Primitive and modern outdoor skills

Survival: Fire danger

2014-01-26

Fire is an amazing tool. In my opinion it's what separated us from other Animals.

As a bushcraft enthusiast and survivalist I feel like I understand fire and the risks of fire. I feel like I know how to use it safely. Well, so did this person:



I came across this shelter this summer. Earlier that day I had chatted with a firefighter who was heading to this site to check that it had cooled down. He'd had to fight it two weeks prior. This survivalist went out with almost nothing and built themselves a shelter. They had a little fire going in front of the shelter and the fire got out of control. They burned several acres and my understanding is that they got evacuated I don't know in what condition.



I've never had a problem, and I'm going to keep using fire. I'll probably even keep thinking I know better than other people and won't screw up... but I intend to make very sure that I'm right.

Review: Enlightened Equipment down quilt

2014-01-26

My previous sleeping bag was a Feathered Friends Lark: http://www.blog.smalladventures.net/2012/06/review-feathered-friends-lark-sleeping.html . This is a really high quality bag, so my standards were high. But, I wore mine out relatively quickly, not due to a problem with the bag, but just due to my own body chemistry. My sweat destroys down rather quickly. I know this because Jess still has her Feathered Friend's bag that she got only a little after I got mine, and it still looks good.

So, I didn't want to spend that much money again knowing how fast I'd wear it out. I wanted something cheap, and versatile, but I still believe that my sleepingbag is likely to save my life, so I wanted it to be ridiculously warm, and I didn't want to give up weight or bulk.... I also wanted a pony.

Well, it turns out that sometimes you can have your pony. Via backpacking light I caught wind of a new company Enlightened Equipment, making cold weather down quilts. From them I got an 850 fill overfilled 5 degree medium taper down quilt. The owner is revising quickly so that model is no longer available, but it's similar to this one: http://www.enlightenedequipment.com/?product=revelation-850dtorried

Warmth

Based on my reading quilts can be drafty, so I was really worried about being cold with it being a quilt, which is why I got a 5 degree quilt (the lark is rated to 10F). So, I also picked up an MLD bivy http://www.mountainlaureldesigns.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=22&products_id=30 . I got it in silnylon with a mesh facepanel. This gives me a bit of a warmth bonus, and works super nice in powdery snow as it keeps the snow off the bag.

I've now been using this bag for a couple of years. It Is warm, very warm. For those who haven't used quilts let me clear something up. This is not just a flat quilt like for a bed. It can be used that way but it can also be zipped, snapped, and drawn up so it hugs you almost like a sleepingbag, except it has no hood, and no bottom. In a sleepingbag when you roll the bag rolls with you, but with a quilt you roll beneath the quilt. This is a big difference, I find it an upside but not everyone does. Also note that it makes liners a touch more annoying since the liner will turn with you and my try to pull the quilt with it. The lack of a bottom is also what makes quilts comparatively drafty. It comes with stretchy cords to run under you sleeping pad to lock out the drafts, personally I hate them and don't use them. Usually it's not a problem and when it's *really* cold the bivy holds everything close to me so there's no gaps, as well as providing an extra wind barrier. I used it in this shelter for example:


Sierra winter SAR training

I almost never use the bivy though, and consider it cold weather gear. I should've used it, but did not recently when Jess and I slept in the truck together at -25F. I had additional clothing on of course, and the truck probably adds 10 or more degrees as well. That said, lets say it's equivelent to -10F... that's damned good for a 5F quilt, even with some extra clothing.


Baffles and leaks


The biggest flaw is that just like the Lark the down doesn't stay in place well enough. I notice that the new model claims to have improved this, but it definitely is an issue. I've often found myself cold and realized that the part of the bag in the center top (about where your chest is should you lie on your back) has no down in it at all. I regularly have to shake the down back into that part of the bag. There's always tons of down at the feet though, so no worries there. As a heads up though note that the bottom doesn't *fully* seal, there's about a quarter sized hole left after you draw everything up. If you shove virtually any piece of fabric down there though it's trivial to seal it off. In colder weather I often use my down vest.


Picture from the JMT

Note that mine is a very unusual baffle design that I haven't seen many places. It's sewn into large squares about the size of an opened hand, but the corners are unsewn. This allows down to move from anywhere, to anywhere, but not super easilly. It's an interesting idea, and I have to say that when I washed mine for the first time recently it fluffed up and filled the bag with no trouble - still, I get the feeling it was an early design and I'm looking forward to something that keeps more down over my torso.

Weight

Together the MLD bivy plus the quilt weigh the same as the feathered friends Lark plus a gossamer gear 1 person ground cloth. So weight wise I haven't lost a bit. When it's warmer and I don't need the bivy (which is basically always) I'm actually winning on weight.

