48h Camp and Build Large Permanent Super Shelter on Newly Acquired Property

Hey guys thanks for tuning in. Me and buddy Sean are out in the woods today. We're up in central Ontario. We've got this whole big property of area we've never been to before. We have lots of things to discover, lots of things to look around for. I think our plan is today to search around and find an area to make a big semi-permanent super shelter. Adirondack style? Adirondack style, that's the point. Yes, three-sided with a wooden floor. Yeah and then leave it up up there because this is some place we will be coming back to. You may ask why we're using snowshoes when there's ground that you can see but you poke through this snow you post fall quite easily these snowshoes are helping that back up to the water I guess. Well we're just trying to skirt a beaver pond right now which is kind of sketchy but it's easier than walking through the woods and I think might have come up on a suitable location. We found a couple so far that look okay just not ideal came across a few spots that were suitable but I think this spot is ideal I think we came to the same conclusion that we like this spot behind me there's a hill going down and a stream you could probably hear it so there's our access to water we're up on a ridge we're not in a cold well like a valley we have a lot of building materials now we can tie off to this big hemlock and this smaller balsam fir make a two-man we'll both sleep uh head to foot and we'll make it back far so one of us can sleep here one of us can sleep here just our feet will be crossing a bit we have a lot of building materials and the wind direction is the right way the sun directions are the right the right way we're going to have the sun open to the south the shelter open to the south is their ground so we have to get down to the ground because we want to make our base stable right we don't want to build it on top of snow we went down to the old beaver pond we're able to find a bunch of rocks lugged them up here and uh what we're doing is trying to make the back level so you can see probably the ground isn't level it humps up here and this is going to be our back so we want to raise the back log up enough using stones so that it's level hopefully that makes sense oh yeah all right putting it on rocks is going to stop those back corners from from sagging too much and of course from rotting we've got um Great balsam fir posts, they're pretty dense and they're heavy, but they're not very rot resistant, so we definitely want to keep them off the ground. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, they should be like right on the corner with room to drop something to the ground behind it. Okay, well then yeah, we can do it. So you like this? I think that length, depth is more than enough, right? How deep are we going to go? Yeah, you won't be hitting anything. No, no, not at all. there yeah yeah not too shabby but view a piss on that seems weird that's pretty good man so you guys can see what we did grab the rocks leveled it off dug down to earth or on that side rock and this side earth now this back balsam fir log is nice and level got to go along and trim it up a bit but that's our back log done success just came out to sit at the end of the beaver pond here to have some lunch got some nice sun rays it's probably what a 10 degree difference from out here into the woods you're probably wondering yourself where are these guys what gives them the right to cut down all these trees well luckily we're on Sean's property you picked this up what last week perfect land for us to do what we want to do and what you guys want to do so we're up here in central Ontario near Algonquin Park yeah so that's why the semi-permanent shelter we want to later on this year start putting some courses on some classes we doing that together and we thought that this property is great to do that on and we'd like to get some structures built beforehand so Sean is in the process right now of building a log cabin with no power tools at all uh you can check that on his channel which is my self-reliance that's on a different location he's going to finish that one up he's going to start some here the idea is to have multiple structures set up where we can take students and either do like a trek like we were saying like go from one to the other and trek multiple camps or even just have separate spots for people to camp out if they wanted to during the courses yeah so we're excited to finally be able to announce this we've been talking about it for a long time and it's coming together this year we've got some cool trips Joe's got some on his own we have a really cool trip coming up together in June but after that we're gonna be ready to put these workshops on like I said pretty excited to do that and we think we have the perfect property to do it on it's basically Algonquin Park but on private land and with access to Crown land to go out and do some really cool backcountry camping where nobody else goes so you have it to yourself guys I asked you in the last video for your comments what you'd like to see as far as courses and workshops or what you'd like to see happen up in this property and i really appreciate got a lot of amazing ideas amazing comments and suggestions and now i finally get to announce that joe's going to be doing this with me so we're going to take your suggestions and put them in the action so some of the great suggestions or comments were build different types of shelters and show people how to do those but also give you the opportunity to sleep or live in those things while you're up here at the the workshops i think is really cool so yeah we'll have a pavilion or something like that for sure to have to do courses on there to learn practice techniques like