- 4 months ago
camping, survival, bushcraft, hot tent, cold weather camping, arctic, alaska, camping Alaska, survival camping, bushcraft camping, hot tent camping, winter camping, winter camping in Alaska, deep snow camping, bushcraft skills, adventure camping, kei truck, camping in arctic, coldest town on earth Outdoor boys, camping, survival, forging, fishing, outdoors, parenting, trapping, bushcraft, parenting, take kids camping, winter camping, survival camping, fishing, outdoors activities, camping videos, bushcraft camping, travel videos, travel VLOG
Category
🏖
TravelTranscript
00:00Luke here at the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel and I'm here in the frozen tundra of Alaska and for
00:09the next three days I'm building bushcraft shelters sleeping under animal hides dealing
00:13with broken equipment and I'm bringing you guys along for the ride
00:30welcome to the taiga forests of Alaska I think it's time to do some camping
00:57so this is the taiga forests of Alaska the word taiga comes from Russian it means little sticks
01:10in English we call these trees black spruce and they grow in the tundra and swamps of Alaska
01:16while these swamps are very difficult to cross in the summertime once they freeze over we can
01:22explore them but first things first I need to find a place to camp I actually like this spot quite a
01:28bit most of these spruce trees you see are dead an invasive beetle called a spruce bark beetle came
01:34in here and wiped these things out that means lots of building material lots of firewood
01:38the air temperatures about 13 degrees Fahrenheit and this ground is still not frozen in the wintertime
02:05the ground temperature is usually a lot warmer than the air temperature and the snow acts as a blanket
02:10that traps that heat in the ground if you can strip away the ice and snow and build your shelter on thawed
02:15ground it's going to be a whole lot warmer and there's a bit of mud right there this ground might
02:21be a little bit more swampy than I first thought we'll just have to deal with it
02:25all right I think it's time to start cutting some trees
02:55Oh, my God.
03:25in Hiroshima, Japan last spring.
03:26I used it to take the limbs off these trees.
03:55It's 3.50pm, starting to get dark, it's this close to the arctic, we don't get a lot
04:24of sunlight.
04:25Ah, well, I better bust out my lights.
04:54This wood is so wet, everything's covered in ice, I'm going to use one of these fire starters
05:15here.
05:16Yeah, that's working.
05:22You can tell everything's wet when dead pine doesn't want to burn.
05:28The fingers are getting a little numb.
05:33I get all the snow out of my hair.
05:38Oh, that feels amazing.
05:40I don't think so.
05:41I'm going to make it all new.
05:43This looks amazing.
05:46It looks amazing.
05:49I've never tried to get a deep breath in.
05:54See if I was hunting in the woods, I'm going to put on my neck.
06:01Huh?
06:02Huh?
06:03Huh?
06:04Huh?
06:05Huh?
06:06Huh?
06:07Huh?
06:08Huh?
06:09I've got a shelter. I've got fire. I think it's time to start working on dinner.
06:28Gloves are a bit wet. I'm going to go dry them by the fire.
06:34I got a sweet potato and a little bit of tin foil here.
06:37We're going to wrap that up. There you go.
06:40Got a nice pile of coals here.
06:43Bury that sweet potato in the coals for about 45 minutes.
06:56Most foods cook at around 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
07:00Hold your hand over the fire and count one, two, three.
07:03And when you can get to three without it hurting, that's about 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
07:09So right about here.
07:10As the fire kind of changes, you can either adjust your meat.
07:22I like a little bread with my steak, so I brought along some bread dough.
07:26I made this up like a week ago and didn't use it, so I threw it in the fridge and it's still good.
07:32Yeah, just got a little bit more of that sourdough goodness.
07:35Pretty little piece of bread right there.
07:53I'm going to have some herbal tea.
07:55Oh, that's done.
07:56Put that there.
07:57Let's take a peek.
07:58Oh, that's looking pretty good.
08:22Some honey and butter I'm going to put on there.
08:26Sweet potato is so mushy.
08:28That's exactly how it should be.
08:30I'm going to put a little cinnamon on my sweet potato and all my bread.
08:33We've got sweet potato and cinnamon, honey butter and bread, and two massive chunks of seasoned steak.
08:41There you go.
08:45This is my cow horn mug.
08:47I made this.
08:48I also made this griddle.
08:50I've got a video explaining how I made these things.
08:52It's pretty easy.
08:53I'll put a link in the video description below.
08:57Mmm.
08:58That is good.
09:06Oh, that was good.
09:07Still got quite a bit of this steak left.
09:09You can just go sit it in the snowbank and it'll be good tomorrow.
09:13There we go.
09:14Oh, that warms me up.
09:18Peach herbal tea with loads of sugar in it.
09:20It tastes pretty good.
09:21And it's just more fun drinking it out of a cow horn.
09:24That is good.
09:28I really love this fork and plate.
09:41Both of them are antiques.
09:43The fork is about 150 years old.
09:45It's from the Civil War era.
09:46Handles made out of cow bone.
09:47This is my fancy camping ware.
09:48Well, now that we've had a fire in here for several hours, we're starting to figure out what the ground situation is.
10:02Over here, it is really soft.
10:04Like, look at this.
10:07That is just a big swampy spot right there.
10:10So I think we're going to end up sleeping on this side.
10:12Well, it's pretty clear that I need to make a bed.
10:14If I sleep straight on the ground, I'm going to get soaking wet and frozen.
10:18I'm refilling my water jug just a cup or two at a time.
10:25Got to melt a lot of snow to get two liters of water.
10:48These logs are all wet and covered in ice.
11:05So I'm going to try to dry them out and warm them up before I sleep on them.
11:09I'm going to try to dry them.
11:10I'm going to try to dry them out before I sleep in the morning.
11:12I'm going to try to dry them.
11:16Jodos.
11:17I'll be trying to dry them by my way.
11:19I'll make a band of water jug.
11:21I'll be fine.
11:24So I will just use theBillいきます.
11:26I will try to dry them all.
11:28When I see them, I will try to dry them.
11:31I was going over here, I will find a hand at this side.
11:34I will try to dry them out.
11:36I got all my firewood for the night and I got it propped up around the fire trying to
11:45dry it out.
11:46I didn't bring any sleeping bags or sleeping pads, but I brought my caribou hide.
11:54Caribou have these thick, hollow hairs that are really warm.
11:57You double a caribou hide over on itself.
11:59It's pretty thick.
12:00It actually gives you some cushion and lots of insulation.
12:07Let's see how lumpy this is going to be.
12:12Wow, I'm tired.
12:16It's almost 10 o'clock.
12:18I'm pretty tired.
12:20Well, instead of a sleeping bag, I'm going to be sleeping underneath a bison hide tonight.
12:25I use the bison because it's one of the few animals big enough to cover me.
12:29I'm kind of a big boy.
12:30The nice thing about using animal hides when you're sleeping next to a fire is that these
12:33won't burn up.
12:34Sparks can land on them, the fire can get real hot, it doesn't matter.
12:38You'll wake up long before these things catch on fire.
12:41It's going to be very cold tonight and my water bottles will freeze solid if I don't keep them
12:46near the fire.
12:47So I'm going to put them just right down here.
13:07I had to put some hot coals underneath my bed, get it nice and toasty.
13:14It is late and I am tired, I will see you guys in the morning.
13:39Oh, good morning.
13:45Stayed pretty warm but the bed is so hard.
13:48Oh, my feet are cold though.
13:51My feet stick out from underneath the hide a little bit.
13:55Oh, that feels good.
13:58Get my toes warmed up.
14:01Ah, frozen boots.
14:04How many times have I put on frozen boots?
14:07I'm going to warm up the honey butter.
14:10I'm going to warm up the soles with the wet.
14:25Oh, my god, I'm going to warm up the soles with my fork.
14:28How good if I'm going to warm up the soles with water?
14:30I'm going to warm up the soles with my shoes with water.
14:33Okay, how many times have I put on ground?
14:38oh that's beautiful got melted honey and butter I'm gonna shake that up fresh
14:56warm bread and honey butter all right time to get up and do some stuff it is
15:11definitely colder today if I'm gonna stay warm I'm gonna need to make this
15:14shelter a whole lot better let me show you something weird about snow you see
15:23this right here is the path I made with my snowshoes yesterday you can see where
15:27yesterday I walked on it without snowshoes and I sunk in but today it's
15:32rock-hard if you stomp a trail down with snowshoes and let it sit overnight it'll
15:37freeze up and turn really hard snowshoes are great for building paths in the snow
15:41like this
15:53I want to push this snow berm back a little bit make a little bit more room
16:13so I've been throwing my tree limbs and logs in here it takes a long time for the
16:18fire to melt the snow but it's a lot better than shoveling
16:33there we go
16:48well now that I got lunch in me I think it's time to start building again
17:16there we go
17:46Okay, here we go.
18:16I don't know.
18:46Let's go.
19:16there we go got my stove installed hopefully this will keep me nice and warm well i got my
19:36shelter set up just in the nick of time it's already starting to get dark luckily i already
19:41have a lot of firewood laying around i'm not going to need as much as i did last night
19:46i am almost completely out of water
20:15so we're going to go melt some snow i've been getting a lot of pine needles and pine cones
20:20in my drinking water so i'm going to go find a spot a little further away from the trees
20:25there we go
20:36got my leftovers
20:40oh it is frozen i'll just put it over here hopefully it'll thaw out well now that i've
20:49got a wood floor instead of all that mud i can change into my little slippers
20:54nice i can put my boots up here on the wall to keep them from freezing in the night
21:00oh it's nice to get my slippers on
21:07all my wood is cold and wet so i'm putting it on top of the stove to dry out and warm up
21:17then it'll burn really well when it comes time to feed the fire
21:20well it's about five o'clock and i'm in for the night so i think i'm going to start making
21:36some dinner all right i got some black beans here
21:51so that when the drummed column arrived the british would be rotten and give way
21:58oh we got a little smoke going on
22:22the logs over on that side were starting to smolder you can tell the logs are getting
22:31hot there's pine sap bubbling out of them have to watch it carefully you don't want anything
22:38starting on fire
22:39oh yeah that's thawed out nicely
22:51it's warming up well
22:52all right just added some rice
22:57it's starting to smell so good
23:00all right
23:02put a little hot sauce on there
23:15i'm so hungry this smells amazing
23:20and i tell you what beans and rice are an amazing camping food not only are they delicious
23:28it's non-perishable and takes up hardly any room in your backpack
23:32i want to check something here two degrees fahrenheit let's compare that to what's inside the shelter
23:49put it right there give it a few minutes to warm up all right it's been a few minutes and you can see
23:55it's just a little over 50 degrees fahrenheit here at the bed i mean it's not exactly warm but that's a lot better than outside but watch this i'm going to put the thermometer on the ground
24:05there on the floor it's about 22 degrees when you're sleeping in a heated shelter the higher you can make your bed the better
24:14you want your bed to be at least as tall as your heat source ideally a little bit taller
24:21well i've been in the shelter five hours and i've already gone through two-thirds of my firewood so
24:33i had to go out and cut some more oh gotta split that too
24:48i think it's time to go to bed
24:54i'll see you guys in the morning
24:56tell you what i slept a lot better last night it was a lot warmer and more comfortable
25:12but i did have to wake up a bunch to stoke the fire i woke up about 2 a.m the first time
25:19and then at 3 4 30 and then 6 and then 6 30 ish or so i was pretty much up
25:28so for breakfast i've got an omelet i made this at home it's got sausage vegetables cheese eggs
25:34went through it in a vacuum sealed bag and then froze it now all i got to do is just warm it up
25:39all right i got my honey butter sitting over here melted
25:50it's getting hot in here yesterday it was cold even with my jacket on and the stove going full blast
26:14i got the stove turned down to halfway and it's still hot in here and it has to do with all this mass
26:19inside the tent there's 400 pounds of wood in here there's all my gear there's the ground the tent itself
26:26all that stuff needs to be heated up and it takes a long time
26:30but once it all gets warm it stays really hot in here it gets really nice
26:35and even when the stove goes down it stays warmer in here for a longer time
26:38doesn't that look good this is so much better than dehydrated eggs
26:45all right well i think it's starting to get up and face the day
26:50oh i gotta tell you it is so nice to have a floor in this tent it's so much warmer and it's so nice not to have my feet down in the mud
26:56it's an absolute luxury
27:05oh look at this my pants are all dry my mittens are all dry
27:11oh i always bring backup food for a lot of reasons and i had this bit of pork here that i didn't get to use
27:20and i was keeping it underneath my bed to keep it cold
27:24a mouse got into it ate up all that pork see that it's probably a vole or lemming
27:30i'll just cut off that part it's still good
27:33i have more trouble with mice than any other animal hands down
27:36and the longer you camp in one spot the worse the problem becomes
27:40it's like more and more mice find you
27:43when the mice get really bad they'll start coming in at night and grabbing your hair
27:47and pulling out bits of your hair to make their nest
27:50it's it's not great
27:52alrighty
27:53oh
27:55it's 10 a.m. and we're just in time for the sunrise
27:58uh oh
28:15that's not good
28:17a car doesn't want to start and it sounds like it's the battery
28:20it's zero degrees fahrenheit right now so i wouldn't be surprised if the battery is so cold
28:25that it just doesn't want to start
28:27it's going back
28:29yeah
28:31yeah
28:33that's cool
28:34yeah
28:35yeah
28:37yeah
28:40yeah
28:41yeah
28:44yeah
28:45yeah
28:46yeah
28:48Make sure it doesn't overheat.
28:58I just need to raise the temperature of the battery like 20-30 degrees.
29:02I don't need to boil it.
29:07Alright, that's feeling warm.
29:21I'm going to try to warm up the engine block and see if that helps.
29:42Fortunately the engine block is way back there.
29:47I got to be careful.
29:49This K truck is sitting on top of 18 inches of snow.
29:52The snow gives way and it settles.
29:54It's going to squish me.
29:55Alright, we're going to give that 30 minutes or so and see if that doesn't help.
30:04Well there she is.
30:05Once I got it all dialed in, it was really nice.
30:08This would have made a really good long-term shelter.
30:12It's warm but it's not hot.
30:19Obviously this is a little bit sketchy.
30:21Got to make sure you don't catch anything on fire or melt any wires or anything.
30:26Oh, it's like a Cheech and Chong video in here.
30:31There's smoke coming out.
30:34This is living in Alaska in a nutshell.
30:51Stuff goes wrong, things break, and you just got to deal with it.
31:02You know, it's not like I could call a tow truck.
31:08Engine's warmed up, let's see if we can get out of here.
31:24Well that was a good time.
31:48Hopefully you guys enjoyed this video and if you want to see more videos from the Outdoor
31:51Boys YouTube channel, make sure to click subscribe, activate that notification button, and I will
31:56see you guys in two weeks.
31:58If you like this video, don't forget to check out the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel where we
32:02have hundreds of videos just like this.
32:04And don't forget to click subscribe so you can see other great videos every Saturday morning.
32:09Hit that bell button and you'll get notifications.
Be the first to comment