Cedar Mtn Camp - Rainy - Hammock - BEAST - Cooking Brownies on Fire -

Description

My first time on Cedar Mountain, which towers above the desert floor. A totally different climate. A storm comes up with rain and up to 50 mph winds, The BEAST with canopy weather it with no problem, and when I finally take it up to leave, the ground under is bone dry. I share a lot of personal thoughts and humor along the way.

Check out all our gear featured here and even more on our website http://wildernessinnovation.com

Index of contents in this video

Camp layout

3:48 Hammock set up using two ponchos

2:35 Special Permit to make ATACS iX gear

6:11 Set up hammock with Dyeema

6:58 Decrease tree damage when using slings

9:33 Slow start fire method

15:38 Viewpoint over the desert

22:44 Pancakes from scratch at camp

35:13 Alternate wide stance tent pole set up with The BEAST

39:52 The storm comes in

41:48 Making Caramel Brownies over campfire

46:05 The storm comes back

Tags: rainy camping,hammock camping in the rain,dutch oven brownies,two poncho hammock set up,a tacs ix,dyneema sling,dyneema cord,hammock tree damage,fire starting methods,starting fire in the dark,camping on the desert,ghirardelli caramel turtle brownie mix,perry peacock wilderness innovations,pancakes from scratch no milk,campfire cooking,rainy camping trip,a tacs ix camo,campfire cooking cast iron,campfire cooking dutch oven

Video Transcription

and then I thought I gotta get camp set up sometime I need to do it in the daylight sometime lavinda here I like this spot

I'll show you I've got some beautiful views that overlook the the San Rafael and the deep canyons and some of that just right over here about a hundred feet from my campsite it's gonna be nice as you may be able to hear or tell it's windy it's it's rained a little bit in the areas around here bring forecast for tomorrow maybe tonight who knows so that'll be my fire pit and I've located me another spot over here for my hammock I could sleep in the Beast - I don't know I might set them both up and then just kind of decide one today and one another one tomorrow so I'm looking to hang from this tree here - went into my hammock and then over here - that one right there for the other end this would be a nice open area and I'm somewhat in line with the flow of the wind I didn't really want to be perpendicular to it we're up here just shy just shy of 7,500 feet here which is one of the higher points out here in the San Rafael swell out here in the desert and I've been using an ultralight poncho I'm just gonna go grab something let's see what happens as you can see in my truck here I hardly brought any I hardly brought anything with me I got a chance to escape from work a little bit early today which is very unusual because usually we're going like nuts getting stuff shipped but I worked all day yesterday and I stayed and worked all through the night and then I worked all day today most the day today tell early afternoon so I worked 30 I worked 31 hours straight and so now I got up here a little bit earlier than normal so

well I tried to get get set up so I didn't even stop to try to grab anything food and different stuff like that I just literally hopped in the truck and drove I want to use my a tax ix poncho as my hammock something I should mention about the a tax IX is it has been pulled from the it's been pulled by a tax from the regular market the consumer market and and it's kind of being dedicated just for military law enforcement kind of special purpose but we managed talking to to the supplier the manufacturer they got with a tax that a tax people and we just found out today we got approval to keep making gear out of the i-x so we may be one of the only places you'll be able to get IX unless you're military law enforcement or something like that but so we're really happy about that because we love it and and we're really excited to be able to offer IX on an ongoing basis to our customers I've got a hammock a hammock it for Poncho's I'm gonna use for this to string it up so let's go get her go in here psych it'd be awesome if I could do this before dark because I never hardly ever get the chance all right let's get her down here so here's my runners here and I'm using I'm using the long ones these are 48 inch we do have them on our website but I don't I may I may try to spread this a little bit more so I have kind of a sign a cab you know what we've if you've watched our stuff you know we do have kind of a hybrid bridge hammock that we do with these and so I might just go ahead and

