Stealth Camping In Storm Drain

welcome to camping with steve we're going to camp in a culvert tonight so the first things first is to make sure the coast is clear we're going to throw a whole bunch of gear down into the ditch and i think it looks good cut down you go sleeping bag tarps of course some cooking supplies the perfect crime now we just got to go park the car somewhere and get things set up normally don't have to walk this far to get to a campsite but luckily i packed lots of fluids after a brisk evening walk of a few kilometers we're back to the spot and the coast is clear so let's crawl down there and see if everything is still in place oh yes perfect everything is just as i left it oh somebody threw an empty down there already holy okay nice and dry in here perfect now this culvert is going to make for some interesting filming we've got light on both ends but i'm thinking it's going to echo a lot and this whole thing is going to be annoying so i did bring a couple of uh tart that we should be able to hang up with some uh with some magnets that should uh actually be able to get everything less echoey in here i got these hundred pound pull magnets which should be able to hold up a tarp i hope i'm going to go back a little ways to give me room for the cot okay that's a little better and i got a bit of a heater in here too so it'll be propane but there's enough draft in here there shouldn't be a problem sweet drag the cod in here oh yeah [Music] okay oh perfect camp is like 90 setup excellent this guy's rustling around a lot in the wind so i'm just going to use one here to stop the wind from blowing through i think it should be warm enough tonight but i don't need two tarps to close this yeah that's better i think well that was pretty easy to set up uh i did bring bear spray with me because these culverts animals love them um there's not bears right now but there's cougars in the area i know there's coyotes there could be wolves and they're used to running through and seeking shelter like if i find this a place i could live a happy life i'm sure they do too and it's time for step two somebody just drove overhead far more peaceful than under a bridge i'll tell you that but this is also another episode of don't do what steve does because these are intended for drainage you can see where the problem might occur this is not even spring yet so there's snow everywhere there's not really any melting everything should be just fine initial thoughts here in the culvert are it's extremely stealthy there could be animals around and it's echoey and it acts like a wind tunnel i know right hard to believe and it drains down to one side so my head will be up on the higher side also be where any animals might come crawling in and i'll be able to give them a blast at the bear spray one downside is it may be hard to stay organized in such a long linear like that six foot diameter so i can i can walk inside of it and it kind of doesn't scrape my head but uh it's because i'm five left we get the sleeping bag set up so it poofs up and lofts give us some nice insulation power tonight so i don't know how stealthy i need to be because we're out of the village on a country road but i'm sure i'm not supposed to be in here so we're gonna have to lay low and only pop her head up uh occasionally to see what's going on and other than that we should have a pretty good setup in here tonight uh there's the slope to this drain so if i need to use the gentleman's room i will exit the drain on that side uh where the flow goes that way and not out in front of us where it would just run on the ground [Music] i thought the wind in there was bad but it's pretty bad out here too so let's get back in there i'm really shocked by how thin of a layer of road there is on top of this what could go wrong what could go wrong as the learning experience goes in the culvert it took tart behind me down it was just catching the wind popping back and forth so i'm gonna have to deal with a little more air movement and i think as long as i keep my voice not too loud it won't echo too much in the video and i'm gonna pop my head outside and see this is the classic move how obvious is it from the outside well we're about to find out i'm gonna leave the lights blazing the way they would be where i'm filming and we're gonna just go outside and see what it looks like from the road up here anywhere you probably can't see too much here but yeah the small amount of light coming out of the culvert there got a small amount of light coming out of the culvert ah too windy too windy yes okay [Music] the small amount of light coming out of the culvert is basically nothing especially with people's headlights going so i think we're fine and dandy in here in my culvert i brought heat a little propane propane so it's time to start the flame and really hope it didn't get damaged when i the heater when i chucked it down the hill but it landed in some soft soft snow there we go [Music] perfect now we'll be cooking on this tonight as well as having it provide us with some warmth somehow the wind doesn't affect this too much and this it seems to be affecting it doesn't really want to well now we're getting somewhere [Music] okay [Music] wonderful [Music] the corrugations on this culvert make it a little tricky to prop something up um but that's okay these little bolts here holding stuff up and it'll provide uh some good heat it'll get things uh good and ready i've got a nice spot here for the bear spray right by my head and uh it is windy that's for sure so that's where we're at for now and oh yeah that that'll work fine the only thumbs down so far in this setup is trying to uh stay organized uh i'll have to rig something up in the future with a little shelf or magnetical just stick it right on because i could see a good future if i found a nice culvert that stayed fairly dry year round i could build a fort so why not somebody's parked right on top all right somebody's parked right on top the culvert why would they park right here that's not good to see i'm just gonna lay low here [Music] okay all right so that was interesting oh boy okay that was uh [Music] that was a surprise they stopped like right on the culvert but okay yeah that was a thing our vehicle friend has passed they stopped right over the culvert they had their looks like the flashers on the four ways and i don't know what they were doing there i didn't hear them throwing any garbage in here we got another light coming turn this off and they just drove right past overhead okay i'm just being extra precautious because i'm sure i'm not supposed to be in here and uh the only way i can tell the difference between the vehicle and the wind from down here is by the headlights going past and so i gotta keep the light a little bit low and we're gonna get into cooking here in a bit and hopefully it the heater seems to be raising the temperature of the of the culvert here a few degrees anyways i'm comfortable so that's uh that's one battle at a time time to cook some grub in the tube and uh got these tortilla things slapping down the pan on top of the space heater thing um pizza sauce it's not ketchup believe it or not it's uh primo pizza squeeze that will form the pizza sauce base and we'll make kind of pizza little things i wandered outside and it was uh actually quite a bit warmer outside of the tunnel than inside but that's the way it goes sometimes i suppose it was quite cold so this uh massive