fire lighting and crafts birch bark crafts wild edibles tree identification all those things that you see us do on our channels that and we have training from from the past that we'd like to share with you guys so really appreciate those suggestions and i think you're really going to love it and i please comment more I'd love to hear what else you think we should be doing here and whether you'd like to participate or not. We'll probably make it official on our website in the next month or two where we'll post the agenda, the syllabus, what the courses are all about and start booking for, I don't know, late summer or early fall. Late summer, yeah. And carry it on into the winter. Just carry it on. I mean, hopefully continuously having different season, different courses. Yeah, we'll have a big communal fire pit where we can kind of sit by the fire at night and have a fireside chat kind of thing, which will be pretty cool. We'll get in guest speakers. We'll get in guest instructors. I know a ton of people. Sean knows a ton of people in the field. This will not be an issue at all. We already have people lined up. Yeah, it's very exciting. It's exciting. We're going to do it right. We're going to do it properly. Everything's going to be all ready to go by the time we get students, the way it should be done. Yeah, absolutely. You're going to love the land up here, too. If you haven't been to Algonquin Park or haven't been to Ontario, Canada, and spend time in the outdoors, like, there's nobody here. We've got this place to ourselves. Cameras are actually set up on ice, believe it or not, and we're sitting here on the bare ground, like, ready. I could be working with my shirt off. I'm not going to do that. I don't want to do that to you. It's just a fantastic area. Like, there's moose tracks and poop all over around. There's bear. There's two wolf packs that call this area home. You heard a barred owl earlier? yeah middle of the day yeah hooting away yeah yeah it's awesome yeah really lucked out great spot so you guys have to continue watching and sign up for some courses if you want to check this place out man all right guys thanks a lot i'm gonna do the same at this end i'll notch that and i'll put a slight notch in this bottom log don't want it too deep because i don't want to weaken it because we're actually putting some some weight on this bottom log a little seat for this log to sit in straighten that out that'll sit there and neither one of these logs can move in any direction so we'll do that in all four corners if we we're making a bigger shelter I'd also take an auger like a drill a hand drill drill down through there and put a put a piece of doweling in there John did on the other side I believe I'll just make a small notch on the top side of this log notch it sorry mark it and saw it a bit so you can see my notches nothing fancy at all just enough to set it in there so it doesn't want to roll around too much we're almost done our floor i've got about a third of the way done and i started to notice that our support beam might have some give to it after all the weights on it like you can see it bounces a little bit so i just cut this offshoot off one of the spruces yeah this one's a spruce that we've been using i'm digging down in the ground just to try to get it flush with where it needs to sit i don't want to prop the log up too much i just don't want it to buckle see it's still up a touch maybe upside down i might have to trim it that's not so bad that was the job temporarily we can always put in some stone or something like that after but for right now that's going to be just fine only be a good idea to do the same to the back we did in the front just going to stack a couple rocks on this side because it's lower it's easier to do that it's five o'clock right now we don't have too much time before the sun goes down so i think we're going to call it quits on the floor for today we can see it's pretty much done we do have to trim up the pokies obviously so we're not going to poke ourselves in our sleeping pads but we can do that tonight when we're sitting around the fire you can really see the ground here and the contours and just how flat we made it and how high up it is it's gonna be nice to sit on and rest so what i think we're gonna do tonight is tie up a ridge pole put up a tarp build a fire pit cook up some food and just rest under the tarp sleep under the tarp on the wood platform that we built and then tomorrow continue on our building process ground is frozen so the only rocks that could actually free up from the earth was down in the Sun on the south facing bank of that pond in the stream Sun was coming in and melted it was like summer down there and up here it's like winter you just can't move any rock so this will do a pretty good job we can get like a three foot fire here and we'll just pull some coals forward and cook on those it's uh slightly far from the from the shelter but until we get it finished um it's good enough for now that's going to actually melt in and probably collapse anyway we're going to be fooling around with it for a while but it's going to do a good enough job for us tonight all right we're going to start this fire up work on our coal base while we're out on collecting more firewood we both have some food we need to cook on the coals so makes sense nothing like making a fire up here when you got conifers and birch bark it's fun it's not just that then you have actual hardwood to put on right actual fuel yeah yeah it's perfect yeah i thought of that when i picked the spot this tarp is obviously temporary just for tonight try to reflect some of the fire from the heat from the fire back onto us keep whatever snow or rain may come off of us tomorrow comes the actual roof maybe we're collecting a bunch of the