rig that up here if I get a chance all right one one other thing I came out for five I think I've showed this before but if you have a hammock kit for Poncho's one thing you can do is you can use your tent stake as a quick way to thread your Dyneema runners through the sleeve here so the hardest part is getting that first little bunch right through that in but once you get it in there see lucky to shove it in pull it back shove it in pull it back that's very very quick and easy to do you're gonna use your poncho very much as a hammock I do recommend getting that optional kit it just gives you everything you need for a very simple and effective setup of your poncho as a hammock so see I'm almost all the way through here you can do without it without it I've done it a lot without it sometimes it's about getting simple all right so so what you want to do is you just kind of work everything around till when you're holding in the loops you want this tie out tab right here to be opposite end or down kind of down with a right there so that that way it centers it so once you got that you are good to go all right so I'm going to use my shuttle sling here this is our new black on orange model here has become the standard model so I'm just gonna get up in here and just pull all this cordage through there

these trees up here are pretty pretty tough I think I've showed in some other videos you just come straight come straight out of the eye that way you're not compressing the bark excessively by by getting a pulley type effect with the eye of the cord so it's you know I'll do this and you'll not you won't even be able to see that I've been here tomorrow I've got my night Dyneema runner ends coming out here I take my the eye of the shuttle shove up through the through there so now I'm pinned into place I take the shock cord that comes on this this is actually a tent aluminum tent stake I just put that through right there I just helps hold everything right in place and then you just kind of start pulling this up however far we need to have it Ridgeline right over the hammock and now we take the canopy here take it up and let it rest on the hammock and then

and I just take the hood go over the bridge line I come down and snap it then I got a couple of these shot cords and all we do is go through the center loop here and then just zip it on we put on down right there and that'll hold it in place

there's my hammock set up my poncho set up as a hammock another poncho over top as a canopy with the east and tent tubed in it and it's all tied off here so I'm good to go with this little setup here well have a BLM rules say specifically specifically don't shovel dirt into the fire pit have to dig it out that's the remains of my fire last night and I could feel some heat down in here well there's a couple of hot coals there's one so I have grabbed some juniper bark here and let it kind of sit in the calls for a few minutes because they cuz it's cold the bark is cold now I warmed it up here now I can just place this I think about using a call a Zygon I can just fold it in there for a while just let it stay in there and it's just gonna maintain the coal that'll last a quite a while in there especially since I warmed this bark up you know if you grab just cold bark out there and you wrap it in there all that cold from the bark is going to is going to cool off that hot coal and I can kind of I'd listen you can actually hear and see when you're blowing at the right amount and as things start to happen you can see more and more smoke happening when you blow in there you're seeing more stuff going on the nice thing about a coal when you're using that is you you don't have to be in a quick hurry everything can just happen and even if the flames go out like they kind of did there it's not a big deal the whole thing is hot you're not under a big rush to hurry hurry hurry

as you develop the coal and you're heating up all your material you get to a point where it's it's gonna be successful anyway so you don't have to like hurry with it so I can set it down in here just like that you always see people blowing that right into a big flame and everything and you don't have to do that gather some stuff right here and dump it into there while it's smoldering and then if it hasn't burst into flame already I'll give it a puff and we got a fire alright now I have purposely just been out and about tinkering for almost 15 minutes now and just to demonstrate to you that although it's dramatic how everybody takes that little tinder bundle puts the Ember in there and blows it into a flame where it's kind of out in front of their face a little above their head makes a dramatic nice video but myself which I like to do that to you it's fun but but the thing I like about starting a fire like this is that you can take your time just get down here and blow a little see it's just been sitting there waiting for a little puff of air to start and so for 15 minutes it's been sitting there doing nothing but just smoldering slowly then I went around gathered a little bit of material and threw on there and now had he said okay it's time a little tiny puff of air and we have a fire height saying see I've got a nice fire going here

and last night I had to build a kind of a windbreak because the wind was just blowing like crazy I really couldn't get much effect out of a fire because of the because of the velocity of the wind alright so here's the back side of the fire pit and like I say last night the wind was really blowing pretty good so I stocked up rocks and then I then I shoveled dirt some sandy soil around this side also to plug up quite a bit of all the holes and everything that went there on the bottom part of that windbreak and doing that sort of thing really makes a huge difference and in making it so your fire burns really nicely in a deal like this I think what I want to do is take you over here to the edge just just a little bit out from where my camp is there's no real there's no real official camps up in this area it's just kind of people just do whatever as we're just we're just out on the desert there's lots of big cracks and fissures like you'll see down in there and we walk out on the edge of the bluff here and it's beautiful out here I'm hoping that this morning with the shadows and everything it'll look a little different not this Sun hasn't come up yet but it's starting to get light and we see back out through here I've done if you've watched my videos I've done a ton of videos back in where you see the the the canyon start just been eroded down in there so I've been out here on this rocky point here waiting for the Sun to give me a just a beautiful shot of these mountains out here just to illuminate them yeah we should be good for firewood me that's a nice it's a nice morning a nice day didn't get rain last night like I thought we might its forecast for more more likely today but I don't know desert you just never do no I mean it really need this light on my head I don't guess anymore but but right here we got the mountains to the west of us and that seems to lift most of the storms or whatever and they drop their moisture over there and they get over here but when it comes down here let me tell you it can come down and you better be on high ground because everything here is rock with a little bit of sand and soil on top so when the water starts running it can't sink in it just flows I have been piddling around for a long time I need to get breakfast sometime but I keep seeing other things I want to see and I hike off over here somewhere tinker around with something I think I'm actually really going to sit down here and get some breakfast on I got stuff that I need to do today I think well I'm gonna have me some except a little different

apple cider cinnamon cinnamon apple cider whatever yes because I need to do something a little different all right so it's been another probably hour and a half since I did my last update on making breakfast so I think I just need to get down to it I got like I don't know why I walked I walked across the road right here cuz I thought I saw a little drop-off going kind of into the Northeast I walked over there there's this little Canyon it's full of Ponderosa pine trees which blew my mind I'm like I never expected to see that out here so I got exploring around in there now that I you know and now I have got to stay in camp life to have breakfast alright so I'm gonna do it okay I get myself psyched up for cooking breakfast I see that's that's one of my problems I mean I like to eat and stuff but when I'm out at camp it's like it seems like such a burden for me too

to cook me it's not hard but I just want to see stuff you know I want to wander over here and see what's over here over there or something you know and I mean stopping to cook breakfast or dinner lunch or whatever is like it's like I think I got it from when I was a kid because my mom would call me you know that was back in the day right when there wasn't any cell phone or anything like that

your mom would stand out on the front porch of her house in the neighborhood right and you know Perry Dane come on you know and hollered hollering you know one word would get relayed around down in the neighborhood right you know and it go from person to person to person tell eventually they get to you to me and I'd be like I'd be like eat you know I'm busy playing could she not see that I'm busy playing I just when I get out I'm like playing right I mean I go over here to the south and it just drops off like 1500 feet down into the valley over there or something yeah it does drops because we're 7,500 feet it's it's 6,000 feet down in the valley over here so I go over here and I just want to look or I see some formation or some crevasse or I don't know you see something or I get over here and I see those Ponderosa trees and so it's like breakfast is such a burden it's like God let that take time to do breakfast I should have brought like cinnamon rolls and do like I did that one time on that video maybe six months ago I bought like two day old cinnamon rolls and I mean they were almost hard as a rock right I got him for like I don't know a dollar for 20 of them or something but I found out I put them in my little Dutch oven thing and put them on the fire and you warm them up just enough they start softening I think because you got the lid on and everything they soften up they're like fresh out of the oven they're awesome that's what I should have done because I would be done with breakfast already I don't even have pancake mix so I got to make up my own which is okay I've done it before you know I was starting to say can you tell I love camping I get out of here I just can't stand it I love it so my my motivation for doing breakfast so I always bring these couple of boxes here with me that's got a Coleman big Coleman stove and dishes silverware all kind of stuff in that box this box here just has odds and ends food kind of stuff so down in here I do have this flower and hopefully it's not like full of weevils or something that's been in here for a couple years nope I don't see any weevils or anything in there we're good now even if we did we just have to eat it all right so baking powder okay gotta have that salt that have some salt so got that syrup I've got some syrup for pancakes there oh yeah I got some cooking oil so of everything I could bring I brought some eggs no bacon no sausage no actual food I just came but I did grab the eggs because I forgot these last week anyways that so these are from last week so anyway I got that and then and then I've got my I love this little deal right here for one or two or three people this is like perfect water paper towels where's my coat see I could do right here and not even cook on the fire at all oh there we go got a whisk and I've got a measuring cup here

