A salvaged winter camp.

Gaurdian_A1

Gaurdian_A1

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Jul 28, 2009
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So yesterday my brother and I had planned to go out to one of our fav spots 30 KM away from the big city to camp for the weekend. The plan was to build a snow shelter, spend the night, practice some trapmaking the next day and hike out/drive home. Naturally we both got called in to work yesterday morning and our plans were dashed. Luckily we both were done work early, so we decided to have a fire at my place, have a few brewskies and chillax.

We then got it in our heads that we were going to build the snow shelter in my back yard....so as we sliced pineapple with our junglases ( tropic thunder LOL) we finalized our plan and headed out to the back yard.

I had enough snow that the snowshelter was 5ft 9" tall at the peak, we built a windbreak wall and made the enterance facing a domestic cedar shrub to aid in dispersing the strong winds and -26 degrees C temp outside.

We poked sticks into the shelter to aid in the sculpting process on the inside..The tools we used were the Junglases ( Awesome snow knife) and a new lightweight snowshovel i am testing called the claw.

here are the pics. I will provide more info as we go along.

Slicing pineapple and going over battle plans.
tropicthunder2.jpg

tropicthunder3.jpg


The CLAW.
This thing is awesome..light, easy to use and it moves lots of snow...it was especially comfortable to use when sculpting the inside of the shelter.Cost 15 bucks canadian currency.

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The blades.
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The entrance to the shelter, you can see our windbreak wall also. this shelter was awesome..it didnt take very long to build either. My brother and I have been making these a looong time.

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Digging out the shelter...This is where the claw shined. Helps to have a headlamp too..
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Here is the shelter from the outside, almost done.Looks like an igloo.
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The inside taking shape.The stick you see indicated that we have another 3 feet of digging to do. You cant see it in the pic but we also have a vent/air hole to the side of the shelter to provide fresh air.
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Another windbreak wall pic
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okay, hope you all are enjoying this, here comes more pics..:eek:
 
i'm gonna be that guy that posts before you are done with the pics. looks like you had some fun today. nice job.
 
Another outside veiw.
shelter4.jpg


Here is my pack, and some of our knives we had out there..we took everything that we would have brought if we were actually out in the bush..and with the -26 temp outside, we didnt know the difference anyway.

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The completed inside, equipped with two beds, 3 beers and 2 glowsticks. :D The inside was tall enough that you could comfortably sit up and get stuff out of your pack or whatever you needed to do.
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We built a shelf to put some candles on for lighting, it looked pretty cool and worked really well.
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Izula in the snow

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Me and my Junglas as i made some advustments to the vent hole.
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ESEE 3 and glow sticks
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ESEE 3 on standby in the shelter
ESEE3.jpg


We slept in our adventure medical kits emergency bivvy bags, they were pretty warm, but by no means perfect, both of our bivvy's ripped in a few spots from tossing and turning through the night as we tried to get comfortable. I recomend these bivvy's for SHTF situations only.

Me bedded down for the night.
sleeptime.jpg


We had a total blast..for what it was, we totally recovered our lost camping trip and had a sh*t load of fun to boot..the only thing we wish we would have had was an abundance of evergreen bows...We made the door for the shelter out of our backpacks and the claw...worked awesome. We slept pretty good too, but both had cold toes through the night...Otherwise the shelter was very warm..our water and remaining beer never froze at all as we found out the next morning..:D

anyway, i hope you enjoyed the write up and the pics.

-G1
 
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Looks like fun! I might have to look into getting one of those Snow Claws, pretty handy.
 
nice job - wish I had enough snow to do that sort of thing...
 
Looks like a damn fun outing!

I really have to brave the cold and get out in the snow to make shelters as such. :thumbup:
 
Great job !! Nice to see someone putting our big snow dump we had to good use :thumbup:
 
1066vik said:
nice job - wish I had enough snow to do that sort of thing...
Click to expand...

We were in a state of emergency over the weekend, had about 2 1/2 - 3' over night. I am actually really jealous I don't have that snow claw because I could have went out and built that shelter in the middle of my yard instead of being a a house bum.
 
Great post -- thanks for bringing us along!

Really gets me in the right frame of mind for a snowmobile-camping trip I have planned in two weeks with my brother in the UP (aka Michigan's Upper Peninsula). We've done it the past two years (a one week tour circling the UP), but I never had an ESEE to bring along until this year. We go pretty lightweight, so I'll be taking my 3MIL and an IZULA.
 
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I got caught in a storm like that visiting friends over new years '96 in B-more.
round 1 was about 18" of snow overnight.
the official count for round 2 was another 36" of snow in 26 hours, but most of it came down over a period of about 6 hours.
While it was coming down I was shoveling the sidewalk & front porch every hour or so.
after it was over when i went to dig out my pickup, I was cutting snow blocks and built a fort for the neighbor kids.
it was a total blast as far as i was concerned.
my friends were convinced I was insane.
 
Man, that looks like a blast! I wish that we got enough snow to do that here. And that my brother was cool enough to have decent knives. :D
 
Great post. I really like seeing an example of a snow shelter. I've never done one of those. Not sure I'm ready to try it tomorrow (we don't really have much snow), but it's cool to see it done.

SP
 
Your a damn mad man, I hate the snow and would never sleep in it unless I had to.

You got balls even if they are frozen.....:thumbup:
 
Wow, that's pretty cool. Wish we got that much snow this year.

One thing though: if it had been me, I wouldn't have trusted that tiny hole for air. Did it actually do well enough that it wasn't stuffy in there?
 
Guardian - great post and nice quinzee. I grew-up in Calgary and in the winter my Scout troop would camp at Boulton Creek in Kananaskis - the boys would build and sleep in quinzees and the leaders would sleep in tents with propane heaters. Your post brings back memories of how much fun those winter camps were. Thanks.
 
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