Snow in the Red Rocks of Utah - Camp - Insulated Hammock - Passive Cooking - Scenery

Description

Gear items from WildernessInnovation.com

Snowy wet wood fire starting at night.

Snow and red rocks, clear sky and clouds, winter on the high deserts of Utah make for a fun camping experience. Setting up camp well after dark due to a snowstorm causing me to take a long detour over the mountain passes on my way to the desert. The sky clears at night and the temperatures fall, but I am comfortable using gear from Wilderness Innovation, a poncho that turns into a hammock, a Cloak that also makes into an underquilt, a survival blanket, and a fleece poncho liner, these all combine for an amazingly comfortable sleep in temperatures that drop to near 0 F. In the day a parachute style fire shelter, holds the heat of the fire, providing amazing warmth. My lunch the next day is provided by passive cooking.

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

Tags: camping,red rocks,utah,desert camp,winter,hammock,poncho shelter,survival blanket,fleece poncho liner,outdoorsman,bushcraft,hiking,under quilt

Video Transcription

I don't know if I aim this right if you can see it maybe by rotating it but this papery bark is just full of ice crystals they dug all this out is always under the snow out there still going to get in here and I'm just gonna collect all this I can even though it's you know had snow on it all that it's had the effects of the Sun helping the snow kind of getting in there and soaking it a little bit but still because this stuff is just as fine as onion skin paper if you're old enough to remember what that is because this is really really fine even though even though there is some dampness to still be able to get a fire going without much of any trouble here the colder the weather the worse the conditions the bigger pile of fire starting you want because once once the woods got charred a little bit that kind of thing usually will start up again pretty easily so oh yeah feeling with this with my bare hands it's very very very damn let's see we can do here like I say it's very fine laughs we can we can let it get started a little bit here that's gonna be the trick so what we got to do is let it you got to let it be able to burn off it's about frost and moisture that's in there and and you have to open it up a little bit of times and this stuff here is pretty damp I think I can dry it out a little bit even though that's not flaming right now that's very very hot down in there and sometimes you can just kind of sometimes you can just leave some of that stuff down in there like that and just let it percolate a little bit it's very hot just not flaming but it being hot you can put some other stuff loosely up on top and let it sit for a little bit and that's a little it'll dry it out badly and then we'll have us some flames doing here so you can see what's happening down in there because I got that little ball started even though it didn't flame that much it got enough to get a lot of embers in there and then when I concentrate all those embers and I piled this other wood around kind of in a square with an open hole in the middle it makes all that heat get trapped in there eventually when everything dries out it takes right off all right right here you can see I have left and opening and then this up here stacked in a square with open center creates a chimney so I have a steady flow of air coming up through here and you can see it kind of pouring up through there so here you can see some flames starting what's this stuff stuff is really soaked so it's going to take a little bit for it to dry out but this is a pretty well no fuss method of doing it so we're starting to get a little bit there it's coming all right there we go we have a real fight oh now it's caught well enough that it's established and we're good to go I really like the burn of that Cottonwood bark those big chunks once it gets dried out like it has here once it gets going I mean look how nice of a glow that has it's a nice calm fire not a lot of popping or anything like that but it's a pretty even well tempered fire and and it lasts a reasonable amount of time well I'm going to use my HDI X poncho today we're setting up my camp and the winter here out on the desert I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to show too much detail with the being I don't know what time it is 9 or 9:30 at night now okay so I'm gonna use my hammock kit for Poncho's here and so it's this is a HD poncho I've got the 24 inch Dyneema runner I'm going to use and then I've got shuttle slings and put over the have a shuttle sling and my tent stake so that's this one I'm going to use to hang the poncho from the trees right here alright so again beings this is a an HD poncho I'm going to use the 24-inch Dyneema runners and and this works the same way as with any of the other ponchos you just shove some in and pull back on it and you just work it on them all the way through well this is my sleeping arrangement last night we got down I'm out on the desert it's a still winter the end of February and we got snow got down almost to zero Fahrenheit last night it was skirting with it well with the wind that was blowing

at times it was probably below well though zero and I've got a this one of our new printed camo pattern fleece poncho liners and I snapped it in over the top of me and snapped this fleece a little more here and throw it back so inside I had a I had a PS BL the large blanket so underneath me the O Snee oh and then eyes huddled up inside the the PS BL blanket and over top of that I put my fleece and once I got in there I snapped it in you know part way up then that kind of down here on the foot end that helped hold everything in for my feet to keep everything on the foot in from popping out and this worked just beautifully last night man it was a comfortable nice nice sleep nice and warm and everything I've been toying around here I get it work on breakfast here sometime well I seem to have forgotten my cast iron got a dozen thing so luckily luckily in my little organizer drawer here they do have a few things I can use this is our these are our frypan snow covers nice simple closer just give it a jerk easy to open this one's made for 8 inches frypan so right there so I'll be using that to cook on so my cast iron little personal stylist give it here I'm gonna make me some hashbrowns so leave me a little butter in there tell them up cheese from origin cheese butter hashbrowns to go along thought out just a little bit pretty frozen last night

