Mojave Desert Survival Training (Bushcraft & Survival Skills)

Surviving in the desert is extremely difficult and dangerous, especially for people that are inexperienced and lack the necessary skills and knowledge to make it out alive. We've decided to spend a day and night in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Located primarily in southeastern California, it is considered a high desert with elevations above 2,000 feet. Chris and I are just average Joes. We're not survival experts and have no formal training. For this reason, our first desert survival experience will be done under more controlled circumstances. We'll be using a specialized trailer that will contain key items, including copious amounts of water to keep us safe as the Mojave is the driest of all North American deserts. While this may seem more like camping, the purpose of this adventure is to familiarize ourselves with the desert landscape and understand how our bodies react to the super hot and dry conditions. We hit the road early morning in an attempt to avoid the scorching midday sun on our arrival, giving us much needed time to set up a basic camp. Mojave Desert people, I mean you're used to, well you've not used to, you've been here you know throughout your growing up, but for me this is like this is like an alien landscape for me. It's so cool though, like there's there's so much of nothing that it's crazy. Yeah well we've kind of found a spot in this valley here. Yeah. And you can see we've got a nice giant mountain, a big valley back here, and just off into never ever land. It just goes and goes Mojave Desert. So I think it's a pretty good spot in the middle of nowhere. Set up a little camp here. Well and we got a cool backdrop this uh the tree here. We got a nice little tree going on. Maybe you said that you thought maybe oh the campfire. Yeah put a little campfire down here. We got we got one boulder in the ground already. Yeah. That could be a good spot. You could sit on it. Hey we can collect rocks off that hill up there. Oh yeah. At the top. The best ones are at the top right here. You should get those. Oh man. I want the good ones. So this this is like some some training that we're doing here. You know we've we've actually brought out some of the guns to practice to some target practice, but also you know setting up fire, trying to survive in the desert where during the day right now time of season it could get up upwards of 85 90 degrees. Yeah. But at night it'll plummet below 50 degrees. So it's extremes like hot during the day especially for me being from Canada. Oh yeah. There's no extremes like that. That's right. It's going to be a shock to the system. If you're just out and it say it's 20 you know 20 degrees it's cold all the time, but when it goes from extreme hot to cold you know puts your system in a shock and it it changes the gear setup too. So I'm going to go collect some rocks. All right I'm going to go check around the uh just walk around see what's up. Building a fireplace. What the heck is that? Oh even in the desert you find garbage. One thing I got to keep in mind which meaty reminded me of is don't just pick up rocks. Look underneath them because there might be stuff you know hidden in crevices and stuff and oh I do not want to be stung by something. Hello critters? Nobody in there? Yikes. Okay all safe. Hey what's that in your back pocket there mister? What? It's my knife. I was talking about the other one. This? Yeah. Pay no attention to that. It's my snake finder. Snake. There's the snake. Oh yeah. We saw this dead tree over here. Nice. We thought we could get some kindling and stuff off of. Yeah it's the same thing as the tree that we're camped at really that style but this one's like dead. This one's been been dead. So I've got to probably break some of it off but I got my little folding saw. Oh yeah. Geez that stuff is drier than a popcorn fart. Yeah that wind's picking up. Oh yeah. So we get some of this. That's some good starter like some good kindling. Really good starter. It's just kind of cracking off eh? We could probably also find some uh I noticed there was some of those thicker dead wood on the ground. Yeah. Here and there. Some of the thicker stuff. Yeah. Maybe some beavers chewed through it already or something. Beavers in the desert eh? It's this new breed I can't believe it. So I got this saw that I keep in in my pack. It's a little folding saw. Works pretty good. Oh yeah. I like those a lot better than those little chainsaws you get in survival kits that basically do nothing. Yeah I found this this one works pretty good. I mean let me try this guy here. Oh yeah look at that. Wow dude. Right through that. So fast. And that's not it's pretty it's it's dense. Yeah. You know it's dense wood it's not. About an inch and a bit thick. Yeah so these work pretty good and they're light right? They're light and they fit inside your pack. I like them. What's what knife is that that you're carrying? This is um. Wow look how thick that is. This is a Becker BK7. Oh. And what I did I took the coating off and just gun blued it because it had a thick coating on it. Yeah. So now you're trying to baton through stuff it was kind of hanging up. Oh okay. So you just gun blew it so doesn't completely rust on you. You got to stay after them though because they're carbon steel blades. Delicious. Deliciousness. All right let's get some more of this wood. We continued gathering rocks and wood from the surrounding area and while doing so I ventured over to an older campsite that we passed by on our way in in hopes of finding some pre-cut wood but that is not what I found. Meaty take a look at this. You got. What? I don't know what it is. Look at that thing. Dude is that fake? Is that a laboratory? I looked at the end piece dude. I don't think that's fake. Look at the end like the I don't know like the inside of the bone and stuff. Dude that's real. That's a real whatever. There's another part over here. So like what is that? That's a long spine like a big dog. These are hip bones here. Yeah yeah they're definitely not human. No it might be like a coyote but I don't know how many ribs they have you know that looks like a lot. Oh yeah oh there the ribs broke. My other question is what's it doing in a fire? You never know what you'll find in the desert or what people do out here. This this pit is in the middle of nowhere. Yeah yeah freaky. I'm out of here. After collecting enough wood for our camp we decided to put in a little time for some target practice. Not all survival situations require it but it's a good skill to have. All right let's shoot some targets. All right so a little bit of target training. We've got a Glock G34. We're gonna shoot. Is that a 10 mil or a nine? It's a nine millimeter. Nine mil. The 34 has a little bit longer barrel and it's lightened. Hey I remember that trigger didn't you uh in one of your videos? Yeah it went full auto on me after I put it in so. Not so bueno. All right so we're at about uh 15 18 yards actually which is a little bit longer than normal for a pistol target. Yeah yeah. So how many we got 10 in there? We got 10 in here we're shooting steel. All right I want to hear 10 dings. All right ding ding ding goes the trolley. Eight. Not bad. I heard eight dings. So if you if you can look through here the sights are like battle sights so they're they take a little bit of getting used to. Oh yeah. They actually fill a lot of the targets. I'm a little surprised with that but once you once you get used to them I think I think they'll be good. All right buddy. Hopefully I don't injure myself. If you're not used to holding pistols properly you get a lesson you get it fast because that thing kicked back. Yeah but it's a perfect u-shape. At least it's symmetrical. You got that going for you. It's a rattlesnake bite. Oh there you go. Nice. That was good. Did the wind push you around a little bit? I just find I'm like you know focusing on the end target and I'm just like yeah it's gusts. That was fun though. That was cool. You guys you've eaten these you've tried these before too. What's that? What do you got there? I got a cliff bar. Hey cliff. Cliffy. So I got um oatmeal raisin walnut. Sounds traditional. You're even smiling because you're like I'm the sissy one. The white chocolate macadamia nut. Dude. I wanted to I thought these things would taste horrible so I wanted them. Why didn't you just bring s'mores out? Oh look at that though. Yeah now you're who's laughing now? That looks tasty. It doesn't taste as good as it sounds. It's not horrible but there's a weird cardboardy taste or something. Really? We're getting ready we're getting ready to kind of venture off with our with our packs on so we're trying to juice up on a little bit of energy and I mean I've heard a lot of people talk about cliff energy bars. I'm not really into caffeine pills or any of that stuff so something a little bit more natural I guess. I don't I don't want anything fake. Have you tried these before? I have I actually once in a while I'll take them to work with me. And then you like the. But you know it's it's like this one looks. Oh yeah. It's a little. I don't know. This one's nice and chewy though because it's got raisins and stuff in it. If it gives us. Litterer. If you got if it gives us the energy we need because we're going to be full rucksacks and trying to do the loop of that entire mountain there so it may be like what mile and a half two miles. Yeah it's pretty it's pretty big it's pretty big from the air it looks small but down here it's big. Yeah oh geez. Traveling in the desert is usually safest early morning or evening as the midday sun is relentless and heat exhaustion can happen very quickly. Chris and I wanted to fully appreciate the power of the desert and understand what it's like to be exposed to the full power of these elements. We've decided to go on a walk at high noon around the hill near our camp. Another important fact to keep in mind is that distances in the desert can be extremely deceptive. What looks like two miles may actually be 10. Fail to pack adequate supplies like enough water and you may end up feeding the buzzards. All right meatball get your pack on. So we're ready to