Winter Camp Experiments - Fire - Super Shelters - No Tent

Description

I slept on top of the snow with no tent, wearing the clothes I came in on at midnight the night before. I revived a mattress of reeds and bark I had gathered a week earlier to lay on. By folding my PSBL survival blanket I crawled in between. I laid my PSSL HD Poncho over top of me to help shed the wind. Since all my gear is breathable my body moisture is able to pass through and freeze on the surface of my poncho, which will then be brushed off in the morning.

On the next day I tried out a couple ways to set up a Super Shelter that I had never done before. I also tried out a log rocket stove.

Check out all our gear at http://wildernessinnovation.com

Tags: snow camp,winter,super shelter,mors kochanski,survival blanket,survival gear,bushcraft,woodsman,long fire,space blanket,no tent,log rocket stove,reed mattress

Video Transcription

that's uh down a single digits here tonight

I don't know what it's gonna do overnight probably gonna stay about where it's at but so that's a crude little ring right there this stuff hanging around me tonight I'm just going to bed I'm hoping that the hilt I made up a week or so ago hoping it's still kind of available well it's morning I guess they're pretty nice comfortable sleep and uh one of the nice things about doing stuff for this type of system is I can wear I can wear what I got on to bed not having to change clothes and stuff like that it all accommodates everything everything's breathable but except for the the poncho on the top isn't breathable I'm have to shake it off because it'll have moisture on it that came up and froze to the inside of it underneath here there's moisture is frost right here through here so that's my body moisture that came through all my clothing came up to my blanket came up here this was this was cold you know so that moisture hits here just freezes to it so I just I could just brush it off shake I just shake it off and the moisture is gone there's no there's no moisture down in here all the moisture all the moisture pastor he's he's the jacket that I had with me as a pillow I've got these reed reeds and some bark underneath that which made up my sleeping pad I didn't I didn't feel any cold at all through the bottom so this the stump of the tree that's standing up and in some wood that I piled up here a week or two ago kind of shielded the back wall a little bit from the wind that typically runs this direction and made kind of a little depression in there and that's what I laid my sleeping setup down into last week out ice-fishing friend of mine brought a big log and he had take a chainsaw and cut a hole in this bottom side

hold down the top in the middle and let that thing on fire like a little rocket stove and that thing burned half the day at least it was kind of nice I thought I'd try making a small version I want to try to see if I can I want to see if I could like heat up a thing of water for some soup or what I don't know something so let's see what happens you know it might be like absolutely ridiculous but I've done that before and this might be another case of it right here so you see I drilled a hole down the bottom cut a little some little grooves in here for flame to come out and in the very bottom I stuff some some of the shavings from I packed right in there from when I drilled the hole if it works I'll have me a fire on top of the snow right here all right this little fat would burn in here probably should have turned down the point of a little bit right oh there we go there we go I got they'll let the flame of it be right in the middle where that little chimney is that didn't work trying to shove it in this side hole because it could never get enough flame so I reel it it and dropped it down through the top now we got stuff going on right there yeah my waters kind of frozen but not all the way set that on there see if it works I don't know we'll see you might not have enough dry out of there I think what I've learned here is the the whole diameter on this one isn't big enough it barely can keep going by itself if I put a pot on top it won't keep going whereas this one that one there just keeps on going I got a bigger you can see I've got a bigger hole diameter in there well it's a work in progress but I'm learning a few things here I need to have deeper grooves cut in there I know that so what the heck but you'll at least get some breakfast out of it that's nice sitting right here in the Sun and sit on my bed here have a little breakfast have a simple breakfast today ramen noodles I could put an egg in there I've done that before put egg and bacon in the ramen noodles before that's pretty good when I stop working and doing things and you just sit down it's you feel the chill a little bit now I want to show how to do how to make a super shelter I'll be using our new super shelter kit for Poncho's and I was gonna build it elsewhere out here and I thought you know this logs already laying over here like this that makes the top of my shelter

