Trouble on Solo Remote Desert Camp Stranded - Things OK until

Description

This camp trip on the desert has a lot of variety -

-mountain bike exploring

-some good cooking

-proper hammock hang angle

-hammock with under quilt

-The BEAST on a cot

-Fire starting with electronic lighter

-cook a meal totally on coals from the day before

-cook a second meal, slow cooked on the same coals

-ash cakes and jam

Check out our multipurpose outdoor gear at http://wildernessinnovation.omc

Tags: mountain bike trail riding,camping on the desert,car stranded on desert,dead battery,search and rescue stories,sar,rescued by facebook,social rescue,online rescue,camp cooking,ash cakes,hammock camp,solo camping,alone on the desert,stranded alone,remote car breakdown,hammock camping setup,solo camping trip,camp cooking cast iron,lodge cast iron

Video Transcription

I'll have my bike made it without getting tore up that's the most place has gone through or so narrow how to keep looking back to make sure my bike didn't get snagged or something no man is crazy pin out of here what's the bike hang back I'm gonna set up camp there I camped here one time before and I loved it and so I thought I'd come back the reason I bet the reason I brought my bike is cuz tomorrow what I want to do tomorrow is I want to be able to uh write around I'm gonna write out to a scenic outlook and stuff you're not to be just fantastic I'm really excited about it let me come on truck camp and I always vehicle camping I always bring a shovel it's really handy especially if you're gonna be working around the fire anything like that so I got my fire pit right here and that's the same fire pit I used six or eight months ago when I was in here yeah I got my propane lantern here and go into a one gallon propane bottle down there put my chair there cuz I want to do a little reading or something right there live delight 8:30 at night out here I'm going to do something very different for camp this time one of them well one of the things I'm going to do you've never ever ever seen me do this setting up my sleeping so stay tuned for something unusual it's not radical or anybody you've never seen me do it so they keep wanting to show you this little flashlight I got it's a gold 0 lighthouse micro so it's a flashlight and then it's got two different kinds of lanterns on it it charges with USB right there

flip up USB the lighting is dimmable so when you switch between the lighting if you hold the button down it'll dim till all the way off and it'll start back over it's got a nice little deal up top here to hang with I just put a little piece of parachute cord on there and that way I can just put it around a line you know and drop it back through itself there and it'll hang it right there

but I tell you what this darling little thing lasts forever it really I mean you can run this light sometimes I run it almost all night long and the nice thing is you just plug it back in to charge it it's pretty sweet see it or not so so what I do here is I string me a Ridgeline I just pull this parachute cord loop it and I just put the light through there just like that now the first time I press this green button then the flashlight comes on the second time I press it it puts the lantern on and you see now watch this lantern maybe I'll turn my head right there now see if I hold that green button down you'll see that thing see it's getting dimmer and dimmer till it's almost nothing if I run it like that it's enough like it's a nightlight I could run that thing for a couple of days I mean it's amazing then it's got a mode where it's a 180 degree Lantern or you can go 360 degree whichever you want the fine doing some setup stuff I might leave it on 360 degree at full power for a while and a lot of times I'll set my sleeping up and then I'll reduce this down about how play and then it can stay there sit here for hours and just give me a light so I can see where my sleeping is and get everything ready without having to do anything else but I love that little thing and I finally got it into a video I'm gonna hang my I'm gonna hang my hammock

this tree right here and over to this so I went for good from a Juniper on that side to opinion pine over here and I'm gonna string that thing up and get it all ready tonight I use a I'm using different Poncho's all the time you know we got to thinking a lot of people these are Poncho's but a lot of people use them more for a hammock than for a poncho so we ought to be saying this is a hammock that makes into a poncho rather than saying this is a poncho that makes into a hammock I'll show you what this orange cord because it's the brightest to drop this thing through I always just use one of my pocket knives or something and you just put it through the loop right there and then just that little bit of weight right there will easily drop it right down through the cord sleeves on here and and you do especially on these light these ultralight Poncho's sometimes the little tie out tarp tie out thing that's on here it's best if you go ahead and make sure you put it through that it just gives it gives a little added strength and helps take nuts that it matters that much we never used to do them that way see now it dropped out the other end so all I do now is I just pull on this thing to loosen it and the loop you just pass it over everything it's like a little magic trick and then that just drops off of there see how simple that is and now we just put the free end of the Dyneema cord just Dyneema cords about ten feet long or so and got I on one end so you can tie it off to the tree on the other side put it through a tree strap or you can use our little well you can't use our little things yet because they're not ready we're working on getting some made by our little hammock suspension keys here these are out of aluminum weighs like six or seven grams makes an easy way to hang it up to the tree which I'll show you in a minute one thing I am experimenting through is demonstrating some of this stuff if you followed me very much you know half the time I'm setting up at night sometimes 10 11 o'clock at night you know but sometime hoping maybe this lighting the sliding stuff here at night might make it a little bit easier for you to see what's going on because the only thing you can see is what I've lit up so all I got to do is take this key and it's kind of ugly rough looking because it's all just hand that's all literally just handmade you know right at this point we will be having some professional ones made here so see then you just hook it over then you just take and you just give a little twist and it forms a loop see that right there and you just kind of snug it that's all there is to it I mean that's pretty simple if you need to adjust it you just pull on this and it just pulls the knot back off of there and now you can tighten it up a little bit more or whatever you need to do and then you just let that loop flip over there and you're back to it our trees out here in the desert they're tough as nails man or barks like I earned they don't need tree straps out here but if you're in a part of the country where the tree's bark is more delicate and soft well you might need a tree strapping but this works really well with those got this set up about I want it here I like to when I first started hanging hammocks doing these ponchos hammocks I used to hang him high and you had to almost climb up into him well it's a lot more convenient to be I could even I could even be a little lower than this and be fine this is but I really don't need of any higher than this and this way if I'm sitting here need to put my shoes on or anything kind of sitting here at about chair height about 34 degrees so I could be thirty degrees as optimum so I could be even flatter than I am right now yeah I said hard to get scientific you don't have to you don't have to get an app on your phone to do the angles and all that but since you know I'm doing R&D and all that sort of thing a lot of times I'm researching stuff and so sometimes trying to set stuff up I try to get right close to 30 degrees while I'm testing different things so I kind of can compare them equally 30 degrees is about that we'll put about your body weight of stress on the suspension system if you go flatter than that you start increasing that to where you're getting more than your body weight and if you pull it fairly snugging and get in it you know you may you may put more than a thousand pounds on here so the tighter you get that kind of increases but all right so today I'm gonna use my Oh sneak luck as an undercurrent now a lot of our gear once you get to know it our fury are familiar a lot of our gear is multi-purpose like our our hammock here is also a poncho it can be a tarp you can use it as a chair or different things like that so so it does have that functionality and this oceany cloak I'll just put it on here like put it on I can snap it they can snap it all down the side so this thing is made out of clay Micheel apex actually apex but a lot of people don't know that is so it's a claim of shield product but anyway it can be and it can be a poncho liner so when I'm wearing this app I chilled it's cold weather I can put the poncho over the top of this I can even snap the punch-out of this and so I got a fully insulated coat top to bottom that will help keep rain or snow or even the wind out of me so if the insulation can do its job no winds penetrating to that so so I got something I can wear as a coat and I can also I could just wear it in the hammock like this and go to sleep but it's gonna get down to 30s tonight so I'm going to snap it underneath the let's snap it underneath the hammock here so it'll be an under quilt so you'll see that the the snaps on the Asti cloak are double-sided so they have mail on one side female on the other so it gives me a lot of options into how I snapped us on here now the way I'm snapping it here yet that'll snap it in and I'll be fine if I flip the pint if I flip the oceany around the other 180 degrees then when I snap it in I won't be folding it over to snap and it'll come up straight and I'll leave me another snap port where I can snap a blanket or something else on top of this alright so on these on these oceany cloaks on the bottom in is a cord sleeve and we made it so that your cord ends kind of nest down in there and then when you draw those up now this thing's a little on the muddy side because I have been I gotta wash it I have been in the mud now I can I can put these cords through one of these tie out tabs right here and cinch it up or here's another option I can just loosen up my my loop for my Dyneema cord and I can just pull them both you just need a place up there cinch it back down so you need is a place so what you're gonna do is draw that up cu8 right there then you just run these cord locks down like that so see what that does is draws the ends closed kind of helps pull this up Oh sneak Lok becomes a full length underquilt and and see I'm not I'm not rigging any kind of shock cording or a bunch of other stuff to this it just snaps right to there it's very simple and it holds it right in place and because of the way this thing's all attached you know it it helps hold everything together holds everything in place the whole length along here it's attached you know from end to end which makes it a much tomb in my opinion makes it even nicer as an under quilt than maybe a regular under quote because you're attached in the whole length of this thing so now I can get inside of here and you see the nice thing is I'm all the way in here and it comes and wraps all the way up up around me and in fact something you can do and I can bring those snaps up there together and I could do that down through here if I wanted to and so I can I could have the whole lower part of my body snap together in here and make kind of a sleeping bag setup out of that end of it if I want to we want you to have as many options as you can so this is an osa knee blanket they don't have it online yet I mean if you want to if you're interested you know leave us a comment in the video so you see this one right here is about when I guess about four feet wide or there abouts and about five feet long so that's my sleeping setup for this one right here because I told you I was going to show you something you've never seen me do before so totally different here we go honey I have not used this thing for probably I don't know a while set this set this up I'm just gonna do a little something different to show you some flexibility of the gear and some of the other stuff you can do if you want to do something a little different than what I always do I thought what I should show a few different things because some people might want to might not want to do like I do so okay so that makes a nice little set up here down here got a nice got a nice cut up off the ground this thing's got some storage underneath it built in so I can store stuff up off the ground and so now the only thing is we're gonna be in the 30s tonight so I don't want to lay right on here just like this so now watch this this is just sweet now you've always seen me use the Beast right on the ground and that's how I commonly use it but but I don't need to I can use it up here on the lumberjack on a cut and so you see this the Beast is 24 inches white and this one here is my head I remember how though I think it's 70 74 inches long and now this right here is my knee this is my ocean narrow blanket we call it really kind of narrow blanket is our our regular blankets are or wider than this listen this incise to fit the beast its size to fit in a hammock or whatever you know all that sort of thing now one of the things here you'll notice is the Beast has this is this is the hook on a deal so you can put a canopy cover over and then right here is for the purpose of being able to attach this blanket so now I can come right down here now the narrow of those narrow black as snaps down one side the other side is no snap so so basically this side as your hinge side this side is secured the other side is a side that you'll get in and out of now I'm not I really don't want to create a sleeping bag I so that's so that's the nice thing here is I'm not not making a sleeping bag it's still just a blanket that lays over me I flip it and flip out get in and out of it just like just like a blanket in your bed at home okay so so I'm set up here the bag that my ghostly narrow blanket came in now the host me narrow blanket is that climate shield apex you can get it in two different weights 3.6 and 5.0 for a little colder weather and you choose your covers it's like on all our stuff you choose whatever you want on there the nice thing about the beast is I don't need to I don't need to have any any cover on the Beast itself it's comfortable just like it is let me take my right yeah and so I can just come here

