Winter Camp at Huntington

Description

A winter camp at nearly 10,000 feet, cold and very windy. I use my PSSL Poncho, my PSBL Survival Blanket, and my clothing as the basis of my sleeping gear. I start out the camp in darkness. See my set up and how I comfortably slept the night.

Survival Blanket http://wildernessinnovation.com/?p=2782

Poncho http://wildernessinnovation.com/?p=1935

Compressor Gear Bag http://wildernessinnovation.com/?p=2779

Fleece Liner http://wildernessinnovation.com/?p=2415

Tags: Winter,camp,fleece poncho liner,poncho,shelter,survival,snow,PSB survival blanket,Firebox Nano stove,Emberlit FireAnt Stove,Camping,Windy,Snowshoe,Trangia Stove

Video Transcription

well I'm out here situation would be like I'm stranded on my way on a winter snow shoe or something in maybe a day hike or something and had to had to stay over something like that or whatever it is doubt about can't make it back got to stay out of night or something like that so I'm out here the wind is blowing pretty pretty pretty strong around through here I got back into a little grove of some pine trees here for a little bit

still still blows pretty good through here but but I thought I'd find some boughs and stuff my my objective here is going to be to build me about mattress to lay on to and then and get out I've got a I got a blanket I'm wearing my fleece my poncho and it's time to make some kind of bed out of that for tonight and I'll see what I can shoot of this in the dark here we'll see how it goes I was hoping to uh nest out here into some hoping to kind of mess that into some these Pines around here but it's too dense inside of there to get into it so I'm just going to get right here on the edge of the trees here I'm going to I've already walked here a little with my snowshoes it's kind of packed down just a little bit and then I use a bunch of boughs under there to try to build up a bed mattress to sleep on too all right well the winds died down momentarily so just kind of give a little shoulder what I'm doing here so there's my bed of boughs I'm going to throw just a few more on and I think I'll call it good and as you can see it's not very long in fact it might even be more than long enough but really all I need is from my head to my back of my knees or so is all the length I need now I've got plenty of width there so I'm pretty I'm really pretty good probably one just a few more little boughs here and I might show you this a little more tomorrow but you put the boughs and you notice all the the notice the buttons of the boughs they're all on the outside all the way around so that's what you want you want the soft the soft stuff towards the middle and the buttons on the outside so that hits soft and nothing poking into you there why are you trying to sleep well I am hoping see me my lighting is blinding me my bow is down here I'm about to put them down about a foot thick or so and next step is I'm going to take my poncho off and lay it out lengthwise and I'm going to lay my my survival blanket fold it in half inside of that then fold the poncho back over the top because with the wind with the wind and stuff as it come goes here that will help the winds going this direction so fold it back that way that will help help keep the wind off of me so I can sleep goodnight so anyway gonna be a fun night as has it seemed like usual my I first night anywhere a lot of times it's after dark but I'm it's good training because you can do stuff after dark with just your Flash later sometimes you want just the full moon but you know that kind of tunes your skills a little bit because you're a lot of what you're doing is kind of in the dark so if you can do that while you're going to get pretty well off as far as getting familiar with your gear and everything right so they pulled my blanket out of it stuff sack I just do the stuff sack down into my little day pack actually I just compressed it down that's a component of our compressor bags I just compressed it down something and so what I did was so I like to do you know since I'm not in a 10 I'm not you know and I'm in the snow you have a good possibility losing a lot of things very easily so because of Mike circumstance tonight I'm going to sleep in my clothes and so all the loose stuff in my pocket I've dropped down into my compressor bag and I'm going to zip that into my little day pack here and how I'm not I'm just keeping the essentials that I can actually clip to something so they don't you know in the night fall off and I lose them so if anything else goes into there and now I'm about ready to finish up my bed so I'll show you that in a second here alright so it's on the side the wind's coming from here I've buried the edge of my poncho from all the way from foot to head eight feet long a berry diet edge in the snow and then I laid now I laid it to lay this back open and put for my blanket in half and put it inside of there and then pulled this back over top and then I'll enter

along that side over there onto my bed of boughs and then how do i blanket anyway so the winds starting to kick up again pretty good here but I had to take my poncho off to you know to make up my bed and everything so my fleece is holding the wind off reasonably well but I want to stay out here a real a long time like that so I'm going to get all ready and flying into bed here and then unless something weird happens I'll probably just talk to you the money well here's Roy slept last night right here

