Rock Cavity Winter Shelter w Parachute and Blanket

Description

During snowshoeing in the back country I found a cavity in a large rock suitable for a shelter, and since it faced South I thought of making it capture solar heat energy for extra warmth. See how I set it up.

Tags: camp,snowshoe,winter,shelter,solar heat,survival blanket,parachute,cave

Video Transcription

I think right up here is going to be a nice place to set up my shelter I want to be up off the bottom a little bit so the coldest air is going to flow right down in the right down here on the bottom so I'd rather be up a little bit above where the cold air flows and then right there gives me a nice exposure for the Southern Sun what you see in that direction

it's a nice ledge and it's got I can be flat right here I'm elevated I think that's going to be good I just discovered another little shelter right here this rock kind of comes comes back the snows drifted up around there and that leaves that sheltered area right there this whole deal right here I could drape my parachute kind of around the front of that rock a little bit and and that would capture some heat into there from the Sun and plus whatever heat the rock absorbs and that could be a nice little shelter for me that was actually going to do a different kind of shelter up here pack down on the flat which I may do that as well to show you that but I think I'm really really enamored with this little deal here and one thing it does drift up here which kind of gives us a you know kind of a blocking effect but I'm looking to have some effect from from the from the Sun and I want I want to be able to gain as much Sun warmth as I can here so I'm going to actually drop this little drift right here down a little bit so let's do a little Trump and down if I can like myself might be able to get myself another foot of sun exposure in here many cute canopy is in this mesh bag which we really are liking these mesh bags we're going to have these on the website here and that's a real nice way to store the gear this is not your grandma's mesh this stuff is tough of Steel almost very strong and a see-through so you can see what you got in there well hopefully I've chopped the snow down good enough here coz it's about waist-deep right in here and we go out here whoa alright I put my snowshoes back on because I keep trying to work around here and I'm busting through up to my crotch that's a little a little more than I want I'm just going to form a little line of snow along the edge there and now I've got that whole inside is kind of sealed off from The Linde and Suns behind some clouds right now but when the Sun comes out can shine right right through here and help warm this inside of here well I'm hauling in I'm closed off now you get some thousand stuff here I'm going to haul inside of there so I can make me a nice take me a nice bed help lift it a little bit a little bit of snow on the front side I'm just going to leave it because I can cover it up with boughs just fine

there's what we look inside it actually even feels warmer in here already and we'll just defend behind a kind of some light cloud this location is just beautiful right here at the foot of all these cliffs is a very nice area there's a shot inside the shelter and as you can see it's fairly roomy inside plenty of headroom play of length also inside of there and plenty roomy but not but not you know too roomy for one person here you can see the mini parachute had been attached to to the face of the of the rock there and extends the length of the opening and allows the Sun to come in and help warm with solar heating we also are debuting the mesh the heavy-duty mesh bag and this one is sized to fit our blankets it's very nice you can see the blanket you can see whatever is inside without opening it and it's very breathable so it allows a lot of drying to occur even even while in the bag now I like to lay there bag blanket I like to lay in my in my blanket all the way I like to get all the way in normally and it's very comfortable and the colder it is the more I like to be all the way inside it's very warm because I'm not sucking in cold air and breathing out the warm bear to the outside I'm keeping everything inside I don't build up any extra moisture inside for doing that the excess moisture just breathes through to the outside so it's it's very comfortable inside it's kind of a create a little micro environment that would be similar to you know being in your home or whatever so it it's a very comfortable way to sleep on a lot of people don't exactly understand how how the thing can can breathe so well to let the moisture out from your breath but I've been doing this for more than thirty years it does really well and it hits me

markable it really works nicely and during my time here on this particular day I have been working pretty hard all week and I got up here I got situated doing this video and I want to taken a nap for about half hour or so and it was just so comfortable in there I couldn't get up so so I took a little sleep and it was his very nice the bow mattress underneath me and the blanket wrapped around me made a very very nice setup one nice thing about that mesh stuffed bag is it tends to kind of grip your blanket as you as you stuff it in there and which is nice it doesn't want to keep popping back out on your like like the bags we had been using in the past because they're kind of slips slippery and you know this was this is nice I like to go out I like to practice things I never intended to stay overnight in this shelter on this particular day but I do want to go back into it I was just out for a snowshoe and going to do some things I saw this the opportunity here and I said well let me let me set it up and so it works practice is what you got to do the more you practice better you get it things and every every type of natural shelter like this is going to be different than the last one so each one you do gives you more experience and if I were to go back here again which I probably will there's a there's a few things I would tweak and and setting it up and everything but overall it's doable just like I did it right there well here's how I secured the the left side here just tied off to a Juniper on the right side I tied off from the tabs here across I tied the two of them just to help hold it up better I went over to a crack in the rock and then came back down and caught the corner and that held it really nice and I optimized that setup by going around the corner of the rock so so that helped hold another edge up and but this the shelter is really nice the sunshine coming into it could warm it very effectively is tomatoey get thirty or thirty to fifty degrees of warmer air inside of there then we would have just in the outside so very significant factor there and you know try our gear out the parachute will be finally coming up after quite a while of testing and different things enjoy your time outdoors have a good time try some things once while like I did here you know just kind of is kind of spontaneous really for doing that particular set up well you know get out there get it out get out as often as you can enjoy the outdoors be safe use our gear if you can I'm sure you'll love it it's great stuff and it makes the outdoors fun