why go reinvent the wheel it's already sitting here so I'm going to show you how with this kit right here and a poncho any any of our Poncho's you can make a super shelter that will enable you to sleep through the night without needing any sleeping gear now a super shelter basically it's what we're doing is making a greenhouse really but you could have the Sun be shining in and warming you and at night you could have your fire so the fire is gonna go 3 or 4 feet out from the front it's going to be a long fire about 6 feet long or so and we have a clear window that is included in a kit and that's going to hang down the front so the radiant energy from the fire can penetrate through there and help to warm us up all right so let me show you the components of a super shelter so any of our ponchos this is a this one of the super UL ultralight ponchos but you can use the one I used last night this is the HD poncho a tax IX any of them work it doesn't matter the poncho not so much in this case not quite as much provide some structure and strength to the shelter but the log here so big it's going to provide a lot of that anyway I'm just going to drape do use the poncho just to show you anyway how you can do it because you can just tie between two trees if you can use a log like this whatever you want so a poncho combined with the items of the kit so in the kit you've got this is your window piece your covering and this is what turns your this what turns everything into a greenhouse type effect also you have we have some duct tape in here

a packet of that I don't always use it but sometimes you need it got a mylar film emergency blanket and sometimes you use the duct tape with that for reinforcements or different things if you want to make a grommet hole or something like that you can use duct tape through this to keep it from tearing you also have for Easton aluminium tents take six inches long to be used for often you may not use these all that much but then again who knows but just to make sure you're covered then you'll have three Hanks of parachute cord 20-foot lengths of parachute cord and also you have packet of six Easy Clip minis and oftentimes we can clip stuff together like we can clip the blanket to the tarp or or we can clip the window ends together or whatever or we can just provide a tie out point where we need it so that has multiple functions and so that's the kit and it comes in a in a ripstop nylon bag so with that kit and a poncho well you can make a super shelter which would enable you to sleep without a no Snee without a blanket sleeping bag anything like that all you need is to provide yourself some something to lay on here and I've used these reeds and stuff around here for that but you know whatever's whatever is handy wherever you're at he is for something to lay on a platform or something and then the shelter contains the heat of the fire or the Sun and you literally can be 65 70 to 80 90 degrees in here if you want no I just string this poncho out here this will give wind protection and structural integrity because the window that we use is very so so normally you'd bring it over the front here so everything that kind of come together right so what we'll do buy carrots a little bit of snow here kind of seal this back edge keeps the wind from getting at it and keeps it from falling in keeps the wind from coming through now that sort of thing in some instances I'll just lay a log on top of it back here and and the log will do the trick alright now take the the plastic window cover that's about 12 feet wide and 14 feet long and drape that over this whole thing right here and I will start to create the greenhouse effect of our shelter