there they are pretty much thought up a couple little chunks there plenty of butter in there so plenty of butter on a medium heat over the fire should yield me some nice nice golden brown hash browns in about seven or eight minutes all right it's like we're nicely browned on the bottom there the trick is something I can never do flipping it over I didn't do too badly that time I got most of them turned over it's my regular fire going over here I want to build up a bed of coals because I'm going to cook something in the coals during the day while I'm doing some other stuff as our hash browns I believe those are probably done all right cut us awesome sausage here that is really hot right there and a cold I can't I can't put my hand over there burns it a few of these and then yes I could go grab my knife but you know why do that one more for the middle there I think there we go salt salt the hash brown I might do that while I'm at it a little bit over my shoulder for good luck today I have too much like I always say everything's done at my table here my table is set I think I'll just eat right out of that pan I'm the only one here so like what doesn't matter right yep I'm gonna do it something hot to drink as well a little bit of ketchup I should have brought some salsa I guess but I've been doing the ketchup thing all my life on the hashbrowns so it ain't all bad tell you that much it's an egg a little bit yeah tiny bit runny not too much and some hash brown here now that's gonna be sloppy right here but with the scenery meeting in who cares what sloppy right but still looks good leg little sausage little hash brown here

mad it's beautiful I could sit here and look at that forever try to find the little caves a little whatever see if I can spot some Indian writing somewhere there's plenty to do out here in a desert one of them is relax I'm out here by myself I saw a couple trucks go by and that's it it's great alright here's lunch I have no idea how this is going to turn out I've got rice in there water chicken onions butter some spices for that over like that and I'm going to put some tinfoil over that too just to hold the saans I didn't come off all right here goes nothing

all right I'm gonna put the pan in but I gotta get the handle out cuz otherwise otherwise it'll melt the silicone grips there we are man I hope this doesn't just like burn the pieces here all right well I decided while the chicken is finishing cooking I'd come up here and hike in the rocks up here there's a couple of things I want to look at that's one of the things when you're out here there's almost always something you've seen you're like I wonder what that is so you got to go check it out Hey look at that the enzymes of the Indians have been here look they're making cordage actually this stuff here was last year about a year ago how's that parent had been raining I came up in the shelter this old cave and I and I twisted a rope a fire-starting rope if you remember that video was my remains nobody's used them yet it's a nice little hike up here bouldering through all this rock fall all right it's quite a view looking up and down across the canyon it's beautiful up here I love it one thing it's important I could open these cliff he's looking back making sure you know how to get down I've got to go between those boulders that are lined up between my pickup down there problem is if you try to come off the wrong way it could be just a big cliff and you can't get down so it could take you a lot of time searching around trying to find the right spot well there's what looked like a cave from down a camp you know I get up here kind of shallow that's shaped at all like it really need to be to be a shelter but from down on the ground looked like a real possibility another way over there doesn't have any roof on it though and down there the yellow that's the apini shelter with a fire looking across you the valley man beautiful beautiful I'm going oh well I glassed it for my binoculars from across the valley a month or two ago and I thought this is what it was and it is it's just it's just kind of steep section right here I was hopeful there'd be a little some little something I could just hop right up there there's the whole valley clouds are coming in now there's another snow storm on its way well I hate to admit it but there is a mistake I made come up here the mistake is I I should have grabbed at least my super ultralight poncho with the storm coming in if something were to happen me twist an ankle or something and maybe I couldn't get down before a storm rolled in with rain and snow and wind at least I would be able to put that on me for protection even though we make ponchos sometimes I forget to bring one when I should so let that be a reminder it can happen to anybody well I'm a little thirsty if I can crunch this up into kind of a snowball or something put in my mouth and by the way there's nothing wrong with doing this it's better to hydrate than not

well the light chugged a big thing a water fight came up I thought like I'm gonna die at him I just feel thirsty I look at that piece of rock lay that Boulder probably 500 pounder so it is literally I've I've seen it from all sides now that thing is literally sitting on about a 1-foot platform and it looks like almost half of it is overhanging it's not attached on the back it's crazy it's crazy how many rocks there's like that up here it's amazing somebody don't get killed more often or something well it's been more than two hours since I put this thing in a fire so let's take a look at it and see what's happening well I can smell something hope that's not the smelling of burning it could be that might be way too hot these coals are still resting slide this out of here I have learned by side experience you know make sure you get all that off of there because you think you're just gonna lift that off of there and everything's gonna be hunky-dory it ain't happening I hope I didn't burn it cuz has gone longer than I planned Wow well it is kind of it is a little toasty around the edge but not it's not burnt I think I think we might be good all right so so look we take that rice and flip it over that is like hash browns that's hash rice actually oh my mom used to make casseroles I used to like the brown stuff on the edge that's a little crunchy it might be a lot more crunchy than you'd like but I was gone almost three hours two hours I'm 45 minutes I may have I may have overdone the chicken though but I don't know let's see well who imagined oh it's hot hey Perry at Fox good idea no the the chicken is tender the chicken is not dry so success I believe rice is good who wish somebody had told me this is hot anyway so that's how I like to cook right there I've done it before

there was something in after breakfast go do your thing shoot some video go on a hike whatever come back and dinner is ready I just noticed something when I put the fleece overtop of I put the fleece over the top like this it kind of looks like Noah's Ark great and well I mean you could use it even just help hold a little more heat in just throw it over the top it's just another tool and I don't know if I told you this this fleece here is next camos Vista g1 that's what this has called