you get in this thing and see I can just I can just lay down go to sleep be as comfortable as ever I'm well insulated underneath with my Beast my blanket is secured to the Beast but you know the nice thing is this site here has opened up if I need to get in and out and I have an unzip or anything like that I just throw it I just throw it over me and I go to sleep now it's tall enough because the osteen Aero blanket is eight feet tall I can put it clear up over my head and that makes it so if it's chilly I can add some more comfort range without doing anything else I can be all the way inside of it it'll work just fine everything here is very breathable so excess moisture and everything just passes right through it to the outside so I don't have to worry about condensation moisture buildup or anything like that my time very often whittling up further step feather sticks or splitting up processing firewood this is how I process well ideas just to reduce it down so all the wood sits closer together you've got broken ins broken in start easier then cut ends or blend in a little bit of a pile I like to twist it telling you really when you twist it you can hear it the fiber snapping so some of the fibers are snapping which means it's mean that I've not only separated the fibers

we've also broken a lot of them so I have barren fibers that I can use for getting the fire started alright now my son gave me this little electric lighter I know if he'd it puts a little spark across there I'm gonna see I don't feel even be able to see it see if I can get something started just at that little spark right there there we go I got it I didn't realize my camera it realized my camera flipped down tilted down a little but there we go right there I should be able to get this down in here now I want to let it get started fairly well

the things that this bark is that can be burning good then when you shove it down in there it kind of starts to compact itself a little bit and then then you find the burning slows down quite a bit so you know if you've got a grapefruit-sized or a couple grapefruit sized chunk of that you're not gonna lose your fire it's gonna go and there we go the twigs are starting to go now so we're good we got us our fire and there is plenty of firewood around here so I am going to have myself a bonfire my face I woke up I woke up oh man I had a great sleep a great night I slept about about half the night in my hammock and then I woke up for a little relief cuz I drank a lot of liquid last night so when I went back to bed I came over here and laid on the laid on the cot here with the Beast underneath and the OCE narrow blanket on top who it was nice nice this is all I needed you know I didn't need a tarp for a tent or anything for the breeze got down in the 30s last night and you know but I was absolutely comfortable in the hammock with my Oh sneak cloak as underquilt under that and I was also very comfortable with the beast on this no discomfort underneath from Chile or anything like that and only just the just the Oh Sneed narrow blanket on top just laid over top of me that was plenty good for me I monkeyed around camp till is about 3:30 this morning or something that my morning pills I gotta take care for keep the old ticker going honey my occupation for like half of my life was or so I guess close to that 18 years or something was electronics so the funny thing is what what haywire with my heart was electronics my cardiologist he goes he goes well there's two kinds of heart there's two kind of doctors for the heart and he's for the heart he said so one of them's a plumber and one of them the electrician he says I'm an electrician he says so your problems not the plumbing of your heart it's the electrical stuff it's it's been really great actually for some people have asked me my last doctor visit a few months ago or so the doctor told me you don't have to come back only just an annual checkup so everything's going well very well regulate have had no problems everything's good no episodes or anything like that so you know what the heck it's nice so now I got to get myself back in shape a little better I'm gonna do some bike riding today gonna do some exploring on my mountain bike a forty three degrees right now yes I put my beast right here where last time I was here I put the beast there but I was on the ground and I put a shelter over the canopy over me and then the hammock here last time I was here I was testing the very first little trial round of a Dyneema type deal I probably burn a pickup load of wood last night I kept piling it up like this burning it down piling up like it's insane man maybe I'll just put my fry pad on here and cook my pancakes right there just like that let's just see what we can do just for kicks got it rockin and rollin now that Bacon's starting to cook pretty nicely that's working really nice while multitasking as I often do I probably undoubtedly got the bacon done a little more than I should have keep it warm in that other half of my Dutch oven

like I do for eggs not like they need them but think if I cook them up now and go scramble them then later later today if I want to make a biscuit or something like that I can put some bacon and some of that or whatever find a biscuit so there's a little coarser pepper grain see that looks like oh yeah I like that better yeah I said tea fine before and I sing is this stuff is all infused with the bacon fat really you know just add some flavor to them eggs man it's just awesome