softer tops of the balsam fir and spruce that we cut down earlier reason being these poles on the ground are for a lot of pokey's and we don't want to poke our air mattresses we're gonna go along and clean it up it's just we're done for tonight we got to eat and stuff so this will be a quick fix and it'll make it nice and soft and look a little bit cooler too a little bushcrafty style right sure well I wanted to cook up some food but Sean's taking up the whole fire pit so I guess I'll wait my turn. They're pretty big. It's only a three foot fire pit. So before I came up here I stopped at my PO box, checked it out and turns out I had a couple cool things from some subscribers. From some subscribers. And I thought I would like to show you guys. So first I got this cool carved pendant of Scout's head. It's really detailed. You can see there's the red eyes like Scout has super small very detailed and then he's got it on just like a lanyard bead lanyard it's really cool so this gift was from a guy named Eric and he has a YouTube channel called outer limitless so I'll check that out he's on YouTube and Instagram apparently so that a guy who he didn't make this he commissioned a guy from Instagram to make this I made a quick little video about the bead you can check take a watch on my channel if you'd like oh that's sweet okay so the The guy who made it, his name is Jonathan Jechik, and I assume that that's his Instagram handle as well. So, Outer Limitless and Jonathan Jechik. Thank you very much, guys. That's really cool, very personable, and I will keep this forever. Next up, I got a whole box of packets of A1 Steak Sauce, which, obviously, as you know, I bring steak out all the time. I'm always eating Steak Spice. so the gentleman who sent this to me um says he brings it all the time backpacking this would be a great fit plus this just helps that i'm not a peasant comments so thank you very much Brian very cool buddy i'm going to try these out tonight for sure on my steak that i have right here next up are you guys ready for this one if you're a Canadian you'll know what this is if you're American maybe you will some Newfoundland Screech some authentic screech rum very cool this is from a gentleman named Troy who also has a YouTube channel named 13 Prevail. Thank you very much Troy. This will get drunk tonight. Hopefully not all of it because I have a lot of work to do in the morning. Thank you very much guys. My subscribers are awesome. I don't know what else to say. This is really cool. All three of these things are going to be enjoyed immensely. So I've got my triple A or higher rib rib eye steak I'm going to cook up tonight using my steak sauce, and I'm going to throw it on my grill. A lot of you guys have been asking about this grill. It's finally almost ready. We've ordered it, we've manufactured it, we've ordered it, and they're on their way to my house right now. You'll be able to order these on my site shortly, I promise. My steak is done. I'm just letting it sit for five minutes here. I'm going to go walk down. Sean came down to the beaver pond over here to see and get me sunset shots. Go check it out. much nothing to reflect you have perfectly clear skin all right got the steak done gotta find my spot all right here we go steak done i am going to put my sauce on it a1 i have not had a1 steak spice since i was like a very small well i'm still very small since i was a very young person and i never liked it back in the day but there's a ton of things that i never used to like I never used to like gravy, guys. What kind of person doesn't like gravy? I don't know! You're not touching my food here, man. Damn it. Well, you like gravy now. I do like gravy now. And salad. Salad and gravy. Salad and gravy, guys. A1. There's no going back. I'm not just gonna put a little bit on, a little part of it. You gotta just, you know, slop it all on and then hope you like it at the end. It's the Joe way. Smells good. Mmm, tangy. All right. This'll be good. How do I do? dropped my steak on the ground hopefully it didn't land in too much gross poop it had been a while since I pulled the Joe so I was due for it the steak spice is good ma'am really good very good for a change thank you all right well it's about time I think got one beer each nothing too crazy so what you got got Muskoka brewery legendary oddity unfiltered all natural premium and pure and pure I've got a Muskoka brewery detour which is my favorite by Muskoka brewery neither of us have tried the oddity yet nice this is going down really nice oh that's different mm-hmm that's not bad at all man that's that's like IPA yeah we like this or no I like yeah I do but I like this better that's good yeah it's real good there's a guy well in tequila we think there used to be like uh up in the one place in the Klondike i think or in Klondike was it yeah yeah yeah in Yukon there's like a human toe i can't remember the full story of it in the do you know the story or no i know i can't remember in in the in the in the tequila and like forever you go there you take a shot or take a swig or whatever and you drink it down but you keep the toe in your mouth and you just kind of spit it back into your cup or whatever it's just a thing and uh this year somebody actually swallowed the toe on purpose and got all sorts of fines and probably got his butt kicked i imagine by the people at the bar but i digress that's really a story for no reason at all well we thought it was worth it anyway bottom line we wouldn't do that we want to be the guy who swallowed the toe after 150 or the guy riding the moose in the water just to be the guy you know so we got our screech it's about time to crack this screech open once again thank you Troy 13 prevail see how she goes down this is the first for me I'm a virgin screech drinker oh you