How to make a DIY Tarp Teepee - Teepee Winter Campout Part 1

hey guys gay dog crazy here and welcome to my tarp tepee series episode 1 today what I'll be doing is scouting out the perfect spot to set up my tepee where I've got a nice flat spot about 10 to 12 feet in diameter my teepee is 10 feet I'll need to have the poles the trees I need from my poles nearby I need to have some standing dead wood for firewood for my 5-inch firebox stove to heat it and hopefully I'll have a water source if not I'll just be melting snow on that stove that I'll be using to heat that shelter so let's go find a nice spot to set this up hopefully this works out and we'll be pulling a pulk sled out here in a couple weeks to do a couple overnighters this winter [Music] welcome back guys so this is part one of my tarp teepee campout series I am not really a winter guy I hate being cold I guess I could call myself a winter Wis or winter weenie I want to be able to have a shelter that's not cramped shelter where I can stand up and change into warmer clothes and a shelter that I can heat now this is far from a hot tent but I do have a wood-burning stove the 5 inch firebox from firebox stoves calm I'm going to be experimenting burning some wood and that stove to see if I can get this heated up I'm not expecting any miracles if it's down in the teens Fahrenheit I'm hoping to at least keep the inside around 40 I do have a propane heater it's a tent heater that's supposed to heat up a hundred square foot I'm going to experiment with that too so in the next couple weeks I'll be poking my sled out here setting this up and experimenting with a nice warm and cozy not cramped tarp teepee ok so let's get started we used a Ozark Trail 10 by 20 foot camouflage tarp from Walmart for about 25 bucks some of the items that I used were a lighter paracord Mason line a big marker scissors tape measure five carabiners and of course a sewing machine first thing we did was we took it out of the package and folded it in half lengthways the fold is up by my wife in the upper right hand corner there got some of the wrinkles out laid some weights on top and used 10 foot of Mason line from that top corner there and drew a half moon here and then cut it out and just for accuracy after this I kind of hired out some of the wrinkles again drew the line again to make sure it was still correct on that second layer and then cut that out separately as well ideally you'd want to lay this out the full length 10 by 20 in the yard and cut out one full half circle but the weather wasn't really agreeing with us today so in the upper right hand corner that's the door we measured two and a half feet out made a mark for the grommet another five feet up from there to the next grommet and then another five feet up from that grommet we made another mark and from that last point where I'm at where the tape measure is over to the fold line on the left-hand side would be three feet now we're just measuring from the top of the teepee down to some of the grommets to make sure it is correct and it's still 10-foot okay I'm going to make a quick cardboard template here for the reinforce patch that will have the grommet we're going to cut that out of the scraps that we just cut off of the tarp and sew it back onto the bottom of the teepee so we have anchor points to go ahead and stake it down to the ground when we set it up so here we've set in that template right on top of that grommet and we're going to draw out six of these and then cut it out and you can see here there is a grommet right in the middle there now I'm going to set it on the mark that we made for the grommet and to get the best hold power I'm going to sew a zig-zag pattern on there and I'll just draw it with that big marker so my wife has something easy to guide her when she sung it on and we used to tarp clips to hold it on to the teepee made it a lot easier to sew this on we'll do six of these all right there we go now we need to melt a hole through the grommet and through that other side there so that goes all the way through and then I'm going to use 12 inches of paracord here to make a loop through that grommet so that it'll be a lot easier to put in wood stakes or this Y stake that I have right here these are my favorite because they're really strong I've got some thicker gauge poly rope here make five loops that will waste through the five grommets along the doorway here and then I'll secure them with some carabiners pop it through the other put my carabiner on there through the loop like that and then I just tighten this down yeah see it's very tight behind those two grommets so this door will stay closed and when it has enough tension on it from my tepee poles you'll see that this whole side is very securely closed it's big enough for all six of the poles I'll be using and to let smoke out and if I have to like it undo this carabiner right here