UNRL Ghandi
Gold Member
- Joined
- Oct 24, 2013
- Messages
- 987
Long story ahead, but it was quite the learning experience and I wanted to share the experience and my lessons learned.
When Operation Two Weeks released the BGTG, I bought 5 of them. One for each of the five guys who were planning to go on this year's winter camping trip with me. My twin brother and I have gone the past two years and each time we try new things we've learned and practice our survival skills during the harshest winter conditions we can find in the Western MD mountains. We had planned to go during the big blizzard, but thought otherwise (for our wives' sakes of course - they worry...). My knives arrived and I was pumped to get the trip scheduled, but trying to get five schedules lined up when some of them work the weekends is almost impossible and with a big work project coming I didn't think I'd get to go this year. Enter my wife. She has said time and again that she won't camp with me if it's under 50 degrees. It's 70 degrees in our house at night and she sleeps with a hot water bottle, so I know she gets cold easily and respect that. Well she saw I was bummed after I found out my twin brother canceled because of something big at his work and my other guys all couldn't make it. "I'll go with you," she said. WHAT!?!? As excited as I was, this was a game changer because now instead of going out and doing my thing and only worrying about me (since the guys can handle themselves) I was worried about her. But knowing this opportunity would likely not come up again, I quickly said yes and told her if she changed her mind I would be crushed. Haha, she was trapped now.
Being the nice husband that I am, I gave her first pick of the BGTGs I had bought or my Ratmandu. Only four are shown in this pic since one was already claimed for my twin to match his AK.
She picked this one:
Lesson Learned: Be careful of leaving INFI within eyesight of someone you're offering a free knife too, especially a stripped one. Dang, that TGLB was mine. Now it's hers...
We got up at 5:30 am to make the 2 1/2 hour drive to our property. The idea was that we were in a "bugout" situation and all we could bring was what we could carry. This created a dilemma for me; which Busse Chopper do I bring? My Battlesaw doesn't have a sheath yet (in progress with Patriot Leather) so that left my BWM, NMFSH, or ASHBM. I worry about weight when carrying my pack, so I can't bring all of them. I had my Gransfors Bruks axe on my pack as my main chopper and I grabbed the green/black BGTG to be my main use knife, so I actually let my wife decide again since she was going to be doing all of the pine skinning for the poles for our lean to. She picked the NMFSH first. It's got the BIG finish and is quite beautiful but she realized it would be too heavy for her, so she grabbed the ghetto satined BWM I got cheap from Tinfoil Hat Timmy here on the exchange. She's a homely blade, but sharp and agile and tore right through those pine branches.
When we got there it was 4 degrees, but we were dressed for it. Because this was a "bugout" situation and our property is 150 miles from where we live (making it more of a bugout/survival trip), we have a long way to go, so I loaded us down with a week's worth of MREs and a half gallon of water each. Beyond that, there weren't a lot of extras. Tarps, sleeping bags, titanium cook pot, firestarting kit (FYI - the Lightning Strike Firestarter - Get One!), technora cord (thinner/lighter version of rope than parachord with just as much or more strength), etc. We were carrying .45s and I had my Benelli also.
Lesson Learned: 50 lb pack hiking through heavy snow and over steep terrain is too much for an office worker. I need to get in better shape. Also, it's not a good idea to put that kind of weight on someone who weighs 110 lbs. Poor lady.
Packed up and ready we hiked the quarter mile through some high snow already on the ground and up the hill to the campsite.
Those smiles are because we were able to put our packs down.
We were camping in the same area that my brother and I had camped the two previous trips. It's a hemlock grove near the top of the hill and offers a great windbreak and the stream is just below us about 100 yards if we need any additional water. I scoped the area looking for the perfect place to put our lean to. The idea was it would be a double lean to structure with all the sides enclosed (except a small door area). Build a bed on each side and put a long fire in the middle. Smoke escapes up through the gap in the ridgepoles and while it's 0 degrees outside it's nice and toasty inside. That was the plan...
Lean to in progress:
I said it would take us three hours to build. My wife told me I'm notorious for underestimating how long it takes to do this kind of thing. I told her to quit yapping and watch the master. 4 hours later we still weren't done.
Lesson Learned: Overestimate the time needed. And when you pick your camping spot don't pick it in an area of mature trees. You need smaller ones to build your structure...
Caught her hard at work and the Busse napping
We were running out of time to build our double lean to, so I decided that it would have to be one lean to and I'd put the tarp opposite us and the fire to reflect the heat back, because I needed to ensure we had enough firewood to get through the night. Now the long fire is meant to have two big logs 6-8" diameter stacked on top of each other with a bed of tinder/kindling in between. You light the kindling and let it burn down and it creates a bed of embers between the two big logs and they slowly burn throughout the night. Supposedly 1 hour per inch in diameter. Sounded exactly what I needed because I didn't want to stoke the fire every hour during the night. So I searched for a big dead standing tree. Found out not far from the site that was perfect. Now I've always thought that having a big chopper knife is smart, but having an axe for the heavier jobs is smarter, so I pulled the Gransfors out and got to work. And work, and work, and work. This hardwood was tough and with the temperature down around 0 didn't help. Took me 3 hours to finally fell this beast and then I had to chop through it two more times so I could have my two logs for the long fire. I bet I swung my axe two thousand or more times throughout the trip, cutting down the poles for our lean to and then getting this firewood ready. I was using so many calories on this and it was so cold out that my middle and ring finger on my right hand began to curl into my palm spontaneously, trying to take me fetal. I quickly ate some fortified MRE peanut butter and my wife made me some green tea to help combat the natural reflexes. That peanut butter was AMAZING! So good.
Lesson Learned: Carry a saw. Which I did end up buying a Silky BigBoy. I tested it out last weekend and man what a difference it makes! When your hands are seizing up on you and it's freezing out, banging a hunk of steel against a hard piece of wood hurts and is not as effective as a saw. Plus the saw is 1 lb lighter than my axe for carrying purposes.
Here's my nemesis, dang thing would not fall! I literally had to chop all the way through it. I just kept thinking, "Where my beavers at!"
So after I got our main firewood take care of and my wife gathered a bunch of firewood for our cooking fire and the one that would keep us warm until 11pm (when I would set the long fire and we would go to bed), we put the finishing touches on our bedroom for the night and made some dinner. This was the best part of the trip. Hard hike in, hard work setting up camp, and now we get to relax and let our bones thaw and our bellies get full.
While we were sitting talking about things I was curious what the weather was like. Our property used to have zero reception and I could at best get a text out to my wife that said "I'm alive" when I was out running the chainsaw, but recently a cell tower went in and we now get full 4G. Which I'm conflicted about because I liked being disconnected out there. However, I did pull my phone out and pull up weather.com. Main page said, "Life Threatening Cold Inbound." Gulp. Apparently there was a polar vortex with high winds coming and this was our weather forecast (notice the windchill in grey):
I got a little panicked because I brought my wife out winter camping on the coldest night of the year and it was going to be an interesting evening if this long fire didn't work. Never having created one before I was worried it might not work. Around 10:30 I got it started:
Everything looked good. Fire was burning hot and the two main logs had caught fire like they were supposed to. We were relatively warm and my wife had her hot water bottle, so climbed into our sleeping bags and called it a night. For the next two hours we both struggled to find sleep. We didn't have time to make the bed structure, so we were laying on top of pine branches which weren't altogether comfortable. The wind was really picking up and the sound of the trees popping kept me awake. It was around 1am when my wife said, "Fire's out."
I got up and sure enough it was. I think what I did wrong was the gap between the two big logs was too big because of a bow in the top log. I debated on gathering more wood and working a different fire, but since this wasn't a real bugout/survival situation and I decided to call it a night. We packed up some of our gear and hiked out in the dark. Drove the 9 miles to my mom's and slept comfortably until 6am when we had to get up to hike back out and get the rest of our gear.
Lesson Learned: Continue to test your gear, test your plans, test your skills. If we had to stay the night, I know we could have. It would have made for a very long night and we had my grandmother's 80th birthday party to attend at 11am the next day, so we flaked out. But the next time, we'll be much more prepared, our packs will have only the essentials, and our fire will not fail us.
Back of the lean to the next morning:
The lonely cold hike out during -18 wind chill weather. My breath was freezing in my beard it was so cold.
This was the most amazing trip regardless of the pain, struggles, or failure. Great bonding trip for my wife and I since it required us to rely on each other and get through something that was beyond our comfort zones. I highly suggest you do something like this with friends or family if you ever get the chance. Test yourself and find out what the other people in your group are made of as well. I said at the beginning that her going on the trip was a game changer because I'd be worried about her. Well now I know that the only game changing part about this trip was that now I know I don't have to worry about her at all the next time. She's a beast and I didn't know quite how much so until I watched haul the equivalent of an 90lb pack for me through snow and up the hill and smiled the whole way through it.
When Operation Two Weeks released the BGTG, I bought 5 of them. One for each of the five guys who were planning to go on this year's winter camping trip with me. My twin brother and I have gone the past two years and each time we try new things we've learned and practice our survival skills during the harshest winter conditions we can find in the Western MD mountains. We had planned to go during the big blizzard, but thought otherwise (for our wives' sakes of course - they worry...). My knives arrived and I was pumped to get the trip scheduled, but trying to get five schedules lined up when some of them work the weekends is almost impossible and with a big work project coming I didn't think I'd get to go this year. Enter my wife. She has said time and again that she won't camp with me if it's under 50 degrees. It's 70 degrees in our house at night and she sleeps with a hot water bottle, so I know she gets cold easily and respect that. Well she saw I was bummed after I found out my twin brother canceled because of something big at his work and my other guys all couldn't make it. "I'll go with you," she said. WHAT!?!? As excited as I was, this was a game changer because now instead of going out and doing my thing and only worrying about me (since the guys can handle themselves) I was worried about her. But knowing this opportunity would likely not come up again, I quickly said yes and told her if she changed her mind I would be crushed. Haha, she was trapped now.
Being the nice husband that I am, I gave her first pick of the BGTGs I had bought or my Ratmandu. Only four are shown in this pic since one was already claimed for my twin to match his AK.
She picked this one:
Lesson Learned: Be careful of leaving INFI within eyesight of someone you're offering a free knife too, especially a stripped one. Dang, that TGLB was mine. Now it's hers...
We got up at 5:30 am to make the 2 1/2 hour drive to our property. The idea was that we were in a "bugout" situation and all we could bring was what we could carry. This created a dilemma for me; which Busse Chopper do I bring? My Battlesaw doesn't have a sheath yet (in progress with Patriot Leather) so that left my BWM, NMFSH, or ASHBM. I worry about weight when carrying my pack, so I can't bring all of them. I had my Gransfors Bruks axe on my pack as my main chopper and I grabbed the green/black BGTG to be my main use knife, so I actually let my wife decide again since she was going to be doing all of the pine skinning for the poles for our lean to. She picked the NMFSH first. It's got the BIG finish and is quite beautiful but she realized it would be too heavy for her, so she grabbed the ghetto satined BWM I got cheap from Tinfoil Hat Timmy here on the exchange. She's a homely blade, but sharp and agile and tore right through those pine branches.
When we got there it was 4 degrees, but we were dressed for it. Because this was a "bugout" situation and our property is 150 miles from where we live (making it more of a bugout/survival trip), we have a long way to go, so I loaded us down with a week's worth of MREs and a half gallon of water each. Beyond that, there weren't a lot of extras. Tarps, sleeping bags, titanium cook pot, firestarting kit (FYI - the Lightning Strike Firestarter - Get One!), technora cord (thinner/lighter version of rope than parachord with just as much or more strength), etc. We were carrying .45s and I had my Benelli also.
Lesson Learned: 50 lb pack hiking through heavy snow and over steep terrain is too much for an office worker. I need to get in better shape. Also, it's not a good idea to put that kind of weight on someone who weighs 110 lbs. Poor lady.
Packed up and ready we hiked the quarter mile through some high snow already on the ground and up the hill to the campsite.
Those smiles are because we were able to put our packs down.
We were camping in the same area that my brother and I had camped the two previous trips. It's a hemlock grove near the top of the hill and offers a great windbreak and the stream is just below us about 100 yards if we need any additional water. I scoped the area looking for the perfect place to put our lean to. The idea was it would be a double lean to structure with all the sides enclosed (except a small door area). Build a bed on each side and put a long fire in the middle. Smoke escapes up through the gap in the ridgepoles and while it's 0 degrees outside it's nice and toasty inside. That was the plan...
Lean to in progress:
I said it would take us three hours to build. My wife told me I'm notorious for underestimating how long it takes to do this kind of thing. I told her to quit yapping and watch the master. 4 hours later we still weren't done.
Lesson Learned: Overestimate the time needed. And when you pick your camping spot don't pick it in an area of mature trees. You need smaller ones to build your structure...
Caught her hard at work and the Busse napping
We were running out of time to build our double lean to, so I decided that it would have to be one lean to and I'd put the tarp opposite us and the fire to reflect the heat back, because I needed to ensure we had enough firewood to get through the night. Now the long fire is meant to have two big logs 6-8" diameter stacked on top of each other with a bed of tinder/kindling in between. You light the kindling and let it burn down and it creates a bed of embers between the two big logs and they slowly burn throughout the night. Supposedly 1 hour per inch in diameter. Sounded exactly what I needed because I didn't want to stoke the fire every hour during the night. So I searched for a big dead standing tree. Found out not far from the site that was perfect. Now I've always thought that having a big chopper knife is smart, but having an axe for the heavier jobs is smarter, so I pulled the Gransfors out and got to work. And work, and work, and work. This hardwood was tough and with the temperature down around 0 didn't help. Took me 3 hours to finally fell this beast and then I had to chop through it two more times so I could have my two logs for the long fire. I bet I swung my axe two thousand or more times throughout the trip, cutting down the poles for our lean to and then getting this firewood ready. I was using so many calories on this and it was so cold out that my middle and ring finger on my right hand began to curl into my palm spontaneously, trying to take me fetal. I quickly ate some fortified MRE peanut butter and my wife made me some green tea to help combat the natural reflexes. That peanut butter was AMAZING! So good.
Lesson Learned: Carry a saw. Which I did end up buying a Silky BigBoy. I tested it out last weekend and man what a difference it makes! When your hands are seizing up on you and it's freezing out, banging a hunk of steel against a hard piece of wood hurts and is not as effective as a saw. Plus the saw is 1 lb lighter than my axe for carrying purposes.
Here's my nemesis, dang thing would not fall! I literally had to chop all the way through it. I just kept thinking, "Where my beavers at!"
So after I got our main firewood take care of and my wife gathered a bunch of firewood for our cooking fire and the one that would keep us warm until 11pm (when I would set the long fire and we would go to bed), we put the finishing touches on our bedroom for the night and made some dinner. This was the best part of the trip. Hard hike in, hard work setting up camp, and now we get to relax and let our bones thaw and our bellies get full.
While we were sitting talking about things I was curious what the weather was like. Our property used to have zero reception and I could at best get a text out to my wife that said "I'm alive" when I was out running the chainsaw, but recently a cell tower went in and we now get full 4G. Which I'm conflicted about because I liked being disconnected out there. However, I did pull my phone out and pull up weather.com. Main page said, "Life Threatening Cold Inbound." Gulp. Apparently there was a polar vortex with high winds coming and this was our weather forecast (notice the windchill in grey):
I got a little panicked because I brought my wife out winter camping on the coldest night of the year and it was going to be an interesting evening if this long fire didn't work. Never having created one before I was worried it might not work. Around 10:30 I got it started:
Everything looked good. Fire was burning hot and the two main logs had caught fire like they were supposed to. We were relatively warm and my wife had her hot water bottle, so climbed into our sleeping bags and called it a night. For the next two hours we both struggled to find sleep. We didn't have time to make the bed structure, so we were laying on top of pine branches which weren't altogether comfortable. The wind was really picking up and the sound of the trees popping kept me awake. It was around 1am when my wife said, "Fire's out."
I got up and sure enough it was. I think what I did wrong was the gap between the two big logs was too big because of a bow in the top log. I debated on gathering more wood and working a different fire, but since this wasn't a real bugout/survival situation and I decided to call it a night. We packed up some of our gear and hiked out in the dark. Drove the 9 miles to my mom's and slept comfortably until 6am when we had to get up to hike back out and get the rest of our gear.Lesson Learned: Continue to test your gear, test your plans, test your skills. If we had to stay the night, I know we could have. It would have made for a very long night and we had my grandmother's 80th birthday party to attend at 11am the next day, so we flaked out. But the next time, we'll be much more prepared, our packs will have only the essentials, and our fire will not fail us.
Back of the lean to the next morning:
The lonely cold hike out during -18 wind chill weather. My breath was freezing in my beard it was so cold.
This was the most amazing trip regardless of the pain, struggles, or failure. Great bonding trip for my wife and I since it required us to rely on each other and get through something that was beyond our comfort zones. I highly suggest you do something like this with friends or family if you ever get the chance. Test yourself and find out what the other people in your group are made of as well. I said at the beginning that her going on the trip was a game changer because I'd be worried about her. Well now I know that the only game changing part about this trip was that now I know I don't have to worry about her at all the next time. She's a beast and I didn't know quite how much so until I watched haul the equivalent of an 90lb pack for me through snow and up the hill and smiled the whole way through it.
Last edited:
:thumbup::thumbup:
