Book’s Method of Starting Fire Fails, Boys Burn It Instead
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BELL CANYON, Utah — Two young rock climbers trapped in the fog on a high ledge couldn’t start a fire using the method explained in a wilderness survival book--so they burned the book.
Searchers saw the flames, and a helicopter arrived Sunday night to rescue the two 14-year-old boys, who were stranded on a rocky perch in Bell Canyon, southeast of Salt Lake City.
Ryan Angus and his classmate, Jim Deering, became stranded at about 6 p.m. and tried for two hours to light a fire using the method explained in the survival book. They finally gave up and set the pamphlet on fire instead.
“It was so hard to start the fire, it took us about two hours to start the fire,” Angus said. “So we started ripping out the pages and it started right up.”
Twenty rescuers had been searching the canyon for the missing youths for four hours.
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