Surviving BITTER COLD in an Old Log Cabin Shelter | Minnesota

It's winter in the northern Minnesota wilderness. Snow has covered the ground and ice is beginning to form on the lakes and rivers. But nestled beneath the towering pines is a survival shelter and that's where we're headed. So come along as we attempt to turn this old log cabin shelter into a warm cozy home for the night. This is Tiny Cabin Life. We are on the western end of the Superior National Forest in northern Minnesota. It's a massive forest at over 3 million acres and borders Lake Superior as well as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. We've just arrived at the Sturgeon River Trail System, a series of hiking and ski trails that follow the river and make their way into the surrounding area. The Sturgeon River is beautiful. It's known for having crystal clear water making it a great spot to get out and do some fishing. However on this trip we're not going to go near the river. Instead we're headed to a nearby lake with a log cabin shelter nestled within a grove of towering red pines. And so my job today is to turn this simple shelter into a cozy cabin for the night. All right we're loaded up and ready to go. We don't have very far to get to our log cabin shelter. It's maybe like a half a mile or so. However I'm not sure what the trail conditions are going to be like. As you can see we definitely have some decent snow on the ground and the trail reports don't really tell us what we're going to expect out there. So I'm hopeful that we're going to get there without any problems so that way we can get set up go get some firewood and get the place warm. All right let's go. And so we were off riding into the woods with Ellie leading the way. Now I do want to note that later on in the season these trails are groomed for cross-country skiing. However there's not enough snow for that yet and so our fat tire bike isn't damaging the trail at all. We arrived at the cabin without much issue. There were a couple times I had to walk the bike and trailer up a hill but for the most part it was smooth sailing. All right not too bad of a shelter. Place is pretty clean. There's not really any trash. There's just some debris from the firewood and stuff. Otherwise you do have some of the graffiti on the walls. You see that unfortunately on most of these places. So that's that's a bummer but you know it is what it is. But overall I'm impressed. This is great. It's absolutely beautiful here. We're tucked in this grove of red pines. We're right on the side of the lake. A beautiful spot to spend the day and night. I tried to tidy up the place as best I could. Then it was time for the most important task. Getting this place warm. My hope is to heat up the cabin a little bit with this wood stove. The trick will be seeing if we can find a way to get the stove pipe to exit out the side of the structure while still having the tarp seal the place up as much as possible. Well I can definitely say that the stove heats it up in here. Enough to notice it. It's not like piping hot by any means. I mean you can see my breath but it's a lot better than outside. So it'll at least do something for us tonight even if it's not you know nice warm and cozy. Dear God thank you for helping us get here safely. Help us to stay warm tonight and to have a good down to the lake just to check it out before we went out and cut some firewood. There's a nice short steep trail leading from the cabin down to the shoreline. Wow just gorgeous. Man oh man I was doing just a little ice check. I knew it wasn't thick but I thought like maybe the water would be a couple inches deep. That went over my boots and I'm very very glad that my feet didn't get soaked because I wouldn't be good right now. The bitter cold temperatures that we've had lately have done a lot for ice formation on our lakes and while it's still pretty thin before you know it we'll be walking and then able to drive out onto the ice to do some fishing. It's amazing to me how fast we went from fall to winter. You know our fall lasted a very very long time don't get me wrong but it kind of just like shifted overnight and now we're just like in a total winter wonderland up here. We dropped by the cabin quick to pick up the chainsaw then we just started looking around in the woods for any sort of down trees that we could cut up for some firewood. So this pine right here looks perfect. It's dead. It's downed already. All I'm gonna have to do is take off some of these branches and then I'm gonna cut a couple of big chunks off that I'll then haul closer to the cabin and then we'll cut them up there so we don't have to do as much work hauling pieces of wood you know back and forth too much. That ought to do it. Now we just gotta haul these things back to the cabin. Doing all this work and heavy lifting has me on the verge of breaking a sweat. Sweating can be extremely dangerous as it can lead to hypothermia in the winter time and so it's very important to make sure you're able to add or shed clothing layers when need be. I cut the larger logs into smaller pieces that would fit well in our wood stove. Well we definitely should have enough firewood to be able to blast the stove tonight and in the morning but the sun is starting to set and that means I gotta get a fire going in our pit because I want to be able to sit out here and enjoy it as long as possible tonight so we don't This is from Big Sky Brewing in Missoula, Montana where I lived for five years. It's a good winter beer. It's nice and dark and very very tasty. Pretty soon it was time to get some dinner going. I fed Ellie first and then started to get my food together. So for dinner tonight I have some goulash. That's right Riley made this the other night and it was so good so I'm really stoked to eat it. Since I was just eating leftovers all I had to do was heat it up for a bit over the fire and so before I knew it it was time to eat. I love me some good leftovers especially reheated over a campfire. Oh fantastic. Man there's nothing quite like being out in the woods like this to make you feel alive. You know when I take my cabins out there's a door to shut. There are locks on the doors but uh you know this you're a little more exposed and uh as much fun as it is I always end up feeling very grateful that I have a home to go back to. You know it definitely helps me count my blessings that's for sure. Eventually it was time to head inside and get a fire started in the stove. Well we got a nice hot fire going in here. It's weird when I shut the door to the stove the thing totally dies but if I have the door open it rages and it's letting off some some decent heat right now. But eventually it got late and I knew it was time to try to get some sleep. All right well the fire has burned down. I've got Ellie in her sleeping bag and it's about time to go to bed. I picked up this pop-up screen thing that attaches to my cot basically to keep mice from crawling on me in the middle of the night. There tends to be mice in these shelters and this will just give me at least the peace of mind to hopefully get some decent sleep so I'm glad to have it. All right it's time for bed. We'll see you first thing in the morning. Good night. Good morning. It's about 6 a.m. I actually slept okay despite the fact that this sleeping bag did not really cut it. I was barely warm enough to like sleep. I could get myself into a position where I was like warm enough to like drift off but yeah this this bag's not cutting it anymore. It's supposed to be rated to zero degrees which should have been fine but definitely didn't hold out well last night. Good morning girl. Good morning. Now that we're up it's time to get some coffee going. It's kind of a bummer. I don't want to make a fire in the stove because the second it's light I'm going to be packing out of here and I don't want it to be all hot but it's cold. It's really really cold. Well we're all packed up. Shelter's cleaned out and I'm happy to say we left this place better than we found it. I was able to cut and split a ton of firewood for the next visitor and that's what you're supposed to do when you come to these types of places. They're kept up and maintained by visitors like us and so you always want to find some way to give back and I'm glad we were able to do that. So we saddled up and made our way back to the truck and I'm grateful to say it was an uneventful exit. All right that's going to do it for the video. Thank you so much for coming along. This is one of those adventures that really places you in the moment. Being forced to kind of roll with what nature sends at you and it's always a meaningful experience. I mean I just love sitting around the campfire huddling around the wood stove and watching the lanterns flicker. I just think it's the best and I hope you enjoyed it as well. I do want to give a special shout out to our patrons who generously donate to this channel but to all of you who watch and like, subscribe, all of that, thank you so much. It means the world to us and it's an absolute joy to make these videos for you. But now it's time for me to load up the truck so we can get out of here. I'll see you next week. God bless.