go on a 14 mile hike. We're not doing that I'm staying here. I'm pretty sure that we have way too much stuff packed but yeah yeah we've got everything we need in these packs tents sleeping pads sleeping bags food water everything in case something happens out there so. And it's part of training so we got to get used to what it's going to be like. You got to know if it's going to be too darn heavy or not. How does that feel? Well right this second it's fine but about five feet down the road it might not be so good. So I love this package. And yours is it's the mystery ranch right? Mystery ranch. Yeah so and that's what you recommended I got the same one on mine. Mystery ranch uh this is the actual ruck. Yeah. Where yours is like the you know a different has more compartments. Yeah yeah. It's just a ruck pack. Oh yeah. Meaty! Hey you didn't get me a name tag. You see that trauma kit I have? Yeah. That's for this. For when I get a rattlesnake bite. Oh this is for you. I forgot to give this to you. In case a rattlesnake attacks. Yeah. Help me! I'm falling and I can't get up. Help me. Just I got tired just lifting it up on the air. It's a pretty good size pack. Oh yeah. Maybe you could just bring the trailer with you. Oh my god that's a lot of weight man. But you got a you got a good size tent. Yeah. And a good size sleeping pad. It's not it's a high-end tent but it's meant for expedition and meant to last and durability not not be super ultra lightweight. Right right. Looking good. Get your hat on. Don't want to signal any airplanes up there. It took you a second for that one. So we're we're going at 11 27 which is in the almost the height of the heat of the day which is the best plan. And we're heading that way. Right around that whole mountain. Around this giant mountain here which it looks it's a lot bigger than it looks because it's wide at the base. So let's go. We're off. So we're walking along this this path here. We saw some lizards coming in and out of here but these are these are some of the places where you could find uh snakes. Yeah like I'm like I I know I saw a lizard but maybe he's just there temporarily. Yeah he might be gone now like in the mouth of a snake or something. Because those holes are way too big like even you're looking at that one. Yeah. Those tiny little lizards are not making those holes. You don't want to go sticking your hands in those holes. But there's a secret thing in there. No. It's a prize like a cracker jack box. Yeah here's your surprise. So this stuff we're walking. Oh my god. It's it's a thick uh like a dry riverbed and it's it's about this thick where your feet will actually sink in like through my boots. So it's like walking on the beach though with 50 pounds on your back and in shoes. Yeah these are at least 50 pounds like I'm thinking they're more dude. We're overloaded for sure but it's a matter of we gotta learn what we can do without. Yeah yeah it's definitely challenging walking on this stuff. Oh my god I'm starting to feel the heat now too though. It's uh. Less wind less wind around here. We're at 2200 feet and it is 87 degrees out Fahrenheit. Oh my god. So it's a good test. It's almost noon which means it's gonna get hotter. It's gonna get hotter. By one o'clock it'll be the heat of the day. So good. So we're about we're a little over halfway. It feels like it's going to be just a little over maybe just two miles. Uh it feels like a lot farther with the the soft ground though right? This is at least a bit better than the other side which is like felt like a beach. This is this is like a um we're almost on a road kind of which is where the BLM would go out or something to service some huge of those big towers. What's BLM? They may not know what BLM is. BLM is the Bureau of Land Management. That's the federal these are federal lands like the deserts out here all federal. I wanted you to show them because I had my brainstorm idea was to later on not right after this was to try and climb the summit of that and then after seeing all the holes here. Where? Oh yeah. There's a cave oh right up toward the top a big cave. There was a bigger one around there. I think you could go in that thing. I'm not going in there. What are you crazy? But I'd have to hold on to rocks and if there's snakes in there I'm not getting bitten. Yeah. Not just look at me. I mean you got to be really aware of that stuff though you know because it is it's as simple as grabbing rocks for a fire pit or climbing up something that has enough vertical pitch to it that you got to use your hands. Yeah. That's when it happens man that's when it happens. I don't want to get I've never been bitten by a snake and I don't plan on starting. Look at that big hole right there. Oh yeah. Oh there's something down there. What is that? There's something. That's not a snake unless it's an anaconda. It's the desert anaconda. Look at that something dug that out. Do you see that? Oh yeah. Dude that's huge. What the heck is out here? I thought you said there wasn't any animals. It's a badger. Is it snakes and stuff? That's not a snake. That's a mountain lion. Let's get