okay I need to get the right frypan here on the fire so I can get heating up me a little oil in there this fire the sun's come out here yeah I'm gonna shovel some coals down underneath here so this will be my cooking area alright this old tin pot here is gonna be my mixing bowl I don't need a cup of flour but I don't know how to make more than I need a cup of flour okay I know I need a little bit of salt I don't know that's too much probably a couple of pinches up throw the other over my shoulder for good luck I think that normally you need about a teaspoon of baking soda baking powder for a cup of flour but I think I need about half as ginn as much for whole wheat I don't know so a teaspoon and a half of that okay because I think I need about a tablespoon of oil so three teaspoons is a tablespoon so so we'll do three of these go bites spoons and figure that's probably pretty good okay there we go alright okay so there's our oil and I need an egg so I need egg my fry pan is hotter than blazes already I had to take it off of there now I need some water or milk I have water so I think I'm going to start with I can't remember how much I could have about a half a cup let's work on that and see if we're close not know I'd be good for biscuits dump a little more in there I know it's like mixing semantics you get close to the right amount and you got to be real careful how much add because you can go over pretty easy and I know if this kind of stuff you're not supposed to over mix it it's actually good if it's a little lumpy but I'm just gonna have to be what I can do here it's probably what do you think what do you think put your answers in the comments I think that's a maybe that's probably a tad on the thick side but I'm gonna I'm gonna use it I'm gonna call it good all right let's see if this is hot enough to cook on I think the answer is yes see see I took a shovel full of hot cold out of the fire pulled them over here no cold become my burner I might be a little too hot we're gonna give it a go anyhow I don't even I mean it's taken me four hours to get breakfast so I'm willing to take a chance let's just see what that does I need a spatula I happen to have one in the back of there all right I can see this thing's is puffed up pretty good it looks like it's starting to cook around the edges so there we go whole-wheat pancakes from scratch up camping not too bad for somebody who hates the cook number two look at that man I think I got this dialed in that pancake is almost an inch thick amazing you know you saw that I have that two burner Coleman stove propane bottles and all that I could easily cook these pancakes on the stove and you know it'd be just fine but I I don't know I love a campfire whenever I can and since I've got a campfire I'm like why not cook them over the fire right especially you got cast-iron cookware it works cast-iron works so well over the fire cause it's so forgiving and you just get somewhere close to the right temperature and if you cook with coals you can cook about anything you want and it works well so I don't know if I have like some kind of problem a CD or something but like I'm waiting for my pancake to cook so I can turn it and I keep wanting to walk away from camp and look at something I think I have a serious problem so I gotta do something I'm going to cut off some I'm gonna cut off some little trim off some little stuff for the fire even though I don't need it I've I love this Sookie pocket boy this thing is awesome switchblade this'll burn good in the fire

all right there we go we're gloating up I can make one more well the last pancake look at that beast you know the last pancake is always the ugliest one just like the last child ooh Cherie is gonna be so ticked when she hears that look how thick that pancake is it's a solid inch thick that is amazing right there I'm telling you what yeah I know I just happen to have a tape measure in my truck too I'm a nerd all right so me and what army is gonna eat all those pancakes what no world was I thinking a whole cup of flour for me I can't Solo 90% of the time all right it's a log cabin syrup no high fructose corn syrup in there I have to stack these up like this cuz you know looks like you're eating at IHOP when you got a stack of pancakes that was a good breakfast oh so much work I've got to take a nap after cooking it you know what one things aggravatin that is I forgot to bring milk how can I have pancakes and syrup without milk that's ridiculous

well I kind of know why it's thinking about bringing some but I didn't want to bring a cooler with ice you know I mean it's it's still not summer yet so you know I haven't been needing to bring a cooler so it's not like it's hard I had in fact if you saw my truck had plenty of room to bring one that's the problem if I have milk it better be ice cold I mean it's got to be sitting in the ice or it's not cold enough for me when I was a kid when I was a kid I worked on my uncle's dairy farm in Idaho and let me tell you what I've had warm milk

