Heated Poncho Shelter Nice for Nap or Sleep in Cold Weather

Description

This simple shelter can be modified many ways and is a really nice way to go for taking a rest, riding out a storm or even sleeping the night like I did. Link to Poncho Shelter http://wildernessinnovation.com/?p=1935

Tags: winter,shelter,poncho shelter,outdoors,camping,hunting,cold weather,poncho liner,candle lantern,beeswax candle,survival shelter,pine boughs

Video Transcription

right so in the in the summer time I did well I think I've done a couple videos before on seeded Vivi's where are you using a poncho and leaning up against the tree and getting cozy and comfortable and so I'm going to show you this is a wintertime version of the same thing and I'm using my multicam Alpine HD poncho and I've got my fleece liner underneath it none other than that is just the clothes I wore to work yesterday and and it did really well for me last night we got down not not too cold but we got down almost to the single digits last night and had a little breeze blowing down through the canyon here but I was nice and cozy okay so I've got me a nice spot here it's pretty level and everything and so what I did here just to give me a little mostly just kind of put my snowshoes down it gives me a little something off the direct snow and that it keeps the snows been kind of powdery so it kind of keeps that from filtering up so I just laid those down right there and then the I gave me kind of my base I'm leaning up against this tree okay so now the next thing it's just like when I've shown how you build a bough bed and everything we just take our pine boughs I'm going to pull them out a little because I'm going to put my backpack up against the back wall there so what we do is we just take these things and we lay them kind of a herringbone style here with most everything we're going to want back near the back where we're where your rear ends going to be sitting and you just work your way out like this alright so for this camp I did yesterday today this I put everything in this little tear drop pack this little JanSport I've had god or maybe fifteen years because I'm not taking sleeping bag blanket anything like that this works really really nice for that and so here's my my next step of my setup now I can just lean against that tree but I found it's actually a little more comfortable and I put the backpack up with the part that's normally against my back because that's padded and that's comfortable now when I sit down that gives me a nice backrest right here and right up against the tree and that makes a nice nice cozy little setup so now here's my here's my setup how we do the how we do the sleeping thing so you just kind of sit cross-legged up off the snow good so I'm not feeling any cold from underneath me and I've got my my poncho all draped around me now I can just kind of lean back and get cozy here and I'm good to go so now here's the here's something you can do just like this is you take and pull your pull your arms inside like that I think I've showed that before but now just that alone is considerably warmer than having your arms outside now one other thing you can do is you reach out here and grab the poncho and pull it inside so I pulled it inside it's underneath that corner for that outside edge is now underneath my arm it's between my arm and my chest I do that on both sides and then and right here in the middle I just lay my hands down just kind of on my lap so now all that is inside and and I've basically sealed sealed the breeze from coming in and all that sort of thing so now I'm now I'm pretty cozy and now I'm going to show you one more thing that I did that this really really makes a lot of difference and it's very simple to do all right so so this is what I really like to do to get really cozy especially when the weather gets colder is you take one of this is a micro Yuko micro candle lantern and you've probably seen them before at a website or other videos we take take the paraffin candles that's out that come with them and we replace those with beeswax candles because I'm going to light this I'm going to put it inside of my poncho and and that way I'm not having that city nasty smelling paraffin burnt candle burning inside me this is a nice beeswax is nice natural you know sweet smell that doesn't have very very very little soot or anything like that so that's what I'm going to use I got the idea from some some customers a number of years ago he would tell me that they had used candles inside their Poncho's I think in the military at times to keep warm and I like the idea but I thought it'd be nice or not to have just open flame inside of there so this way the flame is all contained inside the lantern and then you still get the heat that's equivalent to about a 75 to 100 hundred watt incandescent light bulb so it gives a significant amount of heat inside and it really helps to take the edge off and make things really nice and cozy so let me show you how I do it that's the way I like to do it I light it and then what I like to do as I I've done a bunch of different ways but I kind of like doing like this I usually always throw a pair of leather gloves in the bottom my backpack pack so what I do is I just put it inside the leather glove just slightly because what that does it helps me to position it inside and so what I do is I light it now take my other hand and reach through and I'll grab it the nice thing it's not this is just a small candle so it it's not like it's a blazing fire or anything it's not it's not a lot that you're having to deal with and I just set it in in between my I'm sitting indian-style so I sit it in my legs not lift up here and show you just kind of how I do and I've got a steady supply of heat for about four to five hours inside of there that's just coming up and it's keeping that heat all inside and I can feel it all in my chest and my arms and that whole area it's just just enough extra heat to really make the difference you know we were down nearly two single digits last night miss this was actually pretty nice and cozy like this so so it works really really well so here we are I just set it in here like this so like this I'm just sitting like this I can I'm comfortable with that backpack behind my back it gives me a nice a nice slope back up to the tree I guess I can lay like this I can sleep if you can sleep in a lazy boy you can sleep like this and you'll actually sleep more comfortably like this then you would laying down if now some people might be worried if this thing happened to tip over what happens is the the wick is in the in the wax and it's melted a little pool of wax around the wick and that's what keeps it going if that thing tips what happens is the wax extinguishes it sloshed

and extinguishes the wick so you know you don't have to worry about you're going to have it's not like gasoline or or oil or alcohol or something like that where you going to tip it over and all of a sudden you've got a pool of burning stuff inside of here so it's I've actually done it quite a number of times just experimenting in it it does it puts it right out and but anyway so that's how you do it like that and I'm telling you what it's very nice and cozy alright so one of the principles we're dealing with here is in studying some of the some of the writings of some of the Inuit or used to be called the Eskimos some of those I've read some things where they're kind of explaining some of their lifestyle and some that sort of thing the things they did one thing was mentioned was that if they got into a storm or something or had to kind of kind of had to stop somewhere they'd like to do a sitted a seated position kind of like this because in everything they did they're dealing with trying to maximize the effect that you know hot air rises so hence in their in their igloos you know their floor space is lower than their sleeping platform because the coldest air will be at the bottom so they want to be closer to the top of the igloo because that's where the warmest air is the same thing with their clothing it's all designed in a similar kind of fashion as as the poncho here with the fleece inside where when you when you fastened in the sides and and all that all the body heat your legs everything is all wants to be trapped up around your neck and so it it holds the heat from there down which helps to retain all that heat inside because heat wants to rise so it's trapped around your chest the core of your body which that's the essential thing you want to keep warm so we're doing the same thing here in this seat obivious is where we're going down to the ground with this and we're trapping all the heat inside up around our chest and all that so we want to keep that nice and toasty warm because that will help keep your your body temperature where it needs to be and keep you functioning right and when we put the the little micro candle and dirt inside we're just we're just improving on that by by adding a little extra heat besides your body heat to the situation so it really really makes it nice it's a the seated bivy you're doing the summertime the wintertime any time of the year it's it's just another way to get comfortable and so have a great day enjoy your time outdoors I'm my fire over there is going pretty good now I'm getting ready to cook me some breakfast you