Part 1 of a two-part survival story
When Stanislav Volo became lost on Mount Habrich, injured and unable to find his way back, he spent six days in the mountains with very little food. He had two bags of gummy bears, which he rationed over those six days, and he ate fireweed he found around him.
By the time he was found, his body had spent nearly a week operating with far fewer calories than it needed.
So what was actually happening inside his body — and what would that begin to feel like?
DAY 1 — BURN THE EASY FUEL
During the first several hours, your body uses energy from your last meals and then increasingly draws on glycogen, carbohydrate stored primarily in your liver and muscles.
You're hungry, but physiologically your body still has plenty of energy available. It is simply beginning to change where that energy comes from.
DAY 2 — THE CARBOHYDRATE TANK IS RUNNING LOW
As liver glycogen becomes depleted, your body starts manufacturing more of the glucose it needs while increasingly tapping into its longer-term energy reserves.
Now you may start feeling the effects: hunger, fatigue, weakness, light-headedness and difficulty concentrating. In the wilderness, those aren't minor inconveniences. You may already be injured or cold while trying to navigate, make decisions and move through difficult terrain.
DAY 3 — YOUR BRAIN CHANGES FUEL
This is where human physiology gets fascinating.
Under normal conditions, the adult brain uses roughly 100–120 grams of glucose every day despite representing only about 2% of your body weight.
If your brain continued demanding that much glucose while you were starving, your body would have a problem. Glycogen reserves aren't large enough to keep supplying it.
Instead, your liver starts producing ketones from your stored energy, and your brain increasingly uses those ketones as an alternative fuel. It still requires some glucose, but its glucose requirement falls substantially. This switch is one of the remarkable adaptations that allows humans to function during prolonged food deprivation.
In simple terms, your body starts rationing itself.
DAY 4 — COLD VS. HUNGRY
By now, the body is increasingly drawing on its longer-term energy reserves, including subcutaneous fat — energy stored beneath the skin. That stored energy can help fuel the body and can ultimately be used to produce ketones that increasingly fuel the brain when food is scarce.
But there's a catch: staying warm also costs energy.
Cold says: BURN ENERGY TO MAKE HEAT.
Starvation says: CONSERVE ENERGY.
Producing heat costs energy. Shivering costs energy. As food deprivation continues, your metabolism adapts to conserve its reserves. That's useful for surviving without food, but potentially problematic when you're simultaneously trying to stay warm in the mountains.
Stanislav described pulling his shirt over his face and trapping his warm exhaled breath underneath it in an attempt to keep warm.
He wasn't just hungry. He was trying to conserve heat while his body was trying to conserve energy.
DAY 5 — EVERYTHING GETS HARDER
You still have substantial energy reserves, but that doesn't mean you can perform normally.
Being under-fuelled makes it harder to move, harder to stay warm and harder to self-rescue. Walking, climbing and bushwhacking require energy. Shivering requires energy. An injury may make every movement more expensive.
This is an important survival distinction: lack of food may not be what kills you first, but it can make you increasingly vulnerable to things that can kill you much faster — especially cold, injury and dehydration.
DAY 6 — STANISLAV'S WORLD
Stanislav wasn't consuming zero calories. Throughout those six days, he rationed his two bags of gummy bears and ate fireweed. It wasn't remotely enough to meet his energy needs, but those gummy bears supplied small doses of readily available carbohydrate while his body increasingly relied on its own energy reserves.
In a normal diet we might dismiss gummy bears as candy.
In a survival situation, sugar is fuel.
When Stanislav was finally rescued, he said he ate a pizza.
Carbohydrates. Fat. Protein. Salt.
After six days of gummy bears and fireweed, it was probably the best pizza of his life. 🍕
SO WHAT'S THE LESSON?
Food isn't just about preventing starvation. Calories help you move, think and generate heat. When you're stranded in a cold mountain environment, those functions may matter long before starvation itself becomes life-threatening.
There's even something to the old idea of carrying raisins. They're lightweight, shelf-stable and carbohydrate-dense. Studies in endurance athletes have found raisins can provide carbohydrate and support performance similarly to commercial sports chews or gels.
The lesson is simpler: Carry emergency calories.
Stanislav also did something else: he ate what he could find.
Which raises our next question:
What can you actually eat if you're stranded in the North Shore and Sea-to-Sky mountains?