Camping under 12 ft (4 m) of Snow in a Blizzard - Storm Proof Survival Shelter in Alaska's Mountains

Luke here at the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel and I'm camping in really deep snow in a blizzard. It's gonna be fun. That looks good. All right, I think I'm done digging. I'm exhausted. Oh, dry gloves. What do I need? All right, there we go. Let's get some water boiling. I am so hungry. Oh, it's getting cold. Well guys, now that I'm done digging, let me give you a tour of the shelter here. Look at that. It's a lot of digging. We got vaulted ceilings there. Well, to give you an idea how deep the snow is, this pole is nine feet tall. That's three meters and it doesn't quite reach the roof. So we're about 11 and a half, 12 feet deep or about four meters. The crazy thing is I didn't even dig to the bottom. Now the tunnel I'm sleeping in tonight goes about six and a half feet into the side of the hill and then this part is about seven and a half feet long. Well, originally I was just going to dig the tunnel this way but I ended up hitting something solid and couldn't go any deeper. So I ended up having to hang a right. So my rough estimate is I ended up digging out about 400 cubic feet of snow. So yeah, moved a lot of snow today. I didn't bring any fancy pants camping meals tonight. I've got a leftover MRE packet. I think this is Asian style beef strip. We're going to warm that up in our water here. Once that's warmed up, I'm going to make some of this chicken and rice here. Never tried this flavor before. We'll see if it's any good. Now I'm going to make a cup of warm tea while I wait for my dinner to hydrate. I'm freezing. Oh that's good. I am so thirsty and so cold. This tastes amazing. Kind of a funky flavor but it tastes so good right now. I'm just going to mix up the MRE with this thing and see if it tastes a little better. These dehydrated camping meals are really nice after a hard day like today, but I have a hard time eating them more than a couple days in a row. That's it. All right, this is how I do the dishes. For dessert, I've got one of these shelf life apple turnovers. This thing will last like 20 years before it goes bad or something like that. I'm going to heat it up by putting it on top of the pot like that. All right, we're going to give this a try. A couple year old apple turnover. Let's see if it's any good. No, it's kind of dry. Maybe I'm just hungry, but this thing tastes pretty good. All right, I brought along the second dessert. It's a chocolate covered macadamia nut with caramel, but it's frozen so I gotta thaw it out. Oh that's good. Oh that tasted wonderful. All right, I filled up my water bottle with boiling water. I'm going to throw it in my bag to keep me warm tonight, but in the meantime, I'm putting it in my jacket. Hey guys, check out my snow shovel. This thing took a beating today. The bottom two feet of the snow was almost ice. Black Diamond makes this shovel and I've had it for about four or five years and I have used and abused this shovel, but I think it might be time to retire it and get a new one. I'll definitely be buying another one. This is a good shovel. It is so quiet here under the snow, but every once in a while I'm hearing this noise. At first I thought it was an animal, but I think the wind is kicking up. Let's see. Oh yeah. We got a good 15-20 mile per hour wind whipping through the mountains here. Check it out, the wind's blowing a snowdrift over my snowshoes. I better put those away before I lose them. You can't tell the wind's blowing at all when you get down here in the shelter. And since the wind is coming down from the mountains from that direction, that arch is keeping the wind from swirling down here into the trench. That's the big advantage of these snow shelters. They keep you out of the wind, but you got to build them correctly. That's why you never want the entrance to your snow cave and the entrance to your shelter pointing in the same direction. You never want to give the wind a straight shot into your sleeping area. The other advantage of these snow caves is that if you build them right, they're always about 15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Now that's not warm, but if it's zero degrees out or negative 20, it's a big deal. Another trick is you want to make sure the bed is always at least 12 inches above the floor of the trench. Sometimes the cold air will kind of collect in the bottom of the trench and you don't want your sleeping bag to be the lowest point in the shelter. Now that I'm not moving around and shoveling snow, I'm getting really cold. I'm going to hop in that sleeping bag. Go ahead and put on my down booties. These things are so great for keeping your feet warm. Western Mountaineering makes these. All right, got my clown shoes on and my stretchy pants. Let's see if I can get into my bag without getting myself all snowy. Makes a big difference if you make your shelter big enough so that you don't have to crawl on your hands and knees. Oh, that hot water bottle feels so good. With these snow caves, you always got to make them wide enough and tall enough that you can roll around a little bit and never touch the snow. If even a small part of you rubs up against the snow in the night, it's going to be so cold. Don't want any part of that. Well, it gets dark really early up here in Alaska, so I got a little bit of time before I need to go to sleep. I think I'm going to listen to an audiobook. All right, guys, it's late. I'm going to turn off the camera and I'm going to see you in the morning and I'm going to sleep in. It's been a long day. Good morning. I've been sitting in my bag for way too long. It's nice and toasty in here. Guys, that windstorm that started last night got a lot worse, but it is so cozy in here, you can't hear or feel any wind at all. I mean, listen, you can't hear anything. You know, it's not exactly warm in here, but without the wind, it's a really manageable temperature. All right, enough talking. I got to go use the bathroom. Look at that. We got some serious snow in the shelter. My gloves are so frozen. Yep, those are frozen solid. My stove is under here. There's like six, eight inches of snow in the bottom of my shelter. Oh my goodness. Holy mackerel. Oh, it is really blowing out here. Look at that. The wall is completely buried. Look at that. It's got to be gusting 50 miles per hour out here. It's hard to stand up. You can barely see my stairs. Oh, look at this. Oh, well, it looks like I got some digging to do if I want to make breakfast. There's so much snow being blown into the trench. I don't think I can get the stove lit out here. So I'm going to go ahead and cook inside here. For breakfast, we got something called the bandito scramble, cheese and eggs and potatoes and stuff. Well, I brought my tin can fireplace with me, but I didn't light it last night because I was so tired, but I could really use something to warm my gloves up right now. So I'm gonna go ahead and light it up. Because there's not a lot of firewood around, I brought a chunk of one of those fireplace logs you buy at the supermarket. There we go. A little chunk like that will only last a couple hours, but it makes a really nice, cozy little fire. Works good for drying out gloves. We're going to try my bandito scramble. That is not appetizing. Adding too much water didn't help it. I'm gonna eat some trail mix so my mouth will stop being angry at me. Well, my stuff is quickly getting buried in snow. I need to straighten up before I start losing equipment. I'm all packed up, but I think I better get out of here. This storm's only getting worse and the snow's getting deeper and my fingers are so cold. Yeah, this is a good shelter, but it is quickly filling up with snow. Probably got five feet of snow has accumulated in the foot of the trench since I got up this morning. You see that? It's time to go home. All right, let's go see if we can find my snowshoes. Time to get out of here. Which way do I go? If I can get in the trees, I can get a block from the wind. It's just so cold I can't get my car keys out of my pocket. I gotta warm them up in my armpits for a little bit. It's a little blustery out there, but hopefully you guys enjoyed this video. If you want to see more videos from the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel, don't forget to click subscribe. We put out new videos every Saturday morning. All right guys, I'll see you next Saturday. If you like this video, don't forget to check out the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel where we have hundreds of videos just like this. And don't forget to click subscribe so you can see other great videos every Saturday morning. And hit that bell button so you'll get notifications. Thanks for watching.