this is very thin high-density plastic and this is intended to be disposable everything else in the shelter is continuous for you but this is gonna face the fire inevitably there will be inevitably there will be some fire damage to it in which case we get a new one and throw that one away it's amazing that thin amazing this thin piece of plastic how much difference it makes it's incredible right the shelter is already heating without even having a fire yet the warmth from the Sun is going inside it's being trapped in there the radiant energy is being trapped inside of there and it's already getting quite warm inside there all right inside the super shelter just with the Sun so you know there's a 40 degree difference right there without even having a fire so worst-case scenario if a person or stranded you could set up shoulder like this take advantage of the sunshine if you have it in the daytime and and sleep all day long well it's nice and warm then at night you could do your chores or kind of move around where you know you'd be generating some body heat with the work you're doing now right here where I've got these lugs this will be a fire this long about six feet seven feet long and the idea is the flames and the heat of a fire extend the whole length of that that radiant energy passes into the shelter and warms it up inside so so at night time we have our own Sun by using the fire here's another style of super shelter this uses the kit I've got to still kind of tighten that space blanket up in there kind of pull it back a little to the back but I've gotten fastened right here along the front with three four three of the easy clips you got two poles on the front corners back quarters are be buried in snow the plastic will go over the whole thing in and hold it all up so the heat from the fire will radiate straight back in hit the space blanket and bounce down and have a bounce around in there the interior that'll get warm when you're laying up here I'm just on the platform you're gonna be getting warm by the fire so the effect of all this is that one fire in the middle will heat two super shelters and if you wanted you could sleep two in this one now that one over there's a little bit of fishing actually but I just using the log is laying there that's only good for one I don't you'd have a hard time getting two in there but but you could sleep two in here so one fire would heat both shelters keep both people warm and all without the need of having a sleeping bag wow this is kind of an experiment not sure how I feel about it I've never I've always put up the super shelter string a line between two trees and then then put my poncho or tarp over that like a lean-to and then throw the plastic window over the top of all of that and done you know and put the mylar space blanket into ricourt wreath to reflect the radiant energy so I don't know if this log idea is that good but I've got the fire going and I don't think you can really see it from here much being here it but I can feel the I can feel the radiant energy coming through here and the fire just barely got going so so it's just starting to warm this up but I can really feel a lot of heat from it even though I don't even have the space blanket in here the space blanket makes a tremendous amount of difference well it's really getting nice in here with that fire is really starting to take off now and I can really feel it I had that mylar sheet in here it would be up here and down the backside so I would be I would not right now I'm only feeling heat coming this way I would feel heat bouncing down and bouncing from the back so it would make a quite a big difference when I started to try to put up here but with all this rough stuff on this tree this just gonna shred that miler thing playing even give up I kind of had to abandon that idea but it's still it's still warm in here it's still a whole lot better than outside anyway this is an experiment I don't the way I've been doing it as a lean-to is probably over a cord there's over a ridge line is probably still the best way to do it but you know you got to try stuff but I'm going to tell you what it is roasting in here like I can't stay in here too long because the snow is melting

but the radiant heat is coming we got a heck of a wind out here the radiant heat is coming straight through that plastic it's reflecting strength I can feel it straight down on top of me they can feel it reflecting down from the back I really like using the tent tipping back here cuz it gives me a lot of space inside of here but I normally don't have when you do a lean-to you're coming more straight up but it's pretty it's pretty awesome I tell you they got to get some boughs on the floor here underneath me and I got to get some reeds or dried grass or something so I'm not laying right on the snow but but literally if I if I have something underneath me I mean I'm I'm laying in here without a sleeping bag in the in a winter and being perfectly fine all I gotta have is something to lay on so I'm not laying on the snow other than I am good to go look at my pets we know give you an idea this is this is infrared energy being reflected and it's invisible basically invisible to the eye but it's obviously heating my pants up because look at look at I'm steaming right there whether dim I gives you a good indication of how intense the the infrared is off that fire that's really crazy

well I tell you what even both of these shelters today are experimental to me super shelters I've always done super shelters just as a lean-to on a ridge line between two trees so that one's freestanding with just two poles up and this one's over a log I've never done it that way that way before so they're both para menos but that one I don't even have a floor in it it's just snow but the temperatures in there are in the are approaching 80 degrees now and so that the rate the infrared from this fire is going through that clear plastic turning that into a greenhouse effect the mylar that's in there is reflecting any heat that gets in there reflecting it back down into the shelter so that it doesn't escape out the backside it's just incredible that one is warmer than this one this one doesn't have any mylar in it because with that log I just couldn't there's too many jagged edges and all that kind of stuff I couldn't get that mylar to go around there without tearing and everything so that's one of the disadvantages going over the log well with a log of as big as this one smaller log would probably be fine but but I'll tell you what the shelters work really nice and it's been pretty windy here over overall one of the nice things about these kind of shelters is you get warm from the fire but you're inside of there you have no smoke and these shelters we typically pitch them up so at least you can sit down and sit up in there that sort of thing rainy rainy works nice it's a great great great little thing right there so anyway nice little experiment I'm going to show you on the next video my traditional I've done them before I must make a new one showing you my traditional way of doing it as a lean-to so anyway enjoy my time up here in the winter time very peacock wilderness innovation

you