have to use the Canadian if not his in Canadian accent okay well that's some of that screech there oh she smells fine I don't know man oh it's actually really nice it's kind of Spicy. That can't be real. You don't think? That's the Caribbean thing. You've got to ask him about that. What the hell is Caribbean Newfoundland Screech? Troy, what is the deal, bud? Smooth Caribbean rum, a memorable Newfoundland tradition. It's truly, yeah, it sure as hell is a truly unique experience. I like it. It's good. It's spicy. I don't know. When I've had Screech in Newfoundland, like, it was, like, made in the back shed. Right. It was, like, shine almost. No, it's, like, turpentine. Like, you're not turpentine. You're, like, straight. rubbing alcohol yeah rubbing alcohol imported and bottled by something Saint John's Newfoundland Canada imported by Saint John's Newfoundland Canada yeah that's some of your stuff yeah your whole note on us all right guys that's it for tonight we're headed to bed spent a lot of energy today gain our energy and uh back at it again tomorrow see you in the morning well good morning folks slept great got nine hours of sleep I got to really try to keep up on the water intake today which I did not do yesterday so let's head down to the creek fill up our heavy cover canteen get a brew on great water source here with running water making life easy got her got my hidden woodsman dry sack that I keep my food in this is enough food for three days that's not too bad for breakfast I'm just gonna do oatmeal haven't had oatmeal in a while it's probably at the bottom because I like to put it at the bottom so it doesn't you can't get crushed as opposed to like my chips that go at the top because they can stick with me boys and girls oh and I got my heavy cover spork rolling boil and I leave my I try to leave my handle off the fire because it gets super hot but right now it's not hot at all this is good to go Well, bam did it without scalding the hand too breakfast was good and I made up a tea so nice and hydrated But I've got to get my canteen full and take one more of those I'll have a full canteen. They'll cool nice and good and I'll have It'll cool nice and good instead of yeah, so let's uh, put two more Two more end pieces in so we'll have the cross brace here Now we can flip the sidewalls into that space in the slot Yeah, yeah into that slot and then we'll do one across here 45 yeah 45 coming down and one block or kind of a stop log here yeah and everything's kind of lean right against that back wall yeah we should get uh i got a lot of work done today i think trim these boards out and maybe get them in a better sequence of right high and low yep yeah we could afford to put one or two more down yeah we need a ridge pole a nice solid ridge pole for the next step so i got my snowshoes on i think we're gonna go hike around and find a suitable ridge pole this balsam fir would not be strong enough to support it dead or alive balsam fir would not be strong enough to support it all the weight so what we have options of our maple yellow birch that's probably the best two that I can think of for a strong ridge pole around here look Sean's got wild chocolate covered almonds growing on his property lots of moose activity lots of moose poop and oh this is frozen and moose tracks so here's this yellow birch and it's it's pretty suitable you see from the ground to here it's kind of wampity but then once it levels off about here and it's pretty straight from then on up and it'll be as long as we need so I think we're gonna take this one for our ridge pull the length yeah you don't have to to use that skinny part too much either. No. Okay. Let's straighten off that. Yeah, I like it. All right. Perfect right now. You ever ate one of these buds? Which one? The yellow birch buds. I went on a bud eating thing. Oh, the snake tongues? Very good. Sour apple. Buds don't taste like anything. Take a chew out of it. Buds have it very slightly, but the bark, wintergreen. Yeah, there's no mistake in that. You can brush your teeth, you can mash it up and... So you do Canadian Jam knot to start? I take Canadian Jam and then lash. Yeah. That's the most solid. And then height? Right, height, yes. So... The better the efficiency, the higher the better. And then, especially here, you know, cutting off quite a bit. Maybe let's go up a half a foot or something. So are we happy with... Could we come down more? Do we need that? We can, yeah. I don't think we need it for anything out there, right? Okay, let's lift this if we can too, or right there at least. That's good? Good. Okay, are we level? So after the Canadian Jam, we're just gonna lash it a bunch of times. This thing's not gonna go anywhere. We'll hang off it just to make sure, but it's gonna be choice. 180 pounds. 45 pounds. What I'm doing now is just lining all these logs up in the front, trying to be just past flush with the bottom log, and then I'll go along behind and trim them all up with my saw. Down that way? Yeah, okay. There we go. We're putting longer pieces on the very outside so that it extends past the ridge pole and we have things to butt it up, something to butt the rest of them up against. You can see the progress we're making on the shelter. We need a lot more poles for the back, so we are going to go hike across the frozen beaver pond, while we still can, while it's still frozen, gather some poles over there. The old moose tracks, see the spread, boom, boom. I bet you there's some moose poop right around here, too, if we follow these tracks. Look at them, there you can see it defined pretty good. So the snow has melted obviously around them, making them look a lot bigger than they are. Looks like it could be a moose bed. Well, hello. He's not happy that I'm here. Yeah, the tracks are huge. So there's a