Secret House Under A Rock In The Mountains _ Stealth Hut _ Wilderness _ Survival _ Shelter _ Snow.

Thanks for clicking on the video. Whether you're a regular viewer of this channel or if you're new to the show, then please stay tuned until the end of the video as I have something very important to tell you. So I'm in Austria. This is actually where the YouTuber Survival Lily lives. But don't worry, Lily, I'm not here to stalk you. I'm actually in the region where Ötzi the Iceman was found. And for those of you that don't know about Ötzi the Iceman, well, his 5,500-year-old remains were found, well, they were found thawed out in a melting glacial pool somewhere on the top of these mountains. His discovery played a huge part in us modern-day people understanding how our caveman ancestors lived, from their diet, the clothing they wore, and the tools they carried, which allowed them to do things like hunt food and create fire. So hold on. Before we get into the video, let's just take a moment to appreciate this beautiful landscape with the stiff, snow-capped mountain peaks to the hugely resourceful pine forests leading down to the snow-covered valley and the power of the meltwater-raging rivers. Folks, welcome to Austria. So I'm actually here on holiday, having driven over 18 hours to be right here, reunited with a country that I spent a lot of time in as a child, mainly thanks to my parents for taking me on countless snowboarding holidays to this exact area. And for those that are regular viewers, you'll all be aware of my passion for the outdoors, that being building primitive shelters, natural crafts, foraging for something to eat, or even coastal camps with a bit of fishing, free diving for things like crabs and lobsters. So I just had to come back here and take you awesome subscribers with me right here to Austria. You know, as much as I love and appreciate the country which I live in, that being England, the downside is that there isn't that much nature and it's just too overpopulated with way too many people and too many cars, all crammed onto one little island. So this is a great escape. So let's start off with making a mountain brew. And then I want to talk to you about something that's been bugging me for a long time. Something that affects not only me, but you guys too. So before I do light the fire, I want to just show you what I'm going to use. And that is this. You've all seen it before. You've seen me use it on the channel. You've probably seen lots of other people on YouTube using it. In fact, you've probably used it yourself. This is birch bark and it contains lots of oils. This is great for fire lighting. So I've got with me, I've got a kuxa, which is the wooden cups that you normally drink out of. I've got my small kettle. I've got no water. I've got a bit of biltong. That's pretty much all the food I have with me today. I've walked two hours to get here. I've got another three hours until the sun goes down. So I'm going to probably head off within the next hour. But the plan now is to make a cup of tea and I'm going to use this, which I found by the stream about two hours back along this mountain path. Remember, I'm in the middle of nowhere here. And I've just come across this and it's just a great excuse to stop and make a cup of tea and tell you about why you need to stay tuned until the end of the video. So I did bring my knife with me and well, it's because I always need a knife. In fact, well, it's very handy when I'm out in the woods, especially on a mountain walk. So I've got my knife and built into the sheath, there's this, which is a fire steel or a ferrocerium rod. You've all seen that before, but for those that haven't, it's basically a piece of metal that you strike another piece of metal onto, that being the back of a knife, and it produces very hot sparks like this. So now using my tinder, well, the tinder that I mentioned that I showed you is this silver birch bark. When I peeled it off, it was a bit damp. Since then, it's been in my pocket and it's now, well, I would say bone dry, but it's not quite bone dry, but it should be dry enough to set light to using these two being the knife and the fire steel. You can just hear that it's dried up nicely. It's a bit sort of crunchy sounding. This should go up really quick. And once this is lit, well, when there's a small flame, what I'll do is I'll gradually put on some of these bone dry twigs that will hopefully take my small fire into a bigger fire, allowing me to make a cup of tea. So there's a few ways you can set light to these strips or this bark. One way is to, well, my preferred method is I like to pull it into very small strips, kind of like this. You don't need to do it too thin, but the thinner you get it, the quicker and the easier it will be to create this fire. So I've got a few of these strips. I'm now gonna place them in the palm of my hand and just roll them into a ball. And this loosens up the bark. It separates that kind of loose white bark from the inner brown bark. And then once it's in the ball, I'm then gonna place it down here, pin it down with my fire steel. So the snow is melted and it's now boiling. I've added my tea bag. Well, my nature's tea bag. It's basically pine needles. So that's now infusing for a few minutes, but I thought in the meantime, I'll just show you around this amazing place that I've just discovered. So just looking at the front of this shelter, you can tell that at one point they did put lots of moss in between all the layers of wood. There's moss there and there's layers of moss there and down there as well. But as with a lot of these shelters, it takes a lot of management. Well, you need to keep replenishing the materials you put into it. For example, the moss. It's because things like mice and birds will come along, they'll land here, they'll pull out all the moss, and then they'll just fly off with it and build a nest. So I reckon, you know, whenever this was built, which probably was quite a long time ago, I think all of these would have been filled with moss in order to reduce any cold air getting in and hot air getting out. One other thing that I do love about this, just this, you know, a simple little heart in those shutters. And also here in the door, you can see there's actually a heart in the door as well. And then they've got this, a bit of a door handle. It's brilliant, isn't it? So now let's take a look inside. So there's a bench. You see there's a bench going along here. It's not very wide. I don't know how comfortable you'd be sleeping there, but, you know, it's just a bench. It gets you off the ground. And I did find lots of small twigs under here. So I was wondering if they were there for a reason, in order for people like myself to come along and use those for the fire lighting, which I didn't realise until I came in here. But I have used a few. What I think I'll do is I will replenish what I've taken. In fact, I'm gonna put more back than I used because it's only fair with these mountain cabins is when you turn up and use materials, you not only replace it, but you put back a little bit more than you used. And then at the back of the shelter, we've got this. So I wasn't sure whether to light the fire here. It's almost like there's a bit of a skylight coming through. This would be a great place for a big fire. But the reason why I didn't, one, because there's snow. And the other reason is because there already was a fire area right here. Someone had already had a few previous fires right here. So that's why I thought, right, just a little fire there. It can keep me warm with me sitting there. And yeah, that's all I needed. Just a small fire for a cup of tea. So before I do leave, I'm actually gonna be putting all of this out and I'm just gonna scrape it all back just to make sure it's all how I found it, basically. So as you can see, this has been built under a huge rock. This is something that I would like to do back in England if I can find somewhere to do this. Well, is it stable? Is it safe? I pretty much think it is. These rocks have all been dropped here from glacial melt thousands and thousands of years ago. So they've just been wedged into position by nature. And you can see someone's come along and they've just built a little front door on it, or a front wall, followed by a window and a door. So you can see there's a little sign there that actually says Hexenhöhle. Hexenhöhle means witch's cave. Don't worry, I didn't translate that. I actually know a little bit of German. So yeah, I know that Hexenhöhle means witch's cave. Hexen is witch, or witch's, and Höhle is cave. But I just think this is great. This is the sort of thing that I really wanna build back in England. It's so easy to do. You just need to find a few rocks. Well, if you can find rocks like this. And it's rather than just look at these fallen rocks, you can, which is what quite often I do when I'm shelter building, is I'll find a fallen tree or a natural something where there's a hole or a lean over or an overhang. I'll find these sort of places and build shelter. So I'm really keen to go back to England and try and find me something like this in order to build and turn into a little, well, my own little witch's cave. And if we just go around the back of it, you'll see it's just, well, there's rocks everywhere. There's pine trees everywhere. There's big, you might be able to see, there's a big mountain through there. You probably can't see it from the brightness on the screen. Yeah, lots of moss and wild forageable, well, wild edibles. I've passed some penny warts today. Penny warts are a lovely little edible. They taste a little bit like a mange tout, those kind of, those peas. And then I've also found some wood sorrel as well. So right now I'm standing on top of the roof of the shelter. It's just such an amazing place. I need to come back here in the summertime, spend a few weeks camping, and maybe build me one or two shelters like this. Hey, Amber. So you saw that I put the pine needles in the kettle. Well, I'm gonna place this in there, which means now when I pour it, the pine needles will stay in the kettle, leaving me with a nice infused pine needle tea. And there we have it. Mountain tea. Fragrant, it's tasty, full of vitamins, but there isn't much color, but that's fine. As long as it's a nice liquidy warm drink. Lovely warm drink on this very, very cold day. And I've also got some sort of classic sort of mountain snack food. I've got some jerky. Really nice, beautiful stuff, with a slight, slight bit of chili. This is made by a company called The Steak Detective, based here in the UK. If anyone's interested, I will whack a link below. Go check them out, really good stuff. Okay, now let's get to the main point of this video, and that being one of the dark sides of YouTube. Look, YouTube is a great platform that, for example, allows people like myself to share knowledge and passion for the outdoors in order for you guys, the viewers, to learn something new. And that's exactly what I love doing. But it's not all fun and games. There's a dark side to it, and a side that I've been almost, well, I've almost no control over. But what do I mean? What am I getting to with this? Well, there are people trying to imitate me, trying to represent bushcraft tools in the comment section on YouTube and Instagram. What I mean is that there are quite often, well, there's quite often somebody in the comment section of my videos claiming to be me, saying something like, congratulations, you've won a prize. Please call or text the WhatsApp number above to claim your prize, when it wasn't me. Okay, so these fraudsters have basically created a Google account called Bushcraft Tools. Not only have they used my logo, but they've also put in a WhatsApp number or a telegram number in their name telling you that you've won something, and then they try to scam you. I want to strongly advise you, everyone watching, to not only ignore these comments, but also to please report them to YouTube. They seem to reply to anyone that has commented on my videos, and they tell them about this so-called prize by using a scamming method known as phishing. So to be clear about this, I need to tell you that I would never contact you with a, well, from a suspicious copycat account saying anything like this. So whatever you do, please do not call, text, or email these fraudsters. And whatever you do, do not give them your bank details. It doesn't only happen to me, but it also happens to lots of other YouTubers. And unfortunately, it's becoming more and more common. So the only way to combat this and to ensure you guys don't fall for it is to tell you about it. And that's exactly the message I want to get across to you in this video. So my question to you is, have you ever been scammed? Or have you ever encountered these phishing emails or letters? Please let me know in the comments section and hopefully you'll be able to share your experience which will help to prevent others from being scammed. With that being said, I just want to say a huge, a massive, a big, gigantic thank you to everyone that has been subscribed. And if you're watching this but you haven't yet subscribed, then feel free to hit that red subscribe button. And while you're there, smash the like button. Again, thank you for being part of this amazing journey that YouTube has allowed me to pursue and almost turn it into a job. Final thing, for those that do use Instagram, please go over to my channel, give me a follow under the handle Bushcraft Tools and drop me a comment on my latest post. Finally, I want to wish you all a happy new year and thank you again for being part of this journey. I wish you all the best for the year 2023 and hope to see more of you commenting, liking and sharing my future videos. So until then, I'm gonna finish this tea, continue my exploration of this wonderful mountain region and hey, who knows, I might just grab my snowboard and hit up one of these slopes. See you in the next video, goodbye. Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe.