Winter Survival and Bushcraft – Alone in the Bitter Cold
#bushcraft #survival #camping
Out for a couple days in the snow with nothing but a knife, 200g meat, and a small tin with a ferro rod, hooks, line, sinker and tinfoil. I am not gonna pretend it was enjoyable. I know a lot of haters will complain that I brought a small piece of meat on a survival trip. A Swedwoods outing without a steak is not a Swedwoods outing. Here are some thoughts and what I learnt.
BUILDING A SURVIVAL SHELTER takes more time than anticipated. I could have saved one hour in building the shelter if I had just taken the closest materials. But being out on my friends land which I plan to film on again makes me want to minimize the visual footprint I leave. So I went out in bigger and bigger circles collecting materials, not taking more from each tree or sapling patch that would leave obvious visual scars. Making a shelter in this weather you will get wet. So you better have a fire. If you are not able to make a fire its better to just hunker down and insulate the ground under a dense growth spruce tree and do flap jacks once an hour. You can also make a small fire there but not if it’s covered in snow.
SPOTTING PLACES where you have wood fuel is important. I didn’t have time to get enough firewood for the night before dark. But luckily, building the shelter I learned the surroundings well and where to find dead standing, and dead lying wood. So had no problem collecting firewood after dark. Very hard to get a long fire going with just a knife which let me almost only harvest smaller size logs. A saw or axe would have made a world of difference.
SPRUCE BOUGH BEDDING compress after just an hour. So more was needed. But was easy to collect in comparison to firewood in the dark. When you see me lying on it in the morning it looks very thin but that is because you only see the edge of a deep impression in the ground I’m lying on that is filled out with spruce boughs. Here I learned something new. I noticed the spruce boughs that was green and fresh had a chilling effect even if all the snow on them was removed. Build the top two layers with spruce boughs that you first dry out on the fire for half a minute or so. Make sure they only get smoked and lightly scorched and don’t begin to burn. Made a HUGE difference.
SURVIVAL KITS need to be small. I see no problem with always having a tin that small in a bag, jacket or whatever. But this is my personal preference from my everyday life. Anything bigger than that and I will not have it if something happens when Im not doing my normal hikes, camping trips etc. If something happens on my normal outings I’m loaded with gear! "But what if you get separated from your backpack?" Could happen I guess, but not likely if I don’t river raft in the middle of nowhere.
MELTING SNOW AND WATER PURIFICATION. Yes you need to melt snow. You can not eat snow. It is counter productive because more energy is needed to melt it in your mouth than you gain. You don’t want to loose body heat and energy. So at least you have to melt it. Boiling is even better because then you get both heat and minimize the risk with consuming parasites and viruses. Tinfoil was like a container made from thin air. Folded like that it’s not noticeable in the kit. Fold it gently and have it by the fire instead of on it and it will last for many days.
WOOL TAKES FOREVER TO DRY OUT. And synthetic dry up instantly. If you have a fire synthetic gets you dry and warm instantly. If you don’t have a fire wool can still save your life because wool heat your body some even when wet.
ITS BETTER TO EAT A STEAK AND FIND WOLF TRACKS than finding wolf tracks and having a steak… I guess LOL.
Thanks for Watching!
#bushcraft #survival #camping