Snow Caves Survival Blankets Sleeping Shelf

Description

Proper snow cave construction can make a big difference in comfort and usability. Our Personal Survival Blankets are a perfect compliment to snow caving. PSB http://wildernessinnovation.com/?p=2782

Tags: snow cave,winter,winter camp,survival shelter,wind block,survival blanket,outdoor,survival training,camping gear,cold weather camp

Video Transcription

hey this Perry peacock with wilderness innovation up here we just finished a scout camp or we did snow caves we had the snow here about about four feet deep four and a half five feet deep and we burrowed back in here made snow cave and and then we did the snow caves a little different way than most that most Scouts just bore a hole in their you know big enough to sleep in and that's good and we actually did these you know so there got it started out so it's a little more accommodating if you have to spend a good bit of time in there so one thing I like is we make our doorway big so it's easy to get in and out it's easy to dig the thing out and then once it's all dug out you can cut a snow block between this so you saw it in right here you can put a snow block across here and you can close it down a ways however far you want to and we just used a parachute canopy to close off the doorway last night not work fine but we could have put a snow block just as well all right so here's what we've got I'll take you inside in a second here but you know we borrowed straight back into the sleeping shelf on the right cheap sleeping shelf on the left and if your snows deep enough you can have a tall enough dome in there where you can actually sit upright on the sleeping shelf and make yourself a lot more comfortable one of the one of the things you want to dig down like this with our entry way here is because that your coldest air will settle to the bottom and that way you're sleeping up above the coldest air you'll want to sleep as close to the top as you can because the warm air rises from your bodies or candles whatever you got in there so the closer you are to the top the warmer it is now in this one we didn't do it but we could have put a sleeping shelf across the back as well so this little deal here could accommodate three three people there easily if we built three shelters like this last night and everybody slept very comfortably and warm and everything in there out of the particular up here out of the wind that's one of the big deals here then here we had a scout over night up here we made us some snow caves and and they've already crashed there's in no that's the tradition break them in after you've slept in them I wanted to wanted to show you this one before it caves in but I'll show you a little bit more about how we did it but just so you can see we came in with a we've got a walkway in the middle is down near the ground level we came up about knee height to our sleeping shelves so that way we're up out of the coldest air that that tends to want to gather in the bottom of the shelter and so so it works really nicely and so you kind of up out of it if the snow is a little deeper than it is it's it's only back in here it's only maybe four or five feet deep if it's a little bit deeper than that we could have made of the ceiling a little higher so you could actually sit in here alright so let me show you my setup here I've got didn't really need them both but I have two two of our survival blankets a tall and a regular size and this is very nice this works really nice especially in a crowded shelter like this where you're not having to I'm in and out of a mummy bag or or zip in and out of a regular sleeping bag you know to get in you just you just you just raise up your two layers and crawl in there and you're good to go and everything let's lay on top of you if you need to get up in the night you just slip out and go come back here and slide right in you're good to go nothing to fiddle with or or fuss about and one of the nice things here too is this because these blankets are very breathable your body moisture that accumulates during the night it just goes right through them so I mean these blankets are just as dry as they can be and even if any do anything drip from the ceiling or whatever it's not going to make any difference honest on this kind of a blanket I don't need anything waterproof over it or anything like that which which makes it nice because if if I have to do something like that put something waterproof over it then I'm going to accumulate a lot of moisture and here just from my body then if you're sleeping in here 2 or 3 or 4 days each day it's going to get less comfortable because of a buildup of moisture but with this the way this stuff works the moisture keeps getting pushed out and doesn't accumulate doesn't ten-to-one and cumulate in here and so I'll be I'd be just as good tonight as last night now the other thing I did is I put a sleeping pad underneath or a foam pad underneath to insulate me off the snow normally if I were if I were out hiking into somewhere or whatever I would I would probably but I'd probably break off a bunch of pine boughs and put on here to lay on instead of this but since this is a drive-up can play I brought my foam pad I did put my multicam HD Alpine HD poncho down underneath as a kind of like a ground cloth and again I didn't really need that especially since I had my foam pads but

I don't know I had it so I threw it in here what the heck so it worked worked really nicely here's how I be here's how I be sleeping in here and again for me I like to sleep on my side so I slept on my side and had extra thick roll up there for my pillow and one of the nice things is you know if it's really chilly whatever I can pull the blanket I can pull the blanket clear over the top of me and I can be all the way inside of it and I'm perfectly fine and it gives me actually extra extra warmth because I'm breathing in and out warm air instead of breathing in cold air and breathing out warm air so anyway this is my this is my toe sleeping set up on my sleeping shell fare my survival blankets and this is multicam and OD the other one I've got in here is multicam on both sides and very nice and cozy didn't want to get up this morning he's just too darn comfortable laying there and nice and warm and comfortable who wants to get up you know but you got it one other thing that makes makes it easier when you're doing these snow caves is just a cheap old old-fashioned carpenter saw and you can cut snow blocks and that's nice for when you got to form a shelf or something it's also nice to remove big chunks of snow out the door instead of a lot of loose small snow and some of the guys last night were pulling you know 50 60 pound blocks out of these caves instead of having to shovel you know little shovel fulls of snow constantly take out some big blocks and remove a lot of snow at once so so if I were to get here into this little bush in here now I can take this saw and cut down in here and I was growing up my dad actually owned eyes growing up my dad actually owned some of these k2 saws and I used to believe it or not I grew up before there was a lot of the power tools so I'd come down in here make another cut that's life and I just removed a big a big block out of there and I can keep on going if I want to so anyway see that's a quick way to remove a lot of snow and it's easy to it's easy to trim your sides up and stuff like that make yourself some nice straight sides in here especially get into some icy snow it can really be a benefit because because the saw will go through that pretty easily where a shovel might just jam into there so so anyway you can have a lot of fun with this some of the guys really got good at it

anyway so there I just made the hole bigger