I had this is my poncho and I tried to film this last night but I was writing one to get but yes I played my poncho just on one edge I I sealed with snow right here and draped it over me so the poncho doesn't go under me at all and and I just use my my survival blanket and how is nice and toasty warm the winds were ferocious at times 2030 miles an hour and just whipping through here but I set this up so that the wind direction was going this way so it cannot blow over me and I could feel the wind I could hear the wind but I didn't didn't affect me inside of here because the poncho blocked all that wind from getting at me so so you know it worked worked pretty nicely I put down about a foot of pine boughs from as long is about from my head to not quite down to my knees and that's a that did really well yeah let me show you a little more of a close-up here of the situation and then at snow shoeing this morning saw the Sun come up over the hill so I hightailed it out out into the sunlight little snow shoot about a half hour my little nano stove here I really feel like starting a fire this point sometimes the wintertime fire just gets messy everything gets soggy in all that mess when I went snowshoeing this morning I took my yeah my Trangia stove and put it in my pocket it's already full of alcohol and he's like to spill a little on the rim there or set it in here

there we go I found that the alcohol stoves can get a little a little tricky light and when it gets zero or below so we try to try to warm it up I think thanks Steve on his on his firebox webpage I think he sells a little flask that you can a kind of a flat flask for y'all call that you can put in your you know shirt pocket or whatever so anyway that's an option but this thing get going I'm gonna have me some hot chocolate this morning something you'll notice here on the underside of the poncho here's all the ice crystals so all my body moisture all the way all the way down on here as it pushed up through that blanket it froze onto my poncho I can just take my poncho now and just shake it off all that moisture will be shaking into the breeze and that keeps me from building up a bunch of frost in my in my blanket and everything all right now before the Sun really hits this poncho it's covering my bed here I want to I'm going to take this apart and shake it out because if I shake it now before you see all this frost that's accumulated that's pushed right through this blanket just blanket is this totally dry all my body moisture that the map rate during the night came out and froze on this because it's below freezing and it's stuck to this so before the Sun gets on it I want to shake all that off it'll just start to shake it into the breeze here and I will freeze dry it basically freeze dry all that moisture and obviously you see as you get up more toward your chest and everything there's a lot more of it now now I've kicked some snow and junk into this into my blanket since I've been up milling around a little bit but but anyway this is one of the advantages using this kind of blanket it it doesn't hold on to the moisture it passes right through fact even during the night I took my water bottle in there to keep it from freezing during the night and at some point I must have been laying on the bite valve and probably laying on the bottle a little - it's so it squirted out a bunch of the water was in the water bottle but every the and the blankets breathable water just passed through it so I mean that water just drained through it and I have and pine boughs underneath so the water just ran straight through to the ground and so I mean yeah I didn't even get wet so going to a big deal I'm going to shake this deal off here and and all that sort of thing so you get start putting up some of the camp and I'll kind of reverse show you how I set this up because it was so dark last night when I setting up camp

all right how's my pillow my foam pillow nice and cozy my headlamp right here just toss that down there my boots I'll probably put those on a little I'm gonna probably do a little more heavy-duty snowshoeing before you go some weather mittens now I'm going to pull this poncho now you'll notice as I pull this said Bank this down with snow last night look at that so that seal that the wind was gusting probably 30 miles an hour or more at times and so pack down like that I kept the wind from picking up this edge because I just wanted this thing to drape over the top of me so I'd have good wind protection so this helped throw the wind up over me like that so that that really you know put me well well below well below zero with wind chill last night so so all I do is take this thing out and all that frost that's in there look at that we just shake shake it most of the most the frost is out of there all the big stuffs out so now since I do have a sunny day I'm going to go ahead and just let this hang up on a nub of this little quaking here what just let that get exposed to the Sun I'm gonna come in here and grab my black and it doesn't matter that much this gets in the snow all I want to do right now really just shake off any ice chunks or that kind of thing just kind of get as much of that stuff off of there a little bit of snow is there's no big deal here so I'm going to do here's fold this thing up a little and I'll just I can use that to sit on or whatever and now you can see my my bed of pine boughs let me come move the camera down there a little closer so you can see those ah sometimes I step on the snow go up almost my hips whoa alright so so here's my nice letter pine boughs here there's my nice bed of pine boughs right there about a foot thick and showing last night how see all the butt-ends when you break off the boughs all the buttons go to the outside so the only thing in the middle is a nice soft tips are the boughs and I'll tell you this

look what kind of stunk yeah well I tell you this this pine bough bed was just every bit as comfortable really as sleeping at home when you construct these properly I'd Tramp down the snow if my snowshoes last night so I was nice and level and even and I put these on there and I put them on in a herringbone pattern and layering them up with the butts to the outside that keeps them all locked in so they don't shift away during the night and if you do this right this you'll sleep on this just as comfortable as your bed at home and and that's what it's all about you want to sleep really good when you're when you're out at night out and out camping or whatever especially in a survival type situation so anyway I'm going to continue kind of gathering up my stuff from sleeping last night and then and then I'll have me on another half a cup of hot chocolate and I think I'll go do me a little bit of snowshoeing and compete with these snowmobilers out here okay so so here's the little foot well I'd probably try to give you a little better shot of it you know when you're in this camping in this and when you're camping in the snow everything might as well make yourself cozy because you can be your own architect in the in the snow camp and you can make your own lazy boy or couch or bed or whatever so I like to set up my bed like I've done and stop down a little bit of area where I get in and out of bed so I got kind of a foot well down here that's lower almost chair height and it's easier to put your boots on and off it's easier to get men out of bed without punching your hand way down in the snow somewhere you know how you can do that and so that's just a little tip but my hot chocolate looks like it's probably it's boiling actually it's plenty warm so I'm gonna have me another cup and then I'm going to get out and about for a little bit and do a little snowshoeing around

