Overnighter in Natural Shelter

kgd

kgd

Joined
Feb 28, 2007
Messages
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Once again responding to one of Iz's challenges - build a natural shelter and sleep in it. I wanted to do this with just the shelter and a wool blanket (no fire). But the chill got to me. It dipped just below freezing last night and the wool blanket wasn't cutting it. Plus I got in kind of late and had to change tactics a couple of times of what I thought I was going to do and what I could to. In the end, I build a shelter and slept in it for most of the night. Then on getting cold, I build a nice roasting long fire and cuddled next to that like it was my wife.

[youtube]kPgR1uPADWI[/youtube]

Now, since I seem to be the only one posting Hardswoodsmen challenges up, I'd really encourage JCL-MD to post up his recent "HardCore" - Man-In-The-Creek-Drill. It just has to be seen to be believed. Puts my efforts on all this stuff to shame!
 
nice work Ken.. I;ve spent a number of nights in natural shelters.. It think its a great skill and a heck of allot of fun.
 
Hey good to hear from you Riley! Saw you active on the bushlor condor thread last week as well. Yes, this was a good exercise to get under the belt. It makes me appreciate how easy it is to string up a tarp and set down a foamy. If I had my drothers, I would have gotten in much earlier and gave myself more leeway on the time. Of course, survival situations don't always give you that luxury so on that aspect this was a lot of learning.
 
yeah it can be real time consuming to make a natural shelter

I'm in school fulltime right now finishing up my RN degree. consequentially I need to work most of the time that I'm not in school or studying. But I try to practice when I can

hopefully when things settle down I;ll start making some real trips again... really like the challenges you;ve been doing lately.. Good stuff brother.
 
It looks sort of neat but at the same time I dont think it would protect you from much of anything.
 
SubaruSTi said:
It looks sort of neat but at the same time I dont think it would protect you from much of anything.
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Better than nothing and thats what I walked in with. I had 2.5 h before it got dark. The bark gave some wind protection. It would deflect a drizzle but not a downpour. I you consider what a tarp does, it basically only protects you from precipitation. This did 3/4 of the job. Makes you appreciate a tarp or a garbage bag in your kit. I prefer my silnylon, that is for sure. Thanks for commenting.
 
Good Show Ken!!

Now any time I hear Phragmites I think of you and Rick!!

As per my dodder in the creek vid there was no skill involved ,just a laps of good judgement ! Ha!!
 
My North Face tent stuff sack got shredded this spring and I haven't used it since. The last five weeks, the longfire and raised bed combo have been golden. Camping out at 8500 feet in 17 degree weather on a trout lake with three six-inch lodgepoles throwing heat up from the bottom of your bed and out over the top and on a still night you can sleep 100% warm and toasty-just keep a couple two or three five foot long logs close at hand when the fire burns low and you wake up at 4AM with frost on your whiskers. My first time I had a slightly springy curved pole that I staked in as the last plank for my bed give out and suddenly turn my 2 foot thick sleeping platform into a foot and a half one, but that was my error. Being meticulous in construction pays off. Ever since, these lincoln log beds with or without the lean-to tarp have proven to be extremely effective for staying warm. I'll be using these until snow covers the trees, and then I'll start making igloos.
 
You call that a shelter....OMG! Just kidding. :) Looks like fun to me. I am big on the Sil poncho/tarp thing as well.
 
Great challenge Ken! All my planned challenges will be put on hold this winter as I'll be celebrating Christmas in Kabul;)

kgd said:
Then on getting cold, I build a nice roasting long fire and cuddled next to that like it was my wife.
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Well, if your wife is anything like mine...that could be a two-edged sword; if not respected and paid attention to, the searing burn is often quite painful:D

ROCK6
 
It's very easy to knock another man's natural shelter, it's not so easy to make one yourself. Ken you did a great job, and I am sure you learned a thing or two in the process. I wish I had half the time you have to get out and do, but for now I'll sit back and watch and learn with you.