out of here. All right so we just got back from about a 2.3 mile hike around the hill. How you feeling? Yeah I don't know like I feel tired. I feel exhausted. Parts of my like you were saying like when we're coming around there are parts of your legs that we didn't I didn't think would I guess from like you said like balancing yourself. Yeah. Trying to like compensate with the pack and then the uneven sand and it's just like all right and then the heat of course you got the sun blazing down. It was when the no when there was no wind on that side that's when it was when the sweat was just killing me but it's lunchtime it's time to eat something. So we circled we circled this whole mountain all the way down. Not too bad I mean both did it no problem you but like again you could feel you could feel areas in your leg compensating for the extra weight but then with the wind blowing your pack so yeah it's a good it's good practice something to uh to strive for getting better at. After our walk the midday heat seemed to have drained us of all remaining energy. Oddly enough neither of us felt like eating. I believe we may have been experiencing some mild dehydration despite constantly drinking water. After resting at camp for most of the afternoon we decided to set up our tents as we noticed the sun was setting a lot faster than we had anticipated. Is that your tent in there? This is my tent right here. That's it looks like it compacts more. Yeah it's it's not a it's not like a stuff sack it's just a or a you know scruncher. Yeah. But this is uh it's a small. And self-standing? It's a yeah. Yours is gonna be more fun putting together than mine that's for sure. It's a small one person tent. Yeah. So it's pretty cool and it's coyote one of my favorite colors of of gear. That's the same color as mine actually. Yeah I like I just like that color for gear you know. Yeah. So I got um some stakes which I don't need. Delicious I love them. Poles. Yep good for dancing on. Pole dance. Stakes and poles. Sounds good. Now I have set this up before once. Yeah. You can see I put ranger bands on here instead of because I knew those rubber bands would break at some point. Yeah I just took my rubber bands off. They're just ranger bands are bicycle inner tubes cut. Oh yeah. So they're they're just a lot stronger rubber band. They call them ranger bands. I don't know. It sounds cooler. Ranger danger. Stranger danger. Are those aluminum or carbon? These are aluminum. Aluminum. I think mine are the same way. Aluminum. Uh DAC. Easton and DAC are like the two. Yeah. Really well known. Aluminum's a lot lighter but they they bend and they can. You know they make baseball bats and stuff. Right. I know that. Well you do have some ties right? Oh it's got ties if you want to tie it. Oh okay. But it is freestanding right? This is the front. This is the little front piece so this would be fine. So there's one big one and then two small ones that go here. All right. Well yours is like really yours is actually. It's really small. Yeah yeah meant just so you can get in there right? I think mine's actually a two person because I wasn't sure like how fat I got. Yeah. Nice dude. Yeah yours is I think going to be a lot easier to set up. It's that's it. It's set up. So this is like a vestibule. Yeah. If you want to bring it straight out or down it rolls up. All right so. Come on inside. Come on inside. It's got good netting here. What I like about it lots of oh yeah lots of ventilation. So you see the idea here is like you can put your pack back in that irregular shaped corner and then at the end there's vents here and down here to pop up and that's an extra door right there. You can see the outline. The only problem with that door is that there's no mesh on it for to open it. So you just have to open right there where the solid line is there and down this way. All right well mine is a bit heavier like I says. Hilleberg? Yeah Hilleberg. So this is I think is that a Swedish or Norwegian tent maker? I've heard of them. They're meant for like expeditions to like Nepal and like crazy expeditions. Yeah I heard they're really good tents. Well they should because it cost me an arm and a leg. So look at that man. That looks really tough like the material right? This is the this is what I was saying like this base here. Yeah. This base here is is like so strong like it's so durable. Yeah. It's meant to go on like anything. So is that the bottom? That's the bottom. So we're going to fold it out there and then pull this out. I fold it in. See look at all the cables. Oh wow yeah. Still 87 degrees so. Delicious. The sun is just about those shadows are getting long the sun's just about to drop behind this mountain behind us but I still think we got about 40 minutes of light I think or less or less. And then we got to get the fire started. We got to get the fire started. I don't even know what this is. All right so. You can pole volt with this thing right? I've only built this once. All right so now we start spreading this out like that like that and then it yeah it just naturally goes into place and then feed it into this holder. Yep. Pull up this other side. Yeah there's a lot to this. It almost takes two people to set up huh? Two-person tent. I'm not kidding. Oh shoot those were not in. They were in pretty deep. Oh jesus. I mean these are sure lightweight stakes. Yeah why are they like that? That's not so cool. It's set up. So it's a it's a really nice tent but we found that it's it's difficult to set up in some wind. I mean this nice quality but pain in the butt tent. This area here is for like it's like a vestibule. So it's covered from like uh rain and everything. You put your shoes and everything else in here so it's out of the rain and you put whatever you want in there and then I've actually never even been in here yet. Get a good shot of your butt going in. Yeah. So I mean it's I guess this is the vents. I'm gonna want this open anyway right? Yeah. Um well you have like a little uh bridge line in there. You can hang stuff from like your stinky socks or a flashlight. Oh yeah. Bridge line. I didn't even see that. Dude where's is that it? That's the vent here? This is the vent? Well and you got a vent at this side. Oh and it's all open at the bottom. There's no there's no uh I don't think there's any. There's got to be room. There's got to be something on that. That's all mesh right here on the outside. Oh so maybe this goes sealed up. And then you've got this vestibule here vent. So it blows straight through the long ends of the vent. Does that open up? Yeah. It does? Yeah. Why not? And then that's. I got a knife. Oh yeah. All right. Yeah it does. There's zippers here. Yeah. It opens up. All right. So just it'll turbo right through then. Yeah. Okay. That's actually and the breeze is blowing that way so it should shoot right through. Exactly. I think that's what they say you said. Yeah face it to the wind. Face that to the wind so it blows through the vents. Oh well well pain in the butt but hopefully it'll be a good night's sleep. All right this is this one. Training exercises not only help you acclimatize to certain environments but also allow you to test out your gear. After setting up two completely different styles of tents we quickly learned that not all tents work effectively in every type of terrain. In the desert a freestanding tent is definitely the way to go as the loose sand simply does not allow effective use of ground stakes. Fire time. All right you guys so where you can see it's uh 7 10 and the shadows are super long. We're about to lose sun so and some little gnats are coming out. We figured we'd try and get a fire started. We're gonna try and do it naturally. This is uh you know like a bush. I just ripped it off. It seems dry and flimsy. Guns collected some uh some bark shavings off the dead tree with the hat here. We've got small twigs a little bit bigger a little bit bigger than our bigger stuff's over there after we get it going. But um you think I should try it like this first like in this big rat's nest or? Yeah do it that'd be the easiest. I don't know. Try it like that first. Yeah yeah. If you get lucky. Should I put some of this in there? Then we'll be lucky. Yeah we're just gonna try and throw. I've got my fire kit here. I've got fat wood. I've got lighters. I've got you know wet fire tampons for guns. And actually tampons are really good because you break them open spread the cotton out and it makes a good fire. And then Vaseline to impregnate them. Yeah exactly. So we've got a pretty good uh good size fire steel here. My mora knife. You can try just from a distance first just to really get some hot coals on our hot. You can see it's smoking already dude. Oh yeah. I can you smell that bark? Yeah. There's some embers in there. Oh yeah. That's some hot sparks you're throwing on there. Oh yeah it's really good. You can smell that bark burning. It smells good. Yeah. It's a really weird wood. It almost looks when we were we were carving on a little bit earlier. I thought it was like it looks like mahogany when you start carving it. It's really really neat wood. You can really feel the heat from the sparks. Oh yeah. This just might not be a good tinder. Yeah I think I thought it was good. But let's see what else I have in here because there's some stuff I wanted to definitely. Oh you know what else I have? And the Vaseline too. I have um dryer lint. Oh I have dryer lint. Yeah and then you got the facial wipe swabs. All kinds of neat little things. We're trying it all. Let's try some dryer lint. I can probably pull some from my belly button. Oh look there's cat hair. There's cat hair and all kinds of fun stuff. Wow that's a lot dude. Hey we're gonna get fire going. That's like the color of your underwear. What? It might be. It might be. Oh yeah look at that. Let's see if we can get some of the smaller twigs going. I don't want to smother it. Oh that's good heat off that. Wow really good like dryer lint. Dude boom yeah. Dude that's a fire. The heat is unbelievable off that lint. Yeah. Don't burn your underwear. Yeah. Wow my goodness dude this is like a an inferno already. Get my rock out of there. This thing's a good rock. Dryer lint. Dude look at that dryer lint. Dude that's awesome. It didn't burn. It didn't like flame out quick and it was it was hot a hot flame. Hot hot topic. If you guys want to see like the contents of our fire kits and stuff let us know in the comments because we can do some some shorter videos at different times showing you. Yeah everything that's in it. Like what's in a uh it's a nice I got this it's a uh kufaru. I really like those little bags but it's perfect size and all different types of ways to start fires. So look at that. Yeah nice. Not too chubby. Almost time to eat. Yeah. All right you guys so we decided instead of doing like a freeze-dried meal or something because we're in the desert it just seemed fitting to go with MREs. Not sure why but um so I've got a vegetable lasagna vegetarian MRE. Is that the one you picked? Yeah and then Guns has got the uh beef roast with vegetables. If you guys aren't familiar some people might not be familiar with what MREs. These are meals ready to eat. These are what the military uses um and there's mixed mixed uh you know thoughts. There's like almost too much stuff in them usually. Well some people say they're okay. Some people say they're terrible. Yeah. Sometimes there's you know some good stuff and bad stuff. No I mean like packaging like they're big and bulky. Well I've heard people say they do what they call field strip. Field strip. They're MREs. So they'll take them apart and they'll see what's in here and keep with creamsicle cookie. What? Yes sir. Coffee, mince, salt, pepper, Tabasco. Yeah. Oh really? Spoon, chunky peanut butter. Oh I'm not so good. Candy toffee rolls. Dude I'm on a roll. What are you kidding me? Crackers. I better have as good as that. French vanilla cappuccino instant powder. What? And mango peach applesauce and for my. We're roughing it. Vegetable lasagna and it comes with its own hot pack you put in there. It's a chemical reaction so yeah. Just water and that's it. Yeah. You want to see what's in yours? Yeah I do. I'm actually excited now. Like if you've got a sweet tooth in that one that one's a pretty good one. Yours is really good. Yeah I'm glad I picked it. Jam. Come on. All right. Big money no whammies. We're starting off with cranberries sliced. Not sure what that means. Coffee. All right coffee. Mince. You know the what do they call it? Condiments. Yeah. Spoon. Delicious. Steak sauce. That's a good sign. Okay yeah yeah. Cocoa beverage powder. No you got french vanilla cappuccino and I get. Oh yeah. Hot chocolate. What am I 10 years old? This is thick. Beef pot roast with vegetables and gravy and it's thick. Where's my dessert? Oh the phone telephone. We've got oh what is this? Spiced pound cake. Oh yeah. Crackers and. Spiced pound cake. Oh you got chocolate peanut butter. Oh something. I mean I mean you got regular peanut butter. Dude how'd you get chocolate peanut butter? And then his heating element. So they're pretty cool. They're you know they're kind of neat. It's almost like one of those those subscription boxes you order. You never know what you're going to get inside. It's a box opening. So we're gonna we're gonna go ahead and you know put them in the elements heat them up and uh we'll try them out. We'll bring you guys back when we're when we're trying the stuff. They're gonna be so good. Try them. You got a nice little seat cushion. So I have like one of those little stadium seat cushions. I pulled it out of my backpack. I have it in my bag. He's like what's that? I said this isn't you know this is legit. I've been packing this with you. No wonder your pack's so heavy. If you're willing to carry it. Oh yeah. In your pack then you deserve to sit on it. It's foam like a little foam seat but it's it's perfect for this. This is go like that's pretty warm. It is pretty warm yeah. It's it has a chemical smell to it. Yeah I don't like the chemical smell. I'm a big fan of that. Big fan. Big fan. Yeah I'm actually pretty spent. You know from the heat. Yeah it's been a it's been an interesting day. I think we've I think we've actually learned a lot today in the fact that I come to the desert or I've been coming to the desert for a long time but just like half day little excursions to come out and shoot. Shooting or drive around. Drive around off road ride motorcycles and then I'm gone by noon and then even when I get home from that I'm tired. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And being here all day with the heat the sun beating down on us because we didn't have a good place to really get a lot of shade other than the mountains. And this tree. This tree was really good. The wind felt like it was it when it would blow it would cool us down but at the end of the day it's like the wind really spent you know makes you feel more spent as well because it dries the sweat off you so you tend to sweat more. We drink a ton of water like just a ton of water and I've only gone pee once today and I had to force myself. Yeah. Like it wasn't like oh I really got to go it's like I better go or something. I went and I barely went. Yeah it was like trickles like is that all you got? Trickle trickle. Yeah it was um so that's kind of weird too and it's you know not to gross anybody out but we drink a lot of water when you drink a lot of water you know your pee is clear that means you're hydrated. Well it was really yellowish. Yeah dark. So meaning we're probably dehydrated even though we felt like we drank a lot of water. Is that I thought you said you tried this and it looks. It is good. It looks like almost like barf. Mine actually looks like lasagna. See how I opened it sideways so I could get to the whole thing. It's not so uh warm at the top. Actually you know that tastes pretty good. It's not terrible. It's not it's not hot. I'm gonna put. I don't know what happened with that heating element. Well Tabasco time. It tastes like stew. That's what this tastes like stew. Tabasco. Disco stew. Not too bad. Like beef stew. Well it is beef stew isn't it? Oh it's beef pot roast. Oh here it's actually a big chunk of beef. Like look at that. Yeah that's real beef. That's real beef. They got noodles and stuff in this one. How is that? It's not bad you know. It's not bad. For like a ration though like if you were out and this is your you were out on some excursion and this is what you get to eat. That's pretty good. Plus you got tootsie rolls. There's noodles. There's like all black olives. That actually is really good. You know the other thing is we didn't really eat much today except you know a couple cliff bars and some a little bit of tuna. We brought too much uh food actually. Did we? Well I think we did. Like we thought because we weren't sure. Yeah. We were like oh and when we packed we were like wow this is hardly anything for two guys. We were saying earlier when we're when you come camping you got chips. You got like everything. Yeah yeah. You got like bags and bags of stuff and you're just gorging. Here we packed like okay this is what we need. This is what we might need. We're looking at snacks, lunch, snack, dinner. And a snack was like a cliff bar. Yeah yeah. Or a piece of licorice. Yeah. Licorice for the win. But we hardly went through it. We were like yeah just sitting. Well because it was hot and the heat of the day after we shot a little in the morning then we did we did that hike what was about 11. 11 a.m. We hiked around this big mountain. When we got back you know we were pretty spent and you could feel your back tighten up a little bit but the heat we had to just kind of sit and get in the shade of this tree drink water and we really relaxed. Yeah just trying to stay hydrated. You didn't feel like eating at that point. No it's too hot. You're like I don't know it's weird it is kind of a neat experience though. Yeah. You do I do drink a lot. I didn't feel like I was like dripping in sweat but I guess I was just constantly sweating because like we said we didn't go pee hardly any and the amount of water we were drinking so clearly we were sweating. I think that um we both came to the conclusion as it is now with the drought that we've had in California there's no way you could survive out here. There's no water. No water. Anywhere. The plants you know we we're cutting we're looking you put the bag on a lot of little things we're looking at like the vapor barrier thing. Yeah. It may prolong you or help you get out but there's no long-term survival. You're not you're not gonna walk 40 miles to civilization you know if you even know which direction it is. Yeah. So the desert environment is very dangerous especially this Mojave Desert where there's literally no water for for I don't know how far away the water would be even if there's streams or lakes you know anywhere around here. We spent we must have spent like can you imagine not having as much water as we did and having to walk an entire day through it. I couldn't imagine because we probably drank a half a gallon of water just walking around this this mountain about two miles or so right in that that area with with full packs on but still but. That's why it's training though man because it could have been dangerous if we thought oh this is all we'll need. Yeah. We could have put ourselves in like serious. That's what yeah this is the training desert like if we came out here and did survival and we got a knife and a paper towel you know a stick. We're not experts. We would be done we wouldn't have made it. So learning for us so. We're learning. One thing we did find that Guns has got a really high quality tent but tent stakes in this soft soft sand don't work good. I mean we could probably use we could probably use like they do in the snow where they put a stick they wrap around they bury it. Oh yeah yeah. You would have to probably adapt to that and not be able to use the regular stakes but what you found even though the quality of this tent is top notch. Yeah. You don't necessarily like the ones that you have to run all these lines out. I want it simple like I've had tents that I've gone camping many times before like just for fun. Yeah. And they've always been like yours easy two folds boom done. I don't care if they're not as strong that's a pain in the butt. Right. It really is. I couldn't imagine the wind was blowing a little bit imagine if it was snowing with the wind or raining and the wind. A blizzard and you're just like I just need shelter. That thing would have blown away how many times almost you know. It would not be good. It would it was tough to set up. I'm almost done mine. You've been talking more than me. Yeah I'm done. Oh man how did you do that? The Tabasco made this delicious. I've been eating the whole time you must have been shoveling that in. Listen I got a bulldozer over here. I'm telling you the Tabasco made this. Yeah. And because it was vegetarian it was just like the little spiral. Oh yeah I have tons of meat. Spiral noodles and things. It was good. It was good. I wouldn't eat it every day but but I for out here this is pretty good. Normally you come out here you're cooking steaks and carne asada and carnitas al pastor you know. Yeah. Making tacos and. I go camping I bring steak and hamburgers in the cooler. Chicken barbecue chicken. Yeah yeah. But this like this is what we did. We very carefully picked small portions and even though we did that we still brought too much food because of the heat. We just didn't feel like feel like eating. Tried to force ourselves to drink enough water to stay hydrated. Yeah it's very interesting. I'm curious too how how the lighting turns out right now because this it is. It's pretty dark. It's eight o'clock at night. Yeah. In the distance is we can see light. What was that? The moths they always attack me not you all day long. They like maple syrup. So the the light you can see it's the sun's down right you can just see the light from the sky and we got the fire right here. Hopefully you can hear a little crackling of that but I'm curious to see how the lighting turns out with just this this light you know this little bit of light lighting us up. Well let's enjoy this campfire before we go to bed. Yeah this was good you guys not too bad. I would say um I have a couple uh ex-army guys at work that say you got to be choosy in what you pick like the entree because some are okay like these and some are terrible. Oh really? So don't just expect to go get an MRE and to be perfect because this one that I had was vegetable lasagna and you had a beef stew. Beef pot roast with vegetables and gravy. And it wasn't bad. Yeah it wasn't bad at all. And these spoons are good you could actually keep this spoon for the freeze-dried stuff because they're long to get down in the bag. Delicious. I like it. Truth be told the MREs were actually pretty good. Then again when you're tired and really hungry almost everything tastes better. After a quick cleanup to deter any local wildlife from visiting our camp at night we decided to turn in. It's surprising how exhausting the desert is even when you spend majority of your time resting. The heat and extreme dryness just sucks the energy out of you. Good morning Chris. Hello. Hello. How was your sleep? My tent's a little too small for me. Once you get the air mattress and everything in there it pushes you know because it angles like this so you get higher up I get up on that angle so my head and my feet were touching the ends. Well both you and I used bigger like air mattresses because we're bigger boys. Yeah well and the other thing I find that I like it quick setup in and out and I think it's good if you're just gonna it once it's prepped. But last night I got in it to prep it which there's room to sit up and that's kind of a pain. Other than that it wasn't bad. Oh yeah you prepped like when it was dark. I was pumping up my thing inside there and there's only so much room so it wasn't terrible. I mean I had my watch on so I could see from like somewhere around midnight till about 4 a.m. I was sleeping on top of the bag with the jungle blanket and then at 4 a.m. it was pretty cold so I switched and actually got into the bag. Yeah I think it was the same thing like I was on I was on top of the bag for about an hour or so and then I just had it fully unzipped and I had it loosely draped on me. Yeah. And then probably mid like early morning like 2-3 or yeah around there that's when it was it got actually cold. It was down in the 50s. Yeah it was pretty cold. So there is you're right though and then your throat sounds all buggered too like you're like because of the cold air and stuff. The cold air yeah because I have to have all those vents open breathing that in. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What's for breakfast? I have uh what's left over from the MRE peanut butter and crackers. That's what I think I might can have that too. Well I got my chocolate peanut butter. Chocolate peanut butter and cracker time. If you've never been to the desert it really is an amazing experience but it demands your respect and requires that you pack adequate supplies especially enough water. For this specific part of the desert that we camped in what we realize is that long-term survival is simply not possible. As previously mentioned the Mojave Desert is the driest desert in North America. Finding water naturally is near impossible no matter what technique you use.