Solo Bushcraft Camp. 2 Nights in the Snow - Natural Shelter, Minimal Gear.

Hey folks, Joe here. Thanks for tuning in. Well, as you can see, this ground looks nothing like my last video. There's a bunch of snow. I'm actually up about six hours north of where I live. I had some business to do up here, so I figured let's make a trip of it. I drove all day yesterday in a snowstorm, continued my drive this morning with a red sun. I hiked my butt in, and now I'm at this spot. This is a pine forest. There's nobody around. I see a couple deer tracks here and there. I only have my Wildland Scout Pack. I'm gonna spend two nights here. I need to make a shelter. I need to make a huge fire, because tonight it's gonna get down to negative 10 degrees Celsius, and I only have a negative seven degrees Celsius bag. So that means that a good shelter and a good fire need to happen tonight. So we have to search around now for a suitable site with building materials and a bunch of firewood. Okay, so you can see all in front of me, I've cleared up quite a big area. My plan is to make a lean-to with a raised bed between this tree, this tree here. I'll do a wall there to block the wind because the wind's coming this way. And I don't want my shelter back to the wind or front to the wind. I want it sideways to the wind for smoke escape. So that's what I'm going to do. Right now I have to go search for some wood, get a bed made. That was easy enough. Just trying to clean up these pokies because this is going to be for my bed. Here's my bed. Pretty good, but it's a bit wobbly. So I've made up some stakes. I wanna pound the stakes in to keep it in place. I like the height, and I like the springiness. It's got some bounce to it, so I'll be good for sleeping. I still gotta get insulation material on top of it, which could be difficult in the snow. So I got these long, thick stakes. I chamfered the ends so that they're not gonna mushroom out when I pound them in. And the bed wants to roll that way, so I'm gonna attempt to put them on this side to keep it from, stop it from rolling. The ground's not frozen yet, so I'm still able to pound these in. They still started to mushroom out a little bit, but better than it would have been. That feels good. So I can even, it's pretty long. I have plenty of room, head height and foot height. Plenty of room width-wise. So to start my fire, I've got some birch bark. I don't get to play with this stuff too much at home because it doesn't grow there. But here, it's abundant. I'm just, all I'm doing is making it thin. See how it's kind of thick and curls up? I'm just peeling layers off. Like, yeah, like layers, you know what layers are. Peeling layers off gonna rough them up and then it'll accept my spark from my fire steel I do have a backup lighter. We're bushcraft and right we're playing bushcraft right now. Okay, I'm gonna try to do this quick I got a piece of wood in my eye. Okay, uh, ah a chip of wood So other than the obvious reason to bring your bring your compass. There's a mirror on it as well Oh, man, did I get it? I can't I don't know. I didn't get it. I didn't get it Ah, it's a bad feeling. that's right in the corner man. This is a good idea to wear glasses guys Like it's not very bright at all, but I've seen it a couple times in my videos I'm always worried about my eyes out here, especially when I'm alone. I'm getting all smoked out too from the fire It doesn't help. I think I might have got it Just the reality just the reality a tiny little speck a grain of sand or dirt or moss or leaf or insect or Wood put a damper on things. I don't know if you can see it. It's on my middle finger that's what was in my eye so it's not even that small relatively man that hurt regardless of all the stuff that i have to do still i don't feel 100 comfortable with having this fire just on the ground here this is a mainly pine forest there are some uh maple and oak in here but this is a mainly mainly pine forest and the ground is made up of duff and even though i scraped it down to the dirt and it's soaking wet and almost frozen and there's a ton of snow around i just if i'm going to be having a big fire for two days here i don't want to mess something up i don't want the embers can go down onto the underground and burn on the burn the roots for a long time and then come up and burn a tree or whatever you can start a forest fire and i really don't want that that to happen because i'm out here having fun so i'm gonna go scrounge for some rocks and line it line it with rocks and then I'll build a fire reflector and it'll be all contained. Oh This is a score this one All right You can see I've cleaned the area of the fire and the ground is smoldering a little bit So I am making the right choice. There's a lot more work and I really don't want to do it, but It's important kind of build it up as a long fire Just I just broke my rock with on top of the rocks, right? So the rocks are going to I want to put the wood on top of the rocks And then I will build a barrier around so that doesn't want to roll off and then a barrier Behind it as well, and then I'll probably build a wooden fire reflector I don't know if I'll build that today or not just to go up higher But these rocks will do a good job of retaining the heat and pumping it back to me anyway, so it's all good it's necessary and I'm doing it basically I have this whole big length of this rock to put it on plus another platform here I've got a wall built in the back and on both sides where it's gonna contain the logs from rolling out it's actually sloping backwards too so they're not gonna roll this way just for size comparison here's my axe it's a 26 inch axe so it's not as long as I'd like it's about as half as long as I want it to be but fire safety is more important think i'm not gonna i'm not gonna freeze to death so clearing these uh dead pine up here at the camp so i can actually burn the twigs and not just leave them in the forest pro tip it's actually a Ray Mيرs tip stole it hashtag RayMirs well there she is the rib work is done i gotta get a lot of thatching material which is gonna be difficult because the duff that i was going to use is covered in snow i don't got much time i gotta keep going the wind is picking up i can still work on it tomorrow that's the good thing but i do have to get the majority of it done tonight because tonight is the cold night tonight is the negative 10 night tomorrow is only negative four i saw and i gotta get a ton of firewood still too it's a lot of work guys people think they come out here build shelter and dick around i've been go go go and it's uh it's a lot of work guys all right off to get thatching material this is that stuff i've been using to thatch it's uh duff it's all mixed up with um snow and dirt and sticks and roots and all i'm doing is just scuffing it up with my hands and my feet on the ground and i get this really nice packing stuff i'm about done my my thatching for the shelter now i'm pretty pleased with that back wall there's not too many gaps i'm looking right now on the very end there there's that like long gap but other than that i can't see any daylight through there's a lot of snow on there so we'll see what happens when it uh when it melts but it is gonna get cold so it might not melt um but i have to get firewood now i would like to build sides but that's gonna have to wait till tomorrow which is fine it'll give me like a project for tomorrow but i have to i have to get firewood and probably build a fire reflector because 3 30 now it's gonna get dark very soon i got maybe three hours of light tops that's a really big piece of really solid wood oak probably yeah that's oak it's not in the ground it's actually falling or leaning so i i'd like to just be able to pull it out if possible this is going to be a huge bonus to just get this much wood in one tree as opposed to gathering a bunch of small and this will burn a lot better and longer even if i split it down one in the middle it moves it's going to be slow going i'm going to buck up this log with my boy's axe. When you're doing this with big pieces of wood, you want to make your notch wide. As wide as your log is around. Chop right on a knot too. Fantastic. You don't want to do that. This is really dense oak. It's going to be a good payoff. I'm just going to switch sides now because the other side is like three quarters done. I'll carry that back in two pieces and I'll have a heck of a lot of firewood. It's a good feeling. Like money in the bank. those of you that watched the the gear video for this one like the the prep video for this this trip will know that i didn't bring a sleeping pad or a tarp and i brought only my negative seven celsius sleeping bag the reason i did that was because i was trying to go as little amount of items as possible this sleeping bag fit the best on the bottom i could have used my negative 10 celsius sleeping bag but it's probably double the width of this and it was too bulky so i don't have a sleeping pad okay that's that's the whole gist of this and I on my way in preparation for this trip I didn't expect there to be this much snow if any uh this came like yesterday so I was planning on using duff as my insulation bed and then just putting my Reflectix over top of it to keep it because I knew it was going to be a little bit damp but there's no way that I can do that it's just going to be mounds of snow maybe tomorrow if some of the snow melts I can dry it off by my shelter like the duff but i can't tonight um so that that leaves me with sleeping on my reflectix which is does not have even an r value i'm sure in my sleeping bag that's not rated to how cold it's going to get tonight so i have to really rely on i i know i'm going to be up feeding the fire a lot probably every hour i think what i'm going to do is take rocks and put them underneath my bed because there's a big distance i'm going to clear out all the duff underneath there there's a good i don't know eight inches between there and the ground and i'll put the hot rocks under there and warm up that way and what i'll also do is before i go to bed i'll boil some water put it in my nalgene and put that in my sleeping bag with me i i'm confident i'm going to be okay it's going to be a cold night it's going to be probably not the best sleep i've had but that's okay we're out here doing a minimalist kind of bushcraft thing so i'm cool i'm cool with that. The best use of my time right now is to make a fire reflector because I'm sitting there in my shelter and a lot of the heat is just escaping. Hit a rock. Son of a gun. Dry his gloves out hopefully. A fire reflector is helping big time. I'm actually warming up quite a bit. I'm going to lose this wool because I don't want to start sweating. I've been trying to stay somewhat dry today because I'm spending all of tomorrow and tomorrow night out as well with the same gear. My gloves are soaked. My knees are soaked. My butt's wet. My feet are wet. My feet are wet from sweat everything else from snow make sure my glove doesn't burn here But yeah, I know this fire reflector is doing the trick man I feel feel nice and comfortable right now nice and warm But I'm sure I'll need to put those layers back on in a couple minutes I'm gonna cook up my steak here real soon. I'm gonna brush the coals aside Continue having a fire just cook on the one side I don't have anything to cook my steak on so it'll be right on the coals this time no grill or nothing I'm having a good time man. I freaking busted my butt today I'll tell you like from the time I started nine o'clock even less than that eight o'clock I don't even know anymore, but it's 5:30 now it's a long day. It's a full workday. I'm hungry. Oh my whiskey. I brought some whiskey brought some whiskey Maybe we'll have a little swig after After the steak is done looking forward to that So I got my Angus steak and I didn't bring like I said anything to cook it on but I'm not a not a peasant you know you gotta have a little bit of a little bit of steak spice on that piece some Montreal steak spice on this guy save a little bit for the other side not too much this time cooking it on the coals gives it a good taste anyway it's a nice big fat steak I like ribeye I prefer ribeye but this is a New York cuz that's what they had New York strip fire pits working out okay move some stuff over to this side we're doing it right on the coals that wind is whipping through here reminding me i need to still make a side on that shelter took the steak off it's going to sit for five minutes and we'll stoke the fire back up this is one of those big rounds probably the other side of this plate actually not too shabby steak's really good hitting the spot man time to do the dishes better than paper plates i used one huge section of that big log that i got with the exception of these three logs here so i pounded a stake into the ground and i'm going to use that as a beginning to a wall just as a wind block for tonight and then i'm going to put my backpack here should be good preheated these pieces of wood they're stacked on other pieces of wood but i preheated them by the fire to put my feet on they're a little icy before so i figured why not just not dry them off but warm them up oh it feels nice heated floors guys heated floors up in this piece bushcraft that works like a charm my feet are dry and toasty now too my um my gloves are actually 90 percent dry if you can see it's all dry here just a little patch here is wet and they were soaked through earlier today this is a rock and hot fire i'm super glad i did the rock thing underneath it it would have just been so irresponsible to continue and have a big fire like this right on the on the open ground here not everywhere i'm not saying everywhere is like that just this this spot the all the pine duff it's very dangerous the middle of the winter i wouldn't worry about it all right get the 40 creek it's been a while so i feel like i'm losing a lot of heat the temperature is dropping pretty quick i have that mylar blanket that space blanket and i figure if i tie it off to the ridge pole directly to the ridge pole tight and then slope it down gradually not close enough to the fire where it's gonna get burned obviously but sloping down i think that it'll make the heat it'll trap heat that's going up and swirl it back down into me here i'll take it down in the day and and show you how i did it but i can feel warmth from it i can feel radiating heat coming from it the only problem is it's a little crinkly but i can deal with it so i'm happy with that a little improvement a little improvement on the old shack a little shanty there's an awesome old book dan beard is author maybe maybe but it's called shelters shacks and shanties awesome book if you can find it that one hair on my chest is growing real long i ended up having to move the space blanket it was creating a ton of heat in here and all of the snow that was inside the duff that i packed on the back of my shelter was melt was melting and dripping all over my sleeping bag and i tried bunching my sleeping bed up and it was just dripping all over me it was getting the whole bed wet i ended up untying it from the two points that were out there and just tying it down back behind me so this is the back wall of my shelter it's not doing half as much i can still feel warmth here it's not doing half as much that other angle set up with the angle down that is on point but the snow in the duff there's nothing i can do about it i can't pick it out if it does drip it's going to even just stay on the backside of this mylar and run right down past my bed now i'm gonna lay down i'm gonna stoke the fire and lay down for the night i'm sure i'll be getting up to stoke the fire every couple hours so i imagine i'll uh i'll check in with you guys periodically through the night if not have a good night and i'll see you in the morning but i highly doubt that slept till two got cold now it's time to stoke the fire it's a pretty good run pretty good pretty good run of sleep i imagine that'll be the longest run i get but i'm happy to get it good night again good morning that was a rough sleep guys that was really rough the uh the Reflectix that i put down underneath me didn't do the job i knew it wouldn't you have to have some kind of loft some kind of insulating loft underneath you the sleeping bag actually did a pretty decent job i don't think it got down to negative 10 i left my watch out a couple times between um stoking the fire over there hung up on a tree and the coldest i ever saw it say was negative six so who knows uh it might have got colder it might not have my watch might not work it might have been negative six i don't know but seeing as how i wasn't dying cold i don't imagine it did get down past or around to negative 10 but the problem was where i was laying my hip my back my shoulders all like pushing the down squishing the down in my sleeping bag gives me no insulation underneath and now they're just freezing and and sore from from basically fetal fetal position all night but i got up a few times to stoke the fire i think i checked in with you guys one time um i burned the back reflector the fire reflector got burned so uh yeah but it's all good i got up i i rubbed it in the snow and put it back together so it's fine all while shivering uncontrollably good night and uh hopefully tonight will be a better night i slept for a good chunk right off the hop when i checked in with you guys it wasn't two in the morning it was 12 i rubbed my freaking clock wrong because my watch wrong because when i got up the next time it was only too so that fire had only been going for two hours when i stoked it stoked it probably two three times i think and then the last time was around four and it's seven now so it's completely done i gotta get a fire going it's the name of the game so just tying up a couple small tripods for to make cooking and boiling water easier more convenient so all i'm doing tying a couple overhand knots on three pieces of small dead pine i have already built one and then i just need to get a cross piece to go across this should be good this is right from the butcher some smoked bacon three pieces of thick bacon and then i'm gonna go with my eggs at the same time well my eggs must have frozen and exploded because they were fine last night yeah they're frozen let's uh let's just try to cook them anyways that should be fine that'll work i'm not concerned about that too much i did lose a little bit of the the white but who are we kidding the yolk is the good part anyway oh big old shell in there get in there get in there too good for your home that's another 90s movie trivia right there are you too good for your home so i got some boiled water already i had to boil it because i needed some for drinking so that's gonna go in there that's gonna go back on the fire and cook up with my bacons might be a nice day today we're getting some sun that's for sure this whole woods is lit up it's awesome man seeing the snow on the trees with the sunlight reflecting on it i love winter camping i didn't expect this to be winter camping i expected a late fall camping trip the weather we had like three days ago was record highs and and then a big old snow dump so last night i was saying how i uh i tied up this space blanket and i would i wanted to show you guys how i did it so basically i just made these buttons and they're just made out of duff and i just made a ball tucked it in tied it off and then tied four corners respectively where they needed to go so what i think i'm going to do today because i don't really care to stare at the silver mylar all day is i'll just roll roll it up and leave it tucked up at the top on the ridge pole here hot hot hot everything is done finally i got some food done and i'll throw some pine needles into that boiling hot water spork is probably a better idea let that steep have a nice little brekkie no cell brekkie cuppa bacon yeah that's what bacon's supposed to taste like my thin thin eggs because there's no whites in there it's about the equivalent of one maybe one and a half eggs oh man my nose is running off my face feel rejuvenated i'm going to put my bacon in my eggs live a little eh well it feels good on the stomach all right i'm cold i'm chilled to the bone my feet are numb and i need firewood for today so i'm gonna kill two birds with one stone i'm gonna go for a hike and warm up my toes because if you go on a 20 minute hike in boots regardless of the temperature your toes are going to warm up and i'll scope out firewood at the same time i don't have any tools with me but a lot of the times i've been able to just push the trees over push the firewood over so that's what we're doing walking towards the sun this was my makeshift wall last night but this is really good firewood and it's not a good job of a wall so we're going to remove all this so i've got these pegs arranged in such a way where where they're like crisscrossing one on one side, one on the other, creating tension. I've gotta pry them apart to get the logs through, but that's good, because it'll be a tight, super tight fit. Pretty happy about my wall now, but I do wanna tie these two poles together just to give it a little bit more structure. So I'm gonna tie a Canadian jam knot, the same knot that I used to tie up this shelter, same knot I use all the time. Torque it as much as I can, and you have it. That's on there. I just got back from a walk to go get some water. Filled up my Nalgene in another small titanium container. I got back to my shelter and I boiled up my titanium bottle. And I used some drops for my Nalgene. When I went to go get the water, I brought my empty backpack. And I was able to grab some leaves. Like just my backpack full of oak leaves off trees. Which isn't going to do much for my bed tonight. but i also saw a downed pine with a bunch of limbs that i can use um the the needles are gone they're they're rotted and brown and falling off or gone but the the the twigs themselves are very uh very thin and and almost springy so what i think i'm going to do is take this space blanket down off of here collect a bunch of those and then wrap wrap the the twigs on my bed into the space in the space blanket put my reflectix down after that and uh hopefully that'll get me like a more of a buffer you know i mean just off of the off the off the logs basically just pounding some stakes in to try to contain um the bedding that i'm going to put in the twigs so they're not just falling everywhere i put one there one there put one on the back and then i have the previous ones that i was already using for my bed all right doesn't that look comfortable a nice comfortable bed of sticks that's just one armful but you can see what i mean about springy i gotta get a bunch more and i gotta layer them on it could be it could be something and then wrapped in my space blanket and the space blanket is going to give me some kind of retaining retain some kind of warmth as well it'll be better than nothing for sure ideally i was going to use duff i can't sift the snow out of it i can't sift it here to get dry it it's soaking wet it's soaking wet with snow on top it so this is the alternative okay i think this batch does it i'm gonna crunch down on these as hard as i can yeah man i do have some law and that the reflectix on top will be the lifesaver for sure once again i gotta flatten these out as much as possible i'm exhausted guys i'm just using these buttons that i had tied on already from last night and the cord that's on it i'm wrapping underneath the bed wrap it in the middle as well i already did the end down there i might as well just continue going around like this to secure it even better it's not looking so bad now doesn't look like just a pile of sticks anymore this is all right it's not so bad it's much better than just the logs comfort wise i don't know how much added warmth it'll be but better than it was the bag that i had my spare clothes in i'm gonna make myself a pillow a pillow i told you i wasn't a peasant just like home just like home i'm just coming back from getting some water and look what i found bonus i'm gonna grab a bunch of this and make up a tea it's gonna be dark real soon the temperature's dropping i'm getting chilled so i'm trying to cut up a bunch of firewood right now to warm myself up and to have it for later on right here i have one of the big pieces of wood that i got yesterday and i want to split it down i don't want to saw it any shorter but i want to split it down so i made up these wedges some very very dense white oak and we're going to try and split it so there's a natural check or a crack already in the log going down so i'm going to place the wedge there i'm going to have to get it down off this log it doesn't want to stay here this will work nice i thought i might have had to use both wedges at the same time that is beauty right there guys some hard wood man and the wedge is no worse for wear very cool this one was almost twice as long and i just now have put a second wedge in whip myself up a little table use the tripods that i was using for my cooking and then one of those slabs that i split down i figure i will while i still have some light i'll prepare my dinner not gonna put it on yet but i gotta prepare it like i said so we're doing italian sausage mini potatoes garlic and onions and butter in tin foil i got some salt and pepper put a lot of onion i want to put a lot of garlic lots of potatoes hopefully lots of sausage we'll see how much it turns out to be so i'm just cutting it up big chunks and then it'll go right in with my potatoes onions all that fun stuff so there's lots of butter in there get the remaining garlic pieces and i want to make it kind of flat as flat as possible actually so try and smoosh it out a bit bury that butter in there i'm gonna wrap it again i'm gonna wrap it the other way so that the ends get nice and protected well i'm really hungry i'm hoping this is done i think it is oh potatoes are soft that's the tell sausage sausage is cooked it's got my salt and pepper tubes throw those ends in the fire first up salt can never have too much salt right never hurt nobody at all pepper the bam so good the italian sausage was a very good call i had done this before with ground beef or with um i don't know steak and stuff like that but the italian sausage already has it wasn't cooked excuse me but it had seasonings in it was from the butcher so that alone had a ton of seasonings in it i put the the garlic, the butter, salt, pepper, all that fun stuff in there, um onions so very flavorful, very flavorful that was super tasty, now i sit i can hear coyotes, i heard them last night a lot yipping throughout the night when i was getting up to uh feed the fire and stuff, but this is still early this is like eight o'clock that's pretty cool, maybe they'll start going again, look at this lighting, hey look at the lighting, this fire man, god i love it, i've got a much better fire tonight it's much longer, hotter, the coal base is way better, i don't know what the deal was yesterday maybe it wasn't burning long enough pieces, maybe it was too cold out, i don't know, on top of the rocks, it was weird, it was like i couldn't, i was always struggling to keep a coal base but with this, like it's freaking roasting hot and i've got tons of embers, tons of coals, but it's warm tonight, like i don't know what the temperature is, i want to put my watch out there soon, right now i've got um, sorry, i've got my watch hanging up, it says 16.2, you can see that on the bottom there anyway, 16.2 degrees celsius and that's right there which is not quite at the top of the of the um shelter but all these all these poles are all warm to the touch like no doubt about it down here below me behind they're cold where they're not reached getting any of the fire but all the ones up here are all very warm the ridge pole especially oh yes there's my watch okay it was up to 17.2 now it's down to 16.9 I'm calling it good at 16.9 let's go hanging in the tree out in the cold give it about a half an hour or so how will i know when a half an hour is up i don't have a watch the watch is in the tree the tree took my watch oh shouldn't have on that okay let's go check the old watch 1.6 and it's been like that for a while just because i'm bored out of my skull i'm gonna hang it again and get a second reading in here it's at four degrees celsius now it was supposed to be negative four degrees celsius but i don't think that's happening tonight we shall see but feels to be about zero what's zero like 32 32 fahrenheit 30 such a nice night man there's no wind at all big old fire i'm completely warm it's warm out it's a good night i'm gonna sleep really well i'm tired man not sleeping that great last night working both days today i didn't work much to be honest i i built that bed i cut a lot of firewood i built that wall it's still decent like i had um i had more camp life i guess this this trip than normal today i i was i was busy all day today but i was not rushed i didn't feel rushed at all yesterday i did a lot hiked in found a spot set up shelter firewood cook all that fun stuff yesterday was rushed yesterday i i freaking busted my hump moving around today was good it was a good trip man it was a little like i said a little bit more camp life which is kind of cool i like it two nights solo doing this kind of stuff it's not too bad at all this is the time of year for this kind of stuff i knew it was gonna be cold i didn't know there was gonna be snow no big deal i'm glad there was it's a good change it's a good like abrupt rude awakening into like winter's here now this isn't like a freak thing i don't think the the snow is gonna melt it's gonna get warm again you know what i mean it's late november so what do we got can you see where are we where are we we got uh 14.2 celsius right now so we'll see we'll see if it goes up any more from that i'm standing out here right now away from the fire to cool down there's a humongous long fire like a proper long fire the one i should have been doing the whole time i'm going to bed i'll see you guys in the morning wish me luck good night good morning seven in the morning i slept better than i did last night it stayed warmer it snowed quite a bit last night but i stayed nice and dry in here i gotta get up pack up and hike my butt out of here you can see really see how much they crunched down lost all of the springiness and the loft but it did the trick i wasn't half as cold last night i actually fell asleep last night uh in my full clothes and my boots on top of my sleeping bag next to the fire okay guys this has to be it my battery's flashing at me on my last bar on my last battery i'm not going to cook breakfast this morning because i don't want to start another fire um that one's out it's done so i'm just going to eat granola bars and get up and get out of here i got a i don't know about an hour hike to get out and then i have a six hour car ride home so i don't want to dawdle no dawdling all right guys listen i hope you enjoyed this video i really had a fun time um yeah it was a good eye-opening winter here we come experience going from hot weather to this within the matter of a few days so yeah more winter stuff to come lots of videos i uh i have an instagram account that i put tons of pictures on i'll be putting a bunch of pictures on from this trip as well if you guys have instagram feel free to follow me you'll see lots of more action from me there as well thank you guys for watching i hope you enjoyed it have a good day i'll see you on the next one granola out