Flexability

A massively overly warm quilt in the summer is super super comfy. I open up the foot and everything and just sleep under it like a big cozy comforter from a bed, and unless it's really super hot I don't have issues with overheating. If it cools off a little I often close just the footbox for my feet but leave the rest open. This works really well in the 40 degree range. Then if it's really cold I snap the neck closed and draw that up, and snap the other snaps that make a tube for my legs, and then it's good down to it's rating (possibly with a little shaking the down into place). I don't want to deal with owning multiple bags, and this one is so small and light that I rarely don't mind carrying the warmer bag - so it works everywhere from 70F down to 5F or colder given some extra clothing.

Price

Together the MLD bivy and the quilt cost comparable to the Feathered Friend's Lark ($500 - $600). But, the down that I wear out so fast is only in one of those pieces of gear. The quilt itself is only a bit over half the price of the Lark, so when I wear it out I'll save a ton of money replacing it in comparison.

Conclusion

I'd love to see a better baffle system and I'm very hopeful that the new one will help, but this is a competitive top notch piece of gear (like the Feathered Friend's Lark) for the price of barely decent gear (like the REI sub-kilo). It's easy to forgive a minor failing here or there in return for that. But be aware, it's a quilt. You have to sleep in them slightly differently, and be aware that drafts are a potential though solvable problem.

Transporting bows

2013-12-30

Well, I've been living in the truck since may now. One of the single most annoying things is the "long stuff" storage down one side of the bed of the truck. This has included at various times: Atl-atls and their darts, bows, bow staves, arrows both loose and not, a folding bow saw, etc. The best location for this pile of long items has been balanced on top of the wheel well on one side of the bed of the truck, where the space is hard to use for anything else.

The problem is, every time you move things around in the truck it all slides off the wheel well and then you have this annoying game, while crawling under the platform to put everything else back, of trying to balance that stuff and hold it in place while you slide other things back. The other option is to remove it all every time something adjascent is removed, and put it back again. Super annoying.

Well, at the primitive skills gatherings and elsewhere I noticed some time ago many people simply put a large PVC pipe on their roof, and store things in there, so I'm giving it a try.

The pipe is a bit over 7 feet long, 6" in diameter. It's made with 2 male/male adapters and 2 screw-top caps. This allows me to get into either end of the pipe, so that arrows that slide to one end can be retrieved. Right now it has 1 bow-stave, 1 stick-bow, and 2 recurves, as well as some arrows. The recurves take up a lot of the space due to their... well... curve, so there's not much space left. While you could fit quite a few stick-bows. I made it over 7' so it could fit a full-sized atl-atl dart. So far I've liked darts closer to 6', but Jess is tall, so it seemed like I might as well make it long enough in case one of us decides they like long darts.

The pipe is tied to the roof with 2 small hose-clamps running around the roof-rack bars, and 2 large ones running around the pipe. The large clamps interlace with the small clamps. This does let the pipe rock a little, but it seems pretty secure, we'll see!

BTW, there's a trick to doing this. When you glue together PVC you usually use this primer stuff that preps the surface for the glue. Most of the joints in the pipe I just made are short of being slide all of the way on. One of them is all of the way on. I think the difference is that the one we slide all of the way on we skipped the primer, this leaves the surface smoother allowing it to slide together more easily. If you are using it to hold water the absolute perfect seal might matter, but for my use very very near air-tight is plenty good enough for me.

Their is one catch, which is that I need to purchase a large pair of slip-jaw pliers to open the caps. Also, since I purchased the pipe and fittings rather than managing to scrounge them it's about $100 in parts. Still, that's not much for the headaches it'll save, not too mention the bows getting a lot less beat up being nice and safe in their own compartment.

Also, our truck is now like 7'6" tall... oh well, we already didn't fit in parking garages. We'll see how it affects gas-milage. EDIT: I added 2 more hose-clamps, one on each roof-rack bar. The two hose-clamps on each roof-rack bar are on opposite sides of the mount for the bar, separating them by maybe 4 inches. The hose-clamp around the pipe goes through both, thus giving it some stability so it doesn't rock back and forth.

Saving a shirt

2013-12-26

I had an old white dress shirt that had 2 burn marks on it from overheating in a dryer. I liked the shirt, made of a relatively thick cotton/poly blend with a tougher weave than you usually see in dress shirts, but it was no longer usable as a dress shirt. Jess and I were chatting one day and realized I could save it by just dying it. So, today, finally did it!

This is RIT black.... yes, that's what I said, black. I love the color it came out, but whatever it is it definitely is NOT black. I followed the directions pretty carefully. I used half a bottle of RIT in a