well so I just finished a cup of hot chocolate that I cooked up on the fire box nano stove it's that little folding stove here and now I'm using the fire ant by Ember lit and both of these stoves of course accommodate the Trangia or other similar alcohol burners and the thing I like about these two stoves is number one both these guys are my friends

and and very very good guys they do the best they can with trying to produce some good gear and what I like and the reason I kind of favored these was because I can burn wood or whatever else in the fire chamber of either one of these stoves they both have fuel feed ports or I can you bring a transy or something like that along and I can cook that way as well and so so either one it gives me kind of an option the wintertime a lot of times I'm not I'm not really big on fires because a lot of times in the winter time a warm my hot chocolate backup a lot of times fires in the winter time just make everything all gooey and wet so you know if you're dressed well enough which I am with my my clothing my fleece over me and my booties and everything you know I'm good enough here I'm sitting sitting on my survival blanket kind of padded up so I don't feel any cold underneath me lie because you like be right here you know it's not that bad but anyway so I'm not really a stove review right fact I don't really review much of anything other than other than our own gear but but I just wanted to show you these these two stoves that I like to use it comes in real handy right now like see there's a fallen log here under the snow I just scrape the snow back now I can sit here comfortably and I can cook and I'm not having to stoke a fire or anything like that I'm not having to I'm not melting everything around me and I'm making the snow all soggy or anything but I can still have something hot to drink or a hot meal and you know and I'm good to go in a moment I'm going to show you one other thing with the with the Nano stove steve modified the new models come ported here with four another set up that allows the trans you to sit up higher in the Nano stove and I'll show you that just a minute here might be some hot chocolate now all right so here's I've shown you the the Nano stove they've made an update to it here so these little rods slide through some holes that come in the new Nano stoves the old ones can be retrofitted as well and that way you can drop in a trans ear or any of the similar sized burners so you can burn it on the bottom or you can burn it up here a little higher either way so give us an adjustment and believe Steve also has a an adapter for this where you can put a gas burner in there too for I think butane or whatever so but anyway so I mean I'm not pitching either stove I like them both I use them both I'm not a big I'm not a big like I said I'm not a big stove user but they do have a time in place and and and this is this is one of those nice places another time I like to use a stove like this in the winter or or even if you got some rainy weather and you're pitched under a tarp shelter or something you know you don't you want to use one of these in a floored 10 or anything but now if you have a floorless tent or a tarp type shelter why these work very nice inside of there and you can you can cook and unique you can use the alcohol and you know out there really worry about to worry about you know gases and stuff like that in there so so anyway so there's there's these two stoves and you know you can see the difference yourself listen the titanium this one I have here is stainless but it's also made in a titanium and so they're both they're both can be quite lightweight this one's a folding stove this is the panel stove so basically you can kind of decide what what kind of stove you like to use or whatever and now you can take your pick like I say one of the nice things I do like about is I can burn twigs in here either one of these stoves so say I'm out and I run out of alcohol or fuel or whatever I can always use twigs and I can still do my cooking or if I'm in an area where that's really handy to do I might just do that and save my alcohol for you know at a time when you know when it I really need it you know where I really need it more so anyhow getting some more chocolate going one thing I wanted to point out for you his uh is when you're in the specially in the wintertime your body really craves fat and fat provides a lot of a lot of energy per gram nine nine calories per gram of energy versus versus four for protein or carbohydrates roughly and uh well you can do with like hot chocolate what works really well the military has done some things like they've made some hot chocolates that are actually extra fatty so in the winter time it gives you some extra energy well you can do the same kind of thing just bring a pad a little square of butter a little pad of butter like you get a restaurant or cut some off of a little cube of butter and I want to tell you not to worry about it melting because it's cold anyway and just drop that into your hot chocolate and it gives once it melts into that gives kind of a really rich creamy taste to it and it'll give you some extra fat and energy out of your cup of hot chocolate so that's that's a little tip along the way too all right here we've got some cut some thistle plants right here they're as tall as I am when you get down here at this when you see all that a lot of these have a lot of this fluffy seed down still on them and that can be that can be used very effectively as a flash fire starter these won't burn for very long but if you if you put them in a big pile and fluff them up pretty good and then put your other materials around it they'll do a really quick flaw most like an explosion a real nice flash so even at a time you can find little bits of stuff like that that'll do the trick for you well this is this has really been fun it's no shooting around on the lakeshore here and you hear the snowmobilers in the background this is a great snowmobile country it's it's beautiful day now not a cloud in the sky here it's just this phenomenal one what a blast hope you all have a lot of fun when you get outdoors summer winter spring fall whatever it is get out and enjoy it