Solo Winter Bushcraft Camp-Natural Shelter-Pulk Overnighter

Hey guys, Joe here. Thanks for tuning in. I'm back up in Eastern Ontario. It's negative 5 degrees today. It's gonna go down to negative 14 plus the wind chill tonight. I'm at a new spot I've never been and I need to find a camping spot. I've been walking around for a few hours. I'm warm, man. I've lost my hat and gloves and everything trying to find the perfect spot. This spot's nice and level. I've got a little bit of an opening, some conifers around me, so that should be good. I need to make a natural shelter tonight so I need resources. Make a debris I'll have my entrance here, and I'll be able to crawl in just enough room for me to sleep But I can't have all these on these branches hanging underneath and stuff So that's why I'm clearing them away frozen all the woods covered in a layer of ice it rained last night That's like 10 degrees positive yesterday and rained last night and today. It's down to negative 4 I'm gonna get real cold again, so everything's frozen over. It's gonna be a little yeah Oh, yeah, even the bows or ice be a little difficult. I'm all done clearing the brush underneath I don't think I'm gonna move the snow out just because then the ground will be more uneven I'm just gonna pack the snow down as much as I can But I have to lay underneath this and see that I'm gonna fit so I want to measure Where I want to put my head and my feet. This is pretty good. If I stop it here I can make the entrance on the side here down to my feet and then I'll just crawl in Tuck down and be a cocoon. I'm not gonna sleep next to the fire I will have a fire to cook on and stuff, but I'm going to rely on my gear to keep me warm tonight. I've got to get building. I've got to put a bunch of branches down there. I'm going to use a lot of the branches that I took off the tree already. Here you can see what I've started to do. I'm placing the ribs on just as a framework. I'm staggering them, one on this side, and then kilt it down a bit. Boom, boom, boom, vice versa. I'm almost done with the ribs. I still have to put a little bit more by my head and by my feet, but I'm going to wait on that. I'm going to start filling in with the boughs. I have to put little sticks first. to hold the boughs up and then some boughs hopefully going to not have to cut down any live trees for us i'm going to be using cedar boughs and a lot of these cedar boughs are from this tree that's been laying down already that i just cleaned up the edge the boughs off i may go around and take some boughs off other trees but i'm not going to kill the tree i'm not going to take a full tree down and i'm going to try to take as much off of downed trees as possible which there is quite a few uh right around this immediate area i'm almost on my shelter i need a little bit bit more boughs and i've been walking around trying to find a down tree and i hit the mother load i found this big old spruce up here that fell down and the spruce boughs will make good shelter a few more arm loads like that and i'll be in good shape natural shelters man take some effort it's not even that hard work really it's just walking around looking for materials i don't want to i don't want to take down trees to use for boughs it's not necessary i'm not in a survival situation like you saw it's picking up spruce boughs that that off the spruce that fell over and cutting cedar boughs off this cedar uh eastern white cedar three oxen talus really isn't good uh it's not dense enough for shelter building for for insulation or for shingling uh the spruce and balls and fur are good my shelter needs a little bit more work done to it but as of now i'm comfortable sleeping in it so um if i have time i'll gather some more boughs and stuff and put on i'm not trying to keep out rain because it's going to be so cold tonight that i know it's not going to rain i'm not trying to keep out snow either because i can just i can handle snow what i'm trying to do is just keep my warmth all in this cocoon that's why i made it so small i just want every all of my warmth kept in and i know that's not airtight by any means but it will do something for me so i think now i'm going to go after some firewood i don't see many hardwood here at all it's mostly cedar so i am using my fire to cook tonight uh and i need it to stay warm until i go to bed so i do need a substantial amount of fire ah firewood here we go i want to get my sleeping bag open and starting to fluff out because it's down and i want it to all loft up before i go to bed it is it's only two o'clock now so by the time i get into bed by nine or ten it will be completely lofted up but i'm not just using the sleeping bag the way that i'm going to use it in conjunction i'm not going to drape it over top of the sleeping bag because then that would compress the down right and whenever down is compressed it loses its warmth or at least it's a potential warmth so I'm going to line the inside of the sleeping bag with the wool blanket and that way I'm going to get the best of both worlds. I'm going to get the warmth from the blanket and the sleeping bag and I'm not going to compress the down. So in order to do this properly I'm going to lay my sleeping bag out completely open my wool blanket and I'm not going to open it up completely and I'm going to leave it in half my wool blanket so that I can get inside my wool blanket and I'm going to have wool blanket on the bottom, wool blanket on the top sleeping bag on the bottom sleeping bag on the top the sleeping bag will be compressed underneath me but that's where your sleeping pad comes in all right the shelter's done for today i've been working on a little bit more i'm satisfied with it when i go to bed and put the sled up there like a door if i want not really that necessary but it will block a little bit more window i can do something like that too no big deal but i'm happy with the shelter now so it's three o'clock i got some firewood cut so with the shelter completed and firewood cut i still need get a little bit more firewood but i think now is a good time to find a place where i am going to have the fire i'm not going to have it obviously in front of their shelter um i'm using cedar and it's supposed to be gusts of 40 kilometer winds tonight i'm just not going to chance it so i think over here behind a tree will be a good idea the tree will block the wind of the fire on this side i'll sit against the tree everything should be good so if i sit here this is pretty comfortable i'll put my pad underneath the rest of my back and if i want my legs stretched out i'm going to want the fire probably a foot away from my feet so so here you can see my fire relay it's not exactly an upside down fire more more of just a platform it's all cedar i got some big rounds on the bottom and uh i'll start the fire on top maybe it'll be like an upside down fire we'll see and then i've got my squirrel cooker holding my pot over top that's gonna how i'm gonna cook my food i have a dehydrated chili which i'm going to rehydrate in this and the squirrel cooker again by kestrel bushcraft uh he's out of the uk i believe he made this for me it's got one piece here second piece here that piece gets stabbed in the ground and you just hook second piece on there you can cook your squirrel your steak hey you as I use it as a fire well you said as a pot hanger I mean so very cool I'm excited to get I'm excited to use that I haven't used it yet I've been working non-stop since I got here busy busy so I need to take a little bit to relax when it would walk down to the river check her out snowing now very cool yeah it's coming down now snowing quite a bit they said we had chance of getting a storm from Texas and the winds been picking up the snow is coming so but we are gonna get it we'll see exhausted as well I'm like an hour hike I didn't take any video I got some pictures maybe I'll put them at the end of the video I was sitting here getting cold I really have too much more to do maybe cut a little bit firewood but I was getting cold I figured let's go for a hike I just kept walking it's a nice area it's no snow falling makes it even nicer so if you guys want to check out the gear that i used for this trip i have a video on that i'll put the links in the description and at the end of the video i used uh i used that pulk to pull all my stuff in used a duffel bag and uh to fit all of my gear in except for like my axe and my saw my little blanket but it worked pretty good just gonna sit here and relax for a little bit and start the fire soon that's thunder and the bird's going crazy fancy i was gonna say i'm gonna go take advantage of the river and get some water so i don't never heard thunder in the winter time before yeah ----'s getting real right now this is a storm big time i have to uh start my fire right now because if i don't i don't know if i'll be able to get it started this is this is substantial so i didn't really go into depth with that at all i lit the fire with a fire steel and birch bark it took a while birch bark was wet uh yeah i was real real uh anxious to get that fire going because the way it was coming down there for a minute it seemed like that was going to happen that wasn't going to stop with me like that all night it's still snowing but that was intense my camera is soaking wet so i hope both the mic and the camera are okay i have to try and dry it out but crazy i can tell the water's boiling now because the whole thing's shaking like the bubbles are creating the motion so i can just slide this over let it cool for a second and throw my dehydrated chili right in so here's my dehydrated chili my wife made and that's about a meal and a half there but i am feeling pretty hungry so I'm gonna put a lot in we'll see how much I can fit in there with the water got her all in fancy I have to change my layers I have to put my puppy in the middle because they see the cedar is so sparky and and the direct the winds changing every two seconds I do not want to put holes in that puppy already ---- like that so this goes against what I was saying about the sleeping bag being compressed the down being compressed in it but this is the better of the two so this is how it's going there's what she looks like super hardy and thick be a good meal then I have some crushed M&M peanuts for dessert oh and a babybel moment of truth here steamy oh I better give her a second looks like it's gonna burn my nose I kind of mashed the fire all together it's 541 I started the fire at 510 I haven't added anything to it so it's going pretty good it's cedar so it burns quick but anyways I mashed her Because she was kind of rolling everywhere. I'm just gonna have a normal fire now and add I found a piece of maple so I'll be able to have some hardwood. I'm lucky I picked this spot where I did. I'm in a gully in between two hills You can hear I can see the trees swaying and you can hear the wind behind me blowing like crazy And I'm okay down in here. It's not so bad. My fire is not really going too crazy right now Like it is windy don't get me wrong, but if I was up on a ridge, it would be no go So there's a drawback to being in the gully like I am. Maybe the cold air settles down. It's a little bit more damp and stuff. But I'm going to take that over top of the wind any day. Supper was good. Full. There's always room for a little bit of chocolate, you know? A little M&M peanut in my life. Hear it? It's freaking nuts out there, man. Crazy. Well, there's not much left to do now. Six o'clock. It's going to get dark really soon. And temperature's going to drop real quick. Supposed to get to negative 15 now. I just looked. I do have cell service where I am. So my phone is on airplane mode looked at what the predictions were for tonight earlier It was negative 14 and dropped it down to negative 15 plus windchill And I can't figure out what it is on my phone, but it's gonna be cold not much is going on After supper I went down and clean my pot up some river water for some hot chocolate looking forward to it We got the chocolate show or hot chocolate. This one's after 8 mint I like to be some after 8 mint hot chocolate that hits the spot that's very good it's uh 7 49 right now so almost eight o'clock and uh yeah i think i'm gonna turn in around nine o'clock maybe sit here till 10 but i highly doubt it the fire's keeping me warm i'm finally burning my hardwood i found one dead standing maple so it's giving off a lot more btus i'm actually feeling the fire it's good i think i'm gonna boil up some water and pour it in my nalgene and bring it in my sleeping bag with me when i go to bed it's just a little bit extra warmth you know put it in the small your back or between your legs it's nice to have I'm headed to bed try warmer up in here good night wish me luck hey guys good morning slept good till about 3 o'clock and then woke up to pee and toss and turn till about 345 I cannot go back to sleep just anticipating the drive home and trying to beat the storm well I beat most of it I'm almost home and you can see he's coming down so I'm happy to be almost home I hope you guys liked the video I hope you learned something I hope you enjoyed it I'm glad that I was able to get another winter camping video out for you guys stay tuned there will be more videos coming up soon