Surviving a -36° Night - No Tent & No Sleeping Bag

thank you we are in the middle of a cold snap here in western Canada temperatures tonight are expected to get down close to minus 30 degrees Celsius I've only brought five simple items with me and I'm going to be spending the night out here come to this area where I found this uprooted spruce tree which I'm going to utilize as part of my shelter but first I need to get a fire going when it's this cold it's crucial to have some way to warm yourself up thank you foreign five items that I brought obviously my belt knife my ax and a pot inside of my pot I have a Ferro Rod to start my fire and I've got this pouch with a little bit of food inside thank you [Applause] [Applause] foreign got my fire started I got some snow melting so I can keep myself hydrated now I have to shift my focus to making a comfortable place to sleep tonight foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Applause] thank you [Applause] foreign [Applause] thank you foreign [Applause] foreign [Applause] there we have it finished shelter very simple nothing fancy just made up of some dead logs and thick bark it's not perfect there's gaps and stuff but it should do a pretty good job of keeping the wind from blowing through here I have a nice bow bed underneath of me lay down some dead boughs first to give me a little more Loft then some green branches on top for Comfort I'm hoping that this root ball behind me will heat up throughout the night since there's a bunch of dirt and clean stuff hopefully the radiant heat from the fire will heat this back wall up then through tonight it will re-emit that heat and make the inside of my shelter nice and warm but I am going to have a bright fire burning all night you can tell I left the entrance real open I'm gonna have a nice long fire out in front so that's going to provide me a whole bunch of heat throughout the night keep it burning hot only got about 45 minutes to an hour left of light so I gotta get in gear and start collecting firewood foreign [Applause] hopefully that's enough wood to get me through the night I guess we'll find out I'm just gonna keep my fire burning small like this until I go to bed and then I'll start piling on the bigger logs the sun is completely set now thermometers reading minus 24 degrees Celsius so we're definitely dropping in temperature we'll see how cold it gets throughout the night I got a pot of spruce tea steeping right now so gonna grab my little food pouch and have myself some dinner my boots were wet from working in them all day so got them drying out by the fire so for supper I've got true to the term survival food I've got a heart attack and dried meat so the meat is just beef that's been salted dried and smoked and hard tack is just flour and salt mixed into a thick dough and then spread out thin and baked until it's basically a hard dry biscuit I actually made this stuff over a year ago now and just had it stored in a jar and it still tastes the exact same way that it did when I made it so nice thing about these Foods is that they don't require any Refrigeration or special storage you can pack them in the summer or when it's minus 20 degrees outside don't have to worry about them freezing they're just foolproof foods that will fill you up see if this Spruce tea is still too hot to drink that's good so I'll make sure my boots are good and dry before I go to bed that way I can sleep with them on they should keep my feet warm all night hopefully I have enough wood to keep a bright fire going all night and I'll be able to stay warm so this meal may not seem like much but in the jerky there's protein there's salt maybe even a little bit of fat and the hard tack there's carbs and more salt and my spruce tea there's lots of vitamin C tastes really good too so it may seem like a pretty simple meal but it's good food definitely fills you up and like I said having foolproof foods like these are just so ideal out in the bush especially in these extreme temperatures you know when it's this cold out you got to worry about things freezing and stuff with this you just throw it in your pack and forget about it this fire is putting off some awesome heat now I got I'm just laying all my long logs across here and I'll just keep feeding them in from the end hopefully each section will last about 2-3 hours that should be enough to get me through to the morning it's putting off just incredible heat wow I just checked the thermometer it's reading minus 28 degrees Celsius so it's pretty chilly but it is like a nice little warm bubble in this shelter this fire is putting off tense amounts of heat feels good well I got some food in my system I got a bunch of water in my system I got my fire going real good boots are dry so now it's just time to lay down try and get some sleep we'll see how the night goes not too sure what to expect but right now it feels great so we're gonna lay down call her a night try to get some rest foreign three in the morning my Wood's burning through pretty quick I'm probably got a couple hours left with this and then a couple hours left with what remains so maybe another four hours or so still hopeful to make it till sunrise we'll see how that goes just check the thermometer and it's minus 32 degrees right now um sleeping has been going okay I think I've been sleeping in like 20 30 minute stretches wake up and roll over and warm the other side of my body this root ball behind me is it's kind of warming up kinda like it's warm to the touch but it's not getting hot like I thought it would so uh really just relying on the fire for my feet which is it's fine it's comfortable it certainly would be a lot more enjoyable if I had my wool blankets with me but for what it is it's a lot better of an experience than I thought it was going to be now that I got the fire nice and lime and left though it feels real good in here again so I'm gonna try and get some more sleep and hope that my weight Supply lasts until the morning well good morning and managed to make it through the night thermometer is reading minus 36 degrees this morning it just got colder and colder throughout the night and it is it's a chilly morning the night wasn't too bad kept my fire burning hot all night managed to stay plenty warm I did run out of wood about an hour ago I had to go and scavenge up a few extra pieces just to hold me over until sunrise my sleep wasn't the greatest which is to be expected when you don't have any type of a Sleep System definitely could have used my wool blankets last night that was part of the challenge I did still manage to get a fair amount of sleep I probably slept for maybe 20 30 minutes every hour so I probably ended up getting four or five hours of sleep total obviously not a great sleep but sleep nonetheless and all in all I'll call it a success a minimalist campout and minus 30 degrees you can check that one off the bucket list thank you for watching I'll be back right away with another video I hope to see you there until then God bless and happy trails

Channel: Kusk Bushcraft

Views: 8,125,338

Keywords:

Id: QUYbN5KXl_Q

Length: 19min 55sec (1195 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 03 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/MrKhutz]

I was impressed. There's a lot of poor survival shelter videos on youtube but this video shows a pretty minimal setup that would get you through the night. It's looks like a good approach for when you're not expecting to spend the night out but get lost or stuck unexpectedly.

[u/KING_zAnGzA]

If he would have put some bows and then the logs then some snow on the outside and brought the roof lower he would have been a lot warmer that night. I can say that for certain. When I was in cadets the warmest night I had was when me and my best friend who built shelters and camped in the woods for fun got placed together and we already had a home system for building shelters so we used that. When the competition came around we won first prize. Nice thick fluffy bows low roof was definitely an advanced shelter compared to the rest who used ground sheets and rope we had fun an if I could do that again I’d do it. Best memory from my childhood. He definitely covered the basics but there’s always room for improvement. If he focused on insulation a bit and plugged the holes his heat probably wouldn’t have escaped as much.

[u/MaxK1234B]

Hey that's Kusk Bushcraft! Love him. Glad to see he's getting the recognition he deserves.

[u/Gilmere]

Very well done. Simple, concise, and just what you need. So many other experts fill you with kooky procedures and methods. I liked how you lay trees down in strips on a fire. I imagine so much less chopping and seems to work great. TY for taking the time...and the challenge.

[u/Matty_bunns]

I really enjoyed watching that. Really good cinematography, too. The sounds made me want to go camping :). Well done!

[u/jackparadise1]

I wondering what kind of pants he was wearing and about his clothing choices in general.

[u/CanadianWildWolf]

I have a difficult time considering this survival, more just a YouTube Challenge, there are a number of issues with that shelter that will result in reduced survival chances over a longer period of time, which could be much more than a single night as a lost hiker or whatever ... but my single biggest problem with this demonstration takes place at 9:55 in the video: Time Management

"Only got about 45 min to an hour left of light, so I gotta get in gear and start collecting firewood" Only collecting firewood ... some of it green... just before sundown in cold conditions ... for a fire type without a parallel heat reflector wall ... that he's going to have to tend to all night solo because he didn't set it up to fall into the fire on its own.

As a former Canadian Ranger I would be embarrassed if I had built what I saw in that video on my solo winter wilderness survival operations. In the hopes this saves someone's life one day, even if its just the tiniest scratch in the dirt, please make a...

• self feeding fire pit
• heat reflector wall
• cold sump
• simple mantle

[u/hiking_naked]

Great shelter, but I always wonder about the energy it takes to make something like this with no calorie intake

[u/DasIstDasHausVomNiko]

Discovered that video a few days back, mesmerizing