getting close to done here alright you're the first pancake roll in here my bed of holes in here I'm gonna go for a mountain bike ride and while I'm gone I'm gonna be cooking lunch and I've got me a few drumsticks here I'm gonna dump in there a little bit of some oil swirl all that around that's probably gonna cook for several hours I took my Mora knife and slice me some potato slices look I cannot even keep my hand down there it is hotter than blazes oh that's hot man I should have dug down a little more when I did my pancakes now one of the potatoes has a little necrosis on it but yeah I'll cook it anyway whether eat it or not that'll be another story okay so potatoes some chicken and I got me some peppered gravy mix and add more water to it than what it tells me man I don't know if I can even do this it's so hot I should have done this off the fire right whoo that is hotter than blazes to change hands now that hands too hot okay now you're gonna dump me some water on there a cup and a half but I'm gonna put it couple of cups on there like they might put even a little more than that on there I don't know two and a half cups and it won't really matter cuz time everything steam all that it'll be good anyhow in just a little bit for a something like that right they're probably gonna be getting up anyway so if you watch me very much you know I'm a fan of doing this kind of stuff because I like to I like to have breakfast stuff like that some of the camp stuff out of the way

and have been doing some tests and junk also but but now I can take off go ride my bike explore around stuff like that and when I come back in several hours or something everything there should just be primo so get ready to go on a little mountain bike right here let's throw in camp had a little fun you know got lunch in the fire pit cooking I just want to explore around here and see I want to go on my bike then get back in some places where I couldn't normally get last what it's like exploring the desert I don't know what the crap I'm going well I didn't know where my trail was going took me down into the bottom of his wash hut guess we'll soon see a little hard riding on one hand might not be good right into this rock rubble one-handed Wally oh my word I gotta get me a little different set up I think

[Laughter]

so we're getting either the bottom is falling away from us a little bit getting deeper and deeper here that's what I'm hoping to do is get out along here and get to a beautiful viewpoint because I've ridden at least ten miles out of the way to get over here so I really want to be worthwhile that's the end of the road on this loop here there we go down bottom of the canyon down there well then I came down here on this road here back up there I thought it might be able to bushwhack across to the road it's on that of a ridge over there but look what we got here this desert can be so treacherous and so I mean it's it's tough out here if you think you're gonna just get out here and go bushwalking just look at this right here man this canyon is deep deep deep and when you're up on top you don't you can't even sit so narrow and deep you can't see down in there I probably should when I got to that last lookout point it wasn't really what I wanted I should have just gone back but I thought well just around one little war end of a canyon it would take me out to that lookout I want to be it it never happened I kept going and going and just right through there is where the main dirt road up this Canyon is Cedar Mountain Road but the question is will this road take me there I'm getting closer finally dinner's gonna taste good I'll tell you what well I think we're coming up on something they're trying to steer one-handed run the camera with the other one and not go off the edge well there we are look at that that is spectacular and then right down below us somebody's camping about thousand feet below us there look at the ruggedness of all those Canyon then look at this up here somebody built them a bench out of the square flat stones are up here oh yeah way down the bottom okay well this has been in the coals for a long time and it still feels hot in there burnt nope holy cow

look he cooks potatoes I think and love it oh my gosh look at that just sizzling alright let's dig into some grub here Oh smell that is fantastic get me a cup of coffee can't even keep a meat on the bone drumsticks nice potatoes there and I might when I was a kid my mom would cook Sunday dinner the potatoes are set when they'd get kind of roasted along the edges oh man we'd fight for those things that gravy mix I put in there pick him up nicely this is some good grub right here I'm telling you what man let's let the best meals I've cooked I believe three four hours on a Nicole's I just happened to grab a potato just for kicks out of the fridge you know it was a perfect addition man this is just fabulous fabulous fabulous hmm I'm gonna concentrate on eating now Here I am setting up camp again because my battery is dead on my tahoe you've been following me very long you know holy cow I have had trouble this year vehicle troubles oh my gosh anyway I don't know I think I went mountain bike riding for about half the day exploring and you know I don't know when when I got back I was packing stuff up to go home

but to start the thing and Zippo nothing just to click click a little of nowhere I'm unmarked roads you know whatever so my wife drove out to try to find me tonight and she got lost and so she went back home so and I said well let's worry about tomorrow I want to stay late so I put a post up on Facebook see if there's any of my followers or people that know me there or just anybody that might be in the area that might be able to come and help me took a picture of my topo map off my phone posted that so they could see where I met gave my phone number you know so here I am got my hammock set up ready for another good night's sleep and I don't know I'm gonna go mess around at the fire a little bit I think but do you have food said yeah I got enough food for a probability core to I got enough water for I don't know if I could squeeze a week out of it I probably could have I had to you know there is some water I've seen in some potholes and rocks around here and stuff I could get so I could last a week at least

you know without too much trouble thought any trouble early other than my heart medicine I'm out of it in the morning well I got rescued this morning pretty cool

my battery jumped and all that stuff packing up to get on out of here I got stuff to do today here's the hot coals from the fire to make me a hot pair of this morning warm me up a little bit I'm laying here sound asleep the headlights come up here and I'm like I'm like have I'm not even thinking straight this is guy Jason Jensen we kind of became acquainted followed on Facebook and junk and he lives over in Huntington about I don't know what it is 20 30 30 miles from here or something probably and I mean there's nothing me this middle of nowhere out here I'm telling you but I posted my off of my off my cellphone I took a picture of my topo map the shirt oh is that and I posted it on there and he used that and then figure out it got here about why is that so he shows up jumps me off you know got the battery charge and going and everything so you know it's awesome warning big shout-out to Jason Jason Jenson and everything and thanks so much and I wish there's a little more I could have done or whatever I said I think I still kind of out of it it's shock till Natalie's left I thought I should have got him on camera we said I don't know something and I don't know what the heck I was thinking but you know when you're not kind of moment you know you're just glad somebody came you know so I guess you don't really think about all the other things but thank you anyway and for everybody that expressed concern and everything and on Facebook and thank all of you for thinking about me and it's pretty cool that there's community people out there most of whom you've never met in your life that you know still come to your come to your aid so it is awesome thank you so much now I'm going to make some make me an ash cake or to put me some jam on something for the ride home and I can let that be cooking while I'm getting camp packed up here's how I do it let's grab a have a couple handfuls of flour this is gonna be crude how I'm doing this so because my camp was half packed up and so you know you just do like that Boy Scouts we used a stick but I'm using my finger this morning so but I'm the one eating it so don't matter right so you just add a little that's probably gonna be about right right there I think but anyway so you just get it to a dough like that it's crude and simple but anyway you just knead it and I got dirty hands and everything what the heck but I'm the one eating all this normally I would probably clean up a little bit but anyway so you just make you a little something like that you need to flour a little bit because it gets a little sticky you know you can just do that I'm kind of hasty here this morning because I got it I got to get out of here I got a things to do back home but anyway so there's your ash cake right there hotter than blazes here I got some hot coals there it's kind of that's glowing red throw a little ash on there and then you just throw it in there we just let it cook and then I flip it over a couple of times so it's done got some ash Cakes cooking down and that in there trying to kind of hustle along cuz I'm kind of in a hurry but anyway it'll be good okay so here's a couple of ash cakes and they're crude but what you want to do is you just kind of cook them till they get a little crispy on the outside or you know they're kind of when you kind of flick on them there like that so they're not doughy that's all you want right they're very simple you just brush the ash off or whatever blow it off and you're good to go

this is the most important part this whole procedure the most important thing you do is eat them you know everybody gets into cooking I cook it cooking's not the most important thing the most important things eaten so here we go well very good it should be a little a little crunchy on the outside that's what you want those kind of a kind of a bread on the inside and the outside gets a little crunchy kind of like a soda cracker sort of but what these things are so good eat all you gotta do is have flour and water and a fire done all there is to it - cakes Cheers thanks to that it's like rescued through Facebook I mean you never know when there's people around follow you or whatever

check things out so I was pretty darn cool his mom had seen it on Facebook and said man he's stranded out there man she came again at me get out out of here it's gonna be a great day you