and put para card on this grommet in this grommet and pull it apart to let more smoke out the top we'll go ahead and get this folded up now and it folds up very easy and very compact considering how big it is with everything I just added to it weighs about 3.8 pounds it's about the diameter of a Nalgene bottle well I finally found the perfect spot here behind me it's flat it's about 12 to 13 feet in diameter and I'm surrounded by all the building material I need by way of these smooth bark birch trees you probably can't see behind me I'll need to collect six of those to make my teepee structure here and I've also got a perfect spot to come in on my pulk right here there's a trail that I believe was carved out by cows I was going to dig a pit in the middle to set my stove I think the grounds frozen I waited a little bit too long a week ago I could have done it I've got some mason line here that pretty much using as tape measure to measure out everything from my poles to where to lash them to the diameter of the spot for my teepee the diameter for the spot and location for my fire pit all of that stuff I've got marked on here so it's very easy it's small it's light so here's a nice rough outline of the 10-foot diameter circle that I need I'll go ahead and clean off any debris that's in here and then collect my poles so what I'm looking for from my poles are trees like this it's not too big in diameter it's relatively straight there's not too many branches and I should be able to easily harvest this one right here the diameter here is I think two inches so that's not bad and I can easily trim off all of these branches and you can see this is relatively smooth so I shouldn't have any issues with it tearing holes in my tarp [Music] here's my 12 foot mark right there [Music] I'm to use the Baco saw to clean off the branches and my Condor bush lower bush knife here to clean it up so it's nice and smooth so it doesn't poke holes in my tarp there's one down five more to go all right now I've got my main three poles here cut two 12-foot links and cleaned up it's time to go ahead and lash them together with this paracord at the ten foot mark and set up my structural tripod right here and then I can go ahead and lay in weaker branches or trees in between those so I have at least six poles here to fill out the teepee shape all right so I'm going to go ahead and mark this out to the 10 foot spot where I want to lash them together okay so here's the 12 foot mark here's the 10 foot work now I'll just use my saw to mark it I'm just using some regular 550 paracord to lash this together and you want to make sure you get the poles as close together as possible to make it as tight as possible if I cut them exactly 12 foot I should have two feet above where I lash them together for my margin of error for them to lay across each other thanks to Bryan's YouTube channel survival on purpose I learned the Boy Scout way of lashing these three poles together so that they hold really well and it's really easy to do it I believe it's wrap it thrice and frapp it twice you start with a clove hitch and the end with a clove hitch to check out more detail look at how to do that you want to check out his channel and I've got a link down in the description box [Music] alright I've wrapped it thrice and now I'm going to frappe it twice go ahead and do one more here and then we're going to finish off with a clove hitch that hopefully you guys saw that now this tag in here is what we're going to use to wrap around the whole thing once we get the other three poles set on so one more thing that you could do to tighten your lashing here to make it stronger is to take your middle pull and flip it over so it's facing that way also makes it a lot easier to set it up in the tripod position because you have to out this way and one out this way and you just lift it straight up and it's standing up unfortunately my poles are too narrow at the end and if I do that it's going to snap it right in half so when setting up the tripod I put the base of the poles on the circle and I paste them out to make sure they were equal distance from the base of each pole it's about nine foot I just got to grab three other poles to set in between them and use the tag end of my lashing to wrap around and secure that in place as I just made an awesome discovery here's my trail there's my pack and where I'm sitting on my teepee now but when I come back with my pulk in a few weeks I'm going to come right through here up to this flat spot up here that is framed in by some slate rock it looks like somebody was making a foundation for a cabin or something but I just got to clear out some trees from the middle it's a perfect size for my teepee it's nice and flat it's up off the trail it's out of the wind [Music] [Music] there we go there's all six poles now I just got to figure out a way to get enough height up there so that I can wrap the tag into that line around them I just secured that up there with just a granny knot but to be strong enough that I can now hang all 220 pounds of me from that just to show you how strong it is [Music] now I got a hook my top carabiner to the lashing up at the top here using my little wood scrap stepladder there I got it [Applause] and someone go ahead and close the door using the loops in this rope and the carabiners that I have to kind of button it close and just take this loop of rope through this grommet here and pop the carabiner through there there you go that's nice and secure I'll stake down the loops on the outside I'll have my firebox here in the center and plenty of room for the smoke to go out and I can always undo this toggle if it gets smoky in here [Music] hello now I'm going to go ahead and move the poles to where these reinforcement patches are because that's where I have them staked into the ground and to be more structurally sound you want the pole right behind those stakeout points and I've also got that reinforced patch there to prevent the pole from rubbing too badly and putting a hole in this tarp now with my poles up against all those patches I know that everything is evenly spaced apart and I know that my doorway is evenly spaced apart between these two poles so I can easily get in and out and adjust my smoke vent up there [Music] so here's theoretically how I'm going to set it up in the next couple of weeks when I come out and use this I'm going to have my bed on this side I'll have my fire wet over here and I think I'm going to have to actually move my stove over a little bit little off center and hopefully the airflow will still come in through the door go in through the splashing into my wood stove and up out the vent up there now the stove that I'm planning on using is a fold-out stove called the 5 inch firebox stove from firebox stove comm Steve makes a very very excellent product I'll put the link down in the description here it literally folds out it has hinges there's no pieces you have to put together except for the ash pan that goes slides into the bottom it's a very very versatile stove I've got some aluminum flashing placed around here now ideally what you'd want to do you want to dig a circular hole in the ground about four inch deep in about 15 inch wide and I'd put this flashing down in there the stove down in the middle and hopefully that'll prevent embers from flying over and hitting my gear but it should provide lots of heat I'm going to have to place it a little off-center along with my fire wouldn't everything over here just because it's a little too close to my bed this is a 10 by 20 tarp that should give you a 10 foot diameter here all the way across the center but it does kind of look a little bit smaller if I have it a little off-center it's possible I might melt or catch some of this on fire so we'll do a little bit of experimenting in the next couple weeks this stoves small enough you know it's not going to be like a hot tent per se but if it's in the low teens to zero degrees Fahrenheit outside the outside of the teepee I'm hoping to at least keep it to about 40 degrees inside now that might be a little optimistic but that's why we're out here experimenting before it gets too cold outside Oh before I forget you can actually trim these a little bit shorter and throw a garbage bag or a large stuff sack or something up over the top here so if it's raining or it's snowing really bad you don't get a whole lot of rain coming down into your shelter [Music] okay so that's where it was here's the trail coming up here here's that man-made slate wall with the foundation in this flat area up here and I just drug all six of my poles right up over here shoved them in this little alcove up up right against these trees as straight as I could get them they'll stay dry they'll stay out of the snow they should last me for a good couple months and I can keep coming out here and reusing them since they're still wrapped together I just got to set it back out in the tripod right here wrap my tarp around it I'm guessing about 30 minutes setup tops and I could be in there get my fire nice and cozy and start cooking my dinner don't forget to join me next time on episode 2 of the tarp teepee campout ok tall crazy

Channel: KdawgCrazy Outdoors

Views: 371,468

Rating: 4.7313337 out of 5

Keywords: kdawgcrazy, Solo Backpacking, winter Camping, hiking, winter backpacking, k dawg crazy, kdawg crazy, wild camp, 4 season shelter, backpacking tarp teepee, affordable tarp shelter, affordable gear, tepee, teepee, tipi, heated shelter, heated tarp shelter, warm winter shelter, warm backpacking shelter, cold weather camping, bushcraft shelter, woodcraft shelter, how to make a teepee, how to build a teepee

Id: cd3Y9hfAEgc

Length: 19min 41sec (1181 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 22 2015