I have never made a perfect shelter in one day, and I doubt I would unless I set aside 8 hours to do it. The beauty of shelter making is you learn on every attempt. I see a lot of guys make shelters and concentrate so much on the roof, that they forget about insulating them self from the ground. Try sleeping on the ground with out laying down bedding in the north once in cold temps and I promise you won't forget it again. You did a fine job Ken, and you are one of the guys that continuously get out and do! Thanks for sharing your trials!
 
Seems when I was learning debri shelters it was August in the Mid atlantic. Spiders and ants just love the things! :)

Doing it in the cold excludes the bugs but really tests ones resolve.

Thanks you for being willing to do it and share.

Bill
 
tonym said:
It's very easy to knock another man's natural shelter, it's not so easy to make one yourself. Ken you did a great job, and I am sure you learned a thing or two in the process. I wish I had half the time you have to get out and do, but for now I'll sit back and watch and learn with you.

I have never made a perfect shelter in one day, and I doubt I would unless I set aside 8 hours to do it. The beauty of shelter making is you learn on every attempt. I see a lot of guys make shelters and concentrate so much on the roof, that they forget about insulating them self from the ground. Try sleeping on the ground with out laying down bedding in the north once in cold temps and I promise you won't forget it again. You did a fine job Ken, and you are one of the guys that continuously get out and do! Thanks for sharing your trials!
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Thanks Tony. We all have different motivators for doing certain things and some of us do have the luxury of time. If I were to go back 6 years ago when I was fighting my career fight, between that and the kids I had no time back then either. I now have an empty nest and a pretty steady and established career track which lets me take snippets of time here and there. The natural shelter is not something I have done before, I tried building them once or twice, but never slept in one. I watched Rick deal with his homemade shelters a few times in winter no less and I've slept in hybrid shelter/tarp combos. Anyhow, I started doing these things because a guy on another site managed to motivate a bunch of us into a standard set of difficult, but doable, challenges. Half the battle is committing yourself to do them and you have to use whatever tricks you need to in order to keep yourself to task. This year has been a blast though. All I need to get is one over-nighter in Dec. and I'll have achieved my 2011 goal - have at least one overnighter in every month. Here again, a rather silly little goal to make, but it takes a certain degree of effort to make sure you don't let an entire month slip by without you getting out....
 
tonym said:
Try sleeping on the ground with out laying down bedding in the north once in cold temps and I promise you won't forget it again.
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Or sometimes with a S*^t load of bedding

And that;s how I know you;ll never forget our October night together Tony
 
Good gosh that roof probably took forever, I can appreciate that. Great video and I really liked being able to hear your thoughts during it too. Thanks!
 
Thanks Joe - once I clued into the Bark as a thatching, it went pretty quick. I had a stupid idea that I was going to thatch it with goldenrod because there is a big field right at the shelter. I got on my knees and started cutting it and (hell I even learned this lesson before) and found out how long it takes to gather sufficient golden rod. Way too long. It looks like its dense enough to cut fast and use for bedding material but then it can be a bit difficult to cut through at the base and that adds to processing time. Plus, the little buggers seem to pack down really tight after you lay them down and don't keep their fluff like the phragmities.

Glad you enjoyed the video.
 
Nicely done Ken, thanks for sharing your learning process with the rest of us. Those ice crystals bring back some memories, I need to do this again soon myself. I have been waiting on the cooler months just for this. I enjoyed the post very much. I spent a lot of time out checking out the nearly full moon last night myself.


tonym said:
It's very easy to knock another man's natural shelter, it's not so easy to make one yourself.
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Not to mention it's a whole lot easier to just go out and do anything than it is to do it and document the process for sharing with the rest of the community. I pay close attention when any of the experienced guys here mention something I may have done wrong or they would do differently, there is always something to be learned. As far as other people go, ones who have never gone out and gone through the effort to contribute in this fashion, commenting on short-comings? Eh, I've learned to just scroll on past it and ignore it, and just not give them the attention they want but have done nothing to earn. Natural shelters can be a pain and a lot of work. Ken could have had a more relaxing time and had more of a shelter had he not wanted to share the night with the rest of us and enjoy the fellowship of the discussion that would follow. Some people just don't get that.

Once again Ken, thanks for the post and your effort in furthering the discussion.
 
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Great job Ken. Your significant contributions to this website are most appreciated! Keep it up brother!
 
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