The Arizona Combo Special: Desert and Mountain Modern and Primitive Wilderness Survival Skills
Experience Three Survival Courses in OneClass limited to 12 students
Not offered for 2025. Check back next year!
Tuition:
This is one of Cody's favorite courses to teach. Train in wilderness areas similar to Mexico and Canada... all in one week! Take home skills that can keep you alive from the deserts to the mountains, wherever you live. Another ALSS exclusive, this seven-day desert and mountain survival course mixes primitive living skills and modern survival skills while training in beautifully diverse wilderness areas throughout Arizona. Arizona contains more geographical diversity, in the shortest drive time, of any place in North America and this course will prove it! You'll travel in the ALSS 4x4 van from the Sonoran desert with its towering saguaro cactus, through pinyon/juniper woodland, to the thick, pine and fir forests of the alpine mountains. It's like taking three survival courses for the price of one!
Cody designed the Arizona Combo course in response to students who wanted to train longer and know even more about how to effectively deal with a modern wilderness survival scenario. Like its little brother, the “Staying Alive” course, the Arizona Combo focuses on core skills needed to survive and thrive in the outdoors such as shelter, water, fire and signaling for rescue. The Combo experience, however, provides you with a hands-on opportunity to explore skills within radically different terrain and temperature variations. For example, what is needed and available in the desert for making shelter is very different from creating shelter in a boreal forest at nearly 10,000 feet in elevation. Two hearty meals per day are included. Minimal hiking required.
Experience skills from the best of both worlds, including the primitive and modern aspects of :
Fire on the mountainMaking Fire: from bic’s to sticks including paper and wood matches, lighters, metal matches, magnesium, chemicals, optics, parabolics, flint and steel, bow-drills, hand-drills, natural tinder bundles, techno tinder’s, fire as a tool, fire safety, fire physics, and safely extinguishing a fire.
Enjoying the results of a tree still Getting Water: from solar, bag and tree stills, reverse stills, dew stills, Indian wells, water disinfection methods from stones to halogens, flavoring options, maximal hydration tips for optimal performance in hot or cold weather, natural and human indicators for finding water in the back-country, desert survival gear, body water requirements for men and women, preventing dehydration and hyponatremia and more.
Shelter building to prevent hypothermia
Building Shelter: from natural materials and survival kit components; where, what, why and how to build in desert and mountain terrain, sleeping warm or cool, effectively using space blankets, garbage bags and tarps, and how to choose and wear desert and mountain clothing to prevent hypothermia and hyperthermia.
Multi-use survival kit for desert and mountain regionsSignaling for Rescue: with homemade and store bought signal mirrors and tin whistles, can lids, CD ROMs, sound, smoke, ground to air signals.and activating the Search and Rescue system.
Physics and Physiology presentation
Survival Physiology and Psychology: efficient and effective trip planning, recognizing survival priorities in hot and cold climates, dealing with fear in yourself and others, and preparing and packing survival kits for desert and mountain regions.
Wild Edible Plants: the truth about wild plants as a food source for short or long-term survival, demystifying Arizona’s many life-zone’s, pre-historic hunter-gatherers vs. planting societies, basal metabolic rate requirements for men and women, identifying, harvesting, processing and eating wild plants and exploring the use of some wild medicinal plants.
This experience ups the ante for a modern wilderness survival course and provides you with maximal adaptation possibilities within a wide range of terrain features, climates and weather variations.
"The “main reason” to join the “Arizona Combo Special 2014” was that I was really very keen on getting to know Cody in the field, as we knew Cody before only via TV – the real Cody live in action! It was the idea to see a way – your way – on treating the environment and wilderness and being always ready to solve a problem! Also, the way of your thinking, that everything is special and unique as well as to never give up, although it might be chanceless. It was, of course, the adventure worth, to take the long trip from Austria to Arizona to get the training days with you! So, no way is too long, if you are interested in something special!"
Michael Sereinig, Austria, "Arizona Combo Special" alum, 2014.