I mean fresh I mean fresh and I'm not a big fan of it I'm really not it's then I've always had to have cold milk if I go to a restaurant and get milk I'll last going to bring me a glass of ice and a glass of milk and I pour the milk into the glass of ice so it's so cold you almost can't stand it that's how I like my milk just writing myself a note a little reminder for next time that I go camping I need to remember this right here very important don't forget the milk so remember the milk next time ice-cold milk I won't forget now thing right here that'll be a reminder all right I want to show you something with the with the Beast haven't really showed the stakeout possibilities that you have with it pop the beast loose here rip now of course I can put a ground cloth under here and in some cases I might want to just something simple probably now we do have available to either the Cordura or the ripstop well there's actually three options you can choose for putting a canopy over one you can use one of our HSS the hammock shelter system or a xlx wide poncho you can set both of those up with our Eastern tent tubes with your Beast you're going to get some some clip-on tip pull adapters here so your tent poles can stick down in here so you got d-rings on all four corners okay set of tent poles and we can customize these for other sizes of Poncho's or whatever we just have to know what size you have so I'm gonna do is stab these ends into the opposite corners here this and like that so you can see right here that I've got the canopy set up that's that's can be attached right to the beast and you can throw whatever you want you can throw a tarp over here I'm going to show you a video coming with a PS TM or medium sized tarp it actually goes on top of here on the diagonal really nicely so here's your other option right here there is another set of D rings right here just back from the corner and we can hook this same we can snap in the same little rig right here snap it right there and then we can let that out a little bit I could use even a longer set of tent tubes what happens here as you see I'm I got about a foot wider footprint here on the on the on these tent poles than I would have had right here like you know you can snap in our HSS or our poncho you can't snap it in on one side to the snaps on the Beast so one side comes right to the edge of the beast and then that makes your shelter go a little bit more to one side and you have a little space over there on the ground gives you a little side space over here but if you want to if you want to have the same amount of space on both sides then you use these other snap ins and that and then you don't snap directly to the beast with your with your HSS or your poncho but yeah but you stake it to the ground and that gives you a little bit wider footprint okay now you see with the very same tent tubes it's there at very same tent poles I now have a shelter here that's spaced out about a foot on each side and then I've got

about 10 10 inches or so on each end there we've got the set up here so I give set gives me a profile on all sides to put my shelter over in there so we've now created basically a tent out of the beast and either a poncho or the HSS either one so this can be used as a hammock for example if you know you got good weather if you don't well you can put this thing up as as the top to a beast well I got my sleeping situation here taken care of I just finished putting that canopy on just as the rain started there we are the beast underneath the canopy made out of HSS and we're using the wider stance tent pole configuration the attachments and all that sort of thing are included with the beast whenever you get one I'm gonna keep the fire going here [Music]

that's I'm gonna put up some more shelter here I'm gonna put a punch ow up across here so I can put my my food bins and stuff for my gear bins right here they won't get rained directly on them so I'm actually doing something different we now carry on our website another type of cordage and this is Dyneema twine so you see how thin that is compared to parachute cord and they will carry the same weight so this tarp is made out of a PS SL poncho black seal nylon it's four or five years old it has been through the mill but it's still hanging in there I strung up my ridge line with Dyneema twine which has a 500 pound breaking strength so we're about the same as parachute cord only its tiny alright so getting ready to make me some turtles brownies Ghirardelli good stuff we've got these bags for zebra pots that we make and so I'm going to mix the mix in this zebra pot 16 centimeter and there's the mix right there then we're going to cook it in a Dutch oven at the fire alright

this thing I'll stir it up here shortening but I don't have any shortening with me so so I used oil it's so sue me all right now the caramel part and preheating the Dutch oven so it's hot like preheating an oven so normally I like to put some rocks or something in to space my pan off the bottom of the bed 7 a little bit so Boyd as much as possible burning so I just wanted up a strip of tin foil and I'll put my pan on that so I got a little elevation off the hottest cold oh yeah I could just use some rocks

I could normally just use some rocks for that but that little foil pen I decided to use is too flimsy for rocks that looks like that's going to hold it pretty well

[Music]

[Music]

and put some coals on top crawl in here tech needles news I think we might be done here all right well let's see what we got here see if we can fry this thing up out of here

well oh ho it's good it's still kind of hot in the middle but that is very good I must say I did okay on that one not Bert

[Applause]

well we got it's rain coming down here we've got 40 and 50 mile an hour winds here how to get into this shelter here with my with the beast to get out of that now the temperatures have dropped you just about 40 degrees and the rain is just coming down and the wind is just crazy

you