Winter Camping in Northern Michigan.

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A few weeks ago Ken and I headed to Michigan's U.P

We met up with our buddy Bill (Lonetracker)

Spent 3 days havin fun.

Video Transcription

now it's 22:7 we're driving up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and they don't believe in snow plows here apparently

almost there

four-wheelin now the road is not a plot or anything and looks awesome back in here you go check out a place for a camp maybe see if we can grab snowshoe hare or something

snow is uh pretty deep definitely need snowshoes it's awesome on here it's actually winter well back in here and this is what we call home for the next three nights back in the pines and the Cedars some camped out right under this cedar that's all I want to set up anyways nice back in here nice and sheltered from the wind and I got a bunch of boughs overhead well uh keep some snow off me or melt snow onto me whichever the case movie just got finished setting up my shelter I'm using the go light shangri-la I like it for the wintertime

yeah I wouldn't dare try and hang out hang and hammock and gives me a little bit more coverage than a tarp would so it's my favorite thing in the winter to use so take you on inside and show you my sleeping setup so right on the ground is a casualty blanket folded in half and have some rest NeoAir it's got good thickness then this yellow and black bag is it's not a proper rating but I don't know maybe negative 15 degrees Celsius and then this blue bag inside is a down bag this is synthetic with the down bag is ready to negative three Celsius and I also have my down pillow I really like it takes up no room and makes me comfortable so they use that so temperatures are supposed to dip down to about negative 18 Celsius today tonight and I imagine I'll be toasty warm in here the only problem with this kind of setup is a little bit of condensation because you're enclosed but what are you going to do also set up a little gear rack just a paracord over here just a miniature one got my axe up there I'm I saw a lion kit my water bottle and food and my little Maxpedition rolie polie extreme so it's a nice place I got my whole gear set up and I think I'm going to go off and explore for a little bit and Bill's putting the finishing touches on his fancy shelter crazy Hammacher in the winter

this is Ken's setup he's a ground Weller like I am he's under a steel nylon tarp there we have him he's a emergency blanket and pretty much same setup i have but he's got a bivy over top nylon bivy over over his bag so it's kind of cool alright well I'm gonna start the fire now but all our firewood stacked up like that to kind of dry out once the fire gets that going now I made it through the night got down to about negative 20 last night Celsius so it's kind of cold but we're all alive and well it's two for us American what is it really negative two negative two we got some wood here now one Chitwood they're just bill coming back with some wood we do better today for our wood finding some nice big pieces split them down has a good fire tonight it's not supposed to get down to cold so ah now we just finished up eating lunch after doing our wood processing and we're going to go head up for a hike see if we can find a snowshoe rabbit Ken's got his traditional snowshoes he's putting on help my space-age technology nice damn nice size

he has an album right there hookup on I came back from my walk and they had Bush crafted they craft it they crafted this pot holder out of the bush is oh it's like it's like magic more's would be proud well a black-capped chickadee decided he wanted to eat our porcupine eating older he's eating the bum ol I've been walking around looking for some dead balsam fir leaves haven't found anybody found these which are dead cedar leaves now this is a stern white cedar threw your oxygen talus not the same red cedar that you guys have in the States but I'll try these out with the Ferro rod see what happen

there we go okay right next to the cedar I found there is some dead balsam this is balsam fir abies balsa Mia the dead brown ones so I want to pick some of these try not to get snow all over it see how good these work no I just got snow all over it that's awesome keeps going out there you go

cool both those were bad one yet step around pecking away these on your boot that's pretty cool pretty got going on there bill got a porcupine that we're going to roast over this bet it mostly hardwood coals maple try to stick a little bacon on well baking you say you can flavor of course nice the bacon was froze so I had to warm up in them more MORE that's ingenuity Joe made some skewers

well if Joe made them they're probably not going to work now there's a bacon-wrapped porcupine want to spit over the fire sausage is there and porcupine baked in there watch a snow melting for water chaga tea it's like we're living the high life out here alright the third day now second morning and last night didn't get half as cold it got down to about negative twelve Celsius I guess they're saying that's around 6 or 7 degrees Fahrenheit my nostrils didn't freeze shut when I go up to take a piece that was good one thing I did do is change out my not my normal insulation in my boots for these blue wolf pelt ones and gave me a lot more room in my boot because they're thinner and I guess that's keeping my my toes warmer because they're not so constrained I never tried it before and I had these boots for like five years so I'm really happy with that I have a tree natural twig bundle up there so a balsam fir grew all funky be easy to get turned around in here all it is is balsam full of snow oh just getting back to the camp after a couple mile hike so a porcupine couple sets a deer some bunch of chaga good little hike pretty hungry now make some lunch I think well it's about 1:30 we're going to head out of here in a few hours go home so I'm just taking down my camp a little bit getting set up this is a good camp eat a porcupine had some fun this will probably last the video so thanks for watching guys hope you enjoyed it