iron heatsink is probably soaked in a lot of that minus 30 degree weather but the cheese wise italian blend provolone pizza mozzarella romano eat em pepperoni it's not healthy at all no slap another one on the top actually a little more cheese to glue it all together as long as the dude doesn't glue it to the pan okay tada and there we are yummy meal in the culvert oh yeah remember talking okay well that looks nothing like pizza but it smells a bit like it um double layered uh tortilla pizza made in a culvert i feel like a ninja turtle in a sewer eating a pizza cowabunga the camping heater of many uses heater slash cooking utensil less stuff to bring the better it is uh if you're trying to do something stealthy like uh underground and a culvert that's probably a good thing to have i'm quite satiated in the culvert that's great there's the frost line up here i can see the the frost actually uh building up from the moisture coming off of this heater which is a real cheap propane heater i think it was called world's best or something it was an off-brand they were selling it some some hardware store and uh you know when it goes below the frost line then it is you know there's frost line starts about there at any rate uh as i'm in this worm-filled culvert i would like to acknowledge uh the people who donated to the beer donation fund um that is also gonna be uh the propane donation fund the bail donation fund the tarp donation fund the cot donation fund uh you guys are uh really uh really supportive and it's not just that but the comments as well you know the comments of uh the kind words um if you got mean words please try not to but yeah if it happens it happens but uh thanks so much guys your guys and girls and everyone you're making making these camping trips a little crazier going to a little weirder places and i'm really really scared i'm gonna knock these worms out of hibernation to be honest oh boy they're everywhere um thanks so uh yeah my appetite's gone for a second uh second thing because i'm not sure what might start crawling or metamorphosizing or whatever they're gonna do well we'll see how it goes take another peek outside looks like there's a partial moon but it's mostly obscured with clouds oh yeah that's obscured and you know i do enjoy the crackle of a nice roaring fire so fire in a can to the rescue it's a jelly alcohol type of fire if i can find a lighter to start this up all right crackles it burns it's uh quite nice look at this down here oh yeah it's perfect and i'm gonna change the propane cylinder on here because this one's just about done frosty little devil here yeah oh a fresh one and i'm sure this will all be out by morning but uh in the meantime oh yeah can't fire in a can and that'll be good time to crawl into here and get out of here real soon in the morning oh yeah mushroom sun is coming up and uh it has been a cold one i'm gonna crawl back in and see if i can get a little more sleep before the sun is fully up and yeah so much colder inside this culvert than outside this is a list of the mistakes i made i did not bring a sleeping pad i figured that uh hanging up a couple of tarps and putting this heater inside of it would be sufficient uh the tarps didn't exactly work out as planned because this acts like a wind tunnel and it just blows them around too much secondly this little heater is nothing like that 18000 btu that we used last week in the tent with crazy neighbor and that was an insulated tent so i got cocky i don't know how much i actually slept last night it wasn't a lot um in fact most was probably this morning after the sun came up and it started to warm up just a little bit um this thing was a heatsink it was uh well a cold sink i guess it just this steel was just sucking all the heat out of me uh all night long so it was a tricky sleep um as far as stealth two thumbs up um safety three thumbs down um don't ever do this uh in in the summer or in flood season or anything like that you're just asking for trouble but the high water mark i can see is around there somewhere so this is on the easier side of culverts to camp in there's much much worse ones that are much much longer and much less predictable so um um the coldness factor that might be a good thing in the summertime on a really hot day to have a nice breeze blowing through uh it could be nice but again this is not something to do in the summertime so i think this would be strictly like a fall a fall or early spring type of a camping setup i've gone through uh just about the third one pound propane cylinder that i brought with me uh in this little heater and um i just start packing up because my phone rang this morning and uh it was crazy neighbor and i said he says what are you doing i said oh you know the usual sleeping in a culvert and he says oh well i'll come pick you up so he's to swing by um which is good because i didn't want to walk the two kilometers after zero sleep and freezing cold so i just you know hunker down here and wait for him to pull up over top load all the stuff out of this tube and go eat some breakfast [Music] it was a neat idea for magnets but just wasn't quite powerful enough [Music] while i'm in the culvert may as well keep the culverts beautiful right can anyone explain this this does not look uh not look very good maybe frost heaving or something like that i don't know i'm just a mothball in here so beautiful day out here no crazy neighbor quite yet but now that uh now that we've already done a little bit of a stealth camp um the crime has been committed so i'm just uh here with some stuff waiting for crazy neighbor yeah no sign of crazy neighbor but uh there's a fair bit of traffic moving around uh bustling day in the village this uh this monday yeah all ready to go here as soon as he pulls up i see somebody there i don't know if that's you okay yeah there you go woohoo all right that's crazy neighbor and um he just drove right on past me ah he saw me he's doing a u-turn good uh yeah time to get out of this uh this dank dark cold culvert and have a delicious hot coffee and uh a full breakfast yeah this would have been a great spot to have a pee i know it wouldn't a bunch of barrels in there rain barrels yes it's full of barrels fantastic yeah i can think of a about a million uses for those i had to clean up some litter bugs left a bunch of stuff down there oh yeah no this'll be good for magnet fishing yeah no kidding 600 pounds worth of pull that concludes it thanks for uh picking me up in the help here okay and that concludes that shot i said and that concludes that put that on let's get out of here all right now this is truly the way to have a nice camping breakfast no dishes required so i'm all fed and i'm gonna get back home and actually sleep because uh yeah i probably got about like two hours maybe one hour of very interrupted sleep last night and uh anyhow um i know this is probably a shorter video than usual because there's only so much i can actually do in a culvert uh i realized but uh i hope you did enjoy uh kind of what i was trying to show there i hope that i've shown that it's not always uh as glamorous as it seems to sleep in a culvert and there are downsides to it so uh with the proper culvert it's probably really worth a go uh it could work out nicely but the one i found in the time of year just the stars did not align so uh thanks for watching um subscribe if you like the weird stuff and uh we'll see you guys uh we'll keep on filming ciao

Channel: Steve Wallis

Views: 1,155,048

Rating: 4.9244318 out of 5

Keywords: camping, stealth camping, culvert, pipe, underground, tunnel, camping with steve, steve wallis, winter camping, cot camping, drain pipe, storm drain, storm drain camping, underground camping, culvert camping, tunnel camping, stealth, hunker down, step 2, step two, winter, camp out, wild camp, wild camping, extreme camping

Id: KJ7F3xpGFfo

Length: 28min 11sec (1691 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/jeffbudz]

This was the most bonkers one yet. Did not seem like a good idea. It wasn’t. Crazy neighbor is a good guy.

[u/COSwampYankee]

I had a feeling Steve was going to be camping in an underground pipe this week.

I've camped in a lot of bad places but I've never camped in a pipe, lol.

[u/Fat_Clemenza]

Looking forward to watching this one!

[u/MacArthurParker]

wow, 9:40 in

[u/narrow_octopus]

Ninja Turtles reference FTW

[u/Ragman1992]

Just watched this episode so great! Crazy Neighbor coming in for the rescue at the end was so wholesome. Crappy night as far as Steve's sleep schedule was concerned though. I'm guessing Steve camps on Sunday night because less people are out and about doing stuff knowing the workweek starts the next day.

Also idk about everyone on this subreddit but 2020 really sucked for me, and honestly 2021 hasn't been great either but watching Steve's videos has helped me to keep going and have a positive perspective on life. I know his videos aren't meant to convey any deep meaning but their oozing with positive vibes. I look forward to every Thursday even if I'm having a terrible week because I know Steve's going to be on some crazy new adventure. He makes me feel better about Hunkering Down during the pandimic and I hope this community and his subscriber base keeps growing because the world could use more positivity.

[u/24_SC]

If anyone finds themselves in a similar situation, there were a couple of really easy things Steve might have tried to stay warm. Since he had those two big tarps he could have used both of them as blankets. Fold up one a bit and place it under him, then the other on top. Alternatively he could have used a couple of sticks, or the magnets along with the tarps to kind of tent them around his cot to trap in warmth.