squirrel mitten right here. This is the husks from the pine cones. They're eating the seeds out of the spruce and I believe it's actually spruce and hemlock right here. And then they're living down in there. They're kicking it all up out here, the red squirrels. Pretty cool, lots of, lots of animal sign over here. Pretty, pretty promising. We're putting this center support pole in just to stop any kind of sagging in the middle or bowing in the middle with this ridge pole. Ready? Yep. You push, I'll hold. I'm playing the paracord and I'll be digging bit deeper I'll see him. Post. Yeah. So it's six o'clock now, we've been going all day as you have seen and can see. I'm happy with our progress. What we're gonna do for the rest of tonight is finish up this wall with our cutoff pieces that we were using for the rafters. And I think call it good. This is gonna be a permanent camp, super shelter Adirondack style. So we are gonna come back and work on it. We're not gonna drape the plastic down today. I did bring the plastic, we just don't need it. It's not cold enough tonight at all. So we're gonna leave the one side open, finish off this side, and then the next time we come, do you think we'll be doing we'll be finishing off that side yeah i think we're going to raise up the back a little bit to get a knee wall maybe two feet at the back so we'll flatten this out a bit which will give us room to camp or sleep for eight people at the back right and fit a couple more people in as well yeah exactly like as of now you can see seven people can sit on here but really three people could only sleep because we didn't raise the roof and then backdrop we just went right to the to the to the ground the floor sorry but uh yeah we'll remedy that next time plane the plane the floor down shingle the roof yeah we had a couple ideas about that yeah we might uh i think we will i don't see why we won't do it we've got some cedar logs the massive cedar trees are down here actually i didn't know if you saw those ones but um we can we're going to actually split those we're going to use a froe a shingling froe and split those into cedar shakes or cedar shingles and we can shingle this roof we're probably going to shingle everything on the property with that method actually that's gonna be really cool yeah yeah very cool so yeah happy with the progress but we are starving so it's time to get uh time to get this wall done cook up some food and relax by the fire finally using our axes and saws both days now all day so we've been keeping the hidden woodsman first aid kit right out in the open available super easy super visible thank god we don't have to use it haven't had to use it but nice to keep it out in the open so you're not having to rummage through your bag bleeding profusely all right so for dinner I have some lamb I got a stick of ground lamb for dinner today I got a stick of ground lamb and I have another stick of ground lamb I've not tried this before it just said fresh meat on the on the sticker so so I didn't know what it was fresh lamb meat And also I'm gonna do up some rice with that and some carbs into me tonight So I'm gonna throw this in my heavy cover canteen Let this cook so this my lamb is not gonna take very long to cook there Fred Flintstone We got some nice venison ribs, and it's just about ready after 26 hours of cooking Yeah, oh nice buddy, it's all you like fred flintstone's spoon here too are you boiling yet yeah joe got a quick boil going on have i mentioned how much i love my heavy cover canteen set now that'll sit i'm not gonna lie i don't have high hopes for this ground lamb i uh i've never eaten lamb in my life so here we go that's pretty good yeah it's like um yeah it works that's really good you get like a gamey taste like a different meat taste not gamey no different meat kind of like uh there is an undertone of gamey yeah at the end at the end yeah yeah and if you're cooking in your house you can smell that oh really yeah yeah it turns people off you said either you love it or you hate it yeah i actually really like it it's really good nice it's kind of like an old meatball my grandma used to make or something yeah yeah anyways mystery lamb meat for the win my uh my rice is plumped up i had to actually stick it back on the fire because there was a lot of water but look at this plumpy good rice hot as the dickens so sean's got us awesome light for his camera that really illuminates a lot of things it's good for filming it's good for just having around at night but look at how cool this shelter looks man that light and the smoke this is gonna be so cool when it's done very functional too all right guys it's late we're headed to bed and check it in the morning good night oh good morning folks had a great night's sleep it is 7 11 in the morning so that means we slept in i think all we're gonna do now is pack up and get out of here, I'm gonna hike to the car, drive a few hours to Sean's then I got like five hours back to my house, but that's par for the course that's normal for my trips, hence why I normally hike out pretty early in the morning thanks for coming along guys I had fun I think this is exactly what we wanted to accomplish while we were out here get a good chunk of this thing done, start on a project that we can continue on we'll do a video again next time I'll come back and we'll complete it or almost complete it and then it'll be a third time, maybe even we might have that be one of the courses, we might have some students come and help build a cabin or help build a shelter like this, you're talking yeah absolutely yeah so that could be something too but um again thanks for watching guys, there'll be a new video soon I might do a hammock camp, get out of my comfort zone a little bit, you guys have a good day and I'll see you next time