But not really a house but more of a tunnel where you can spend the rest of the night or keep yourself away from torrential winds.

If the snow is deep enough, dig an opening or a tunnel where you can fit comfortably. Make sure that the hole is parallel to the ground.

Making a tunnel or a cave out of snow can save you from piercing winds and using a sleeping bag or branches to sleep on.

4. Build Furniture

Whether it is for your emergency shelter or building a comfortable chair or table outside, building furniture while surviving outdoors in the cold is just one shoveling away from happening.

5. Drink Snow

If all else fails and you don’t have any source for hydration left, melting snow and using it to drink is possible.

If you have built a fire, just don’t forget to purify the snow by boiling the melted water in a pan.

RELATED: Top 10 Tips for Surviving in the Cold

6. For Personal Hygiene

If you are in your home and the pipes freeze and you do not have any source of water, using snow to flush your waste down the drain is possible.

7. Refrigeration

In a survival case where you are already living outdoors, options for uses for snow increase.

If you have hunted a whole animal and you need to preserve the rest of the meat for future use, use the snow as a refrigeration device for the meat to last longer.

What you need to do is bury the meat underneath the snow to freeze it and make it still edible later.

8. Hunting

When hunting, tracking down game or monitoring for predators is easier with snow.

At the same time, following their tracks can help you get to a water source since animals will go for a stream or river where you can get water from.

9. Keep You Safe

In relation to tracking trials in the snow, taking advantage of the snow tracks when you are being followed can help you survive.

If someone is on your tail, you can either confuse them by creating wrong tracks or covering your tracks with leaves or branches.

Here's an infographic guide that you can use. Feel free to download, save and share it with your loved ones:

Watch this video from Outdoor Boys as they demonstrate the uses for snow in survival situations:

These uses for snow can help you survive a pesky winter storm and is a great addition to your growing survival skills.

If you are in a life-threatening situation outside, these uses for snow can help you survive.

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Do you have other uses for snow in mind? Share it with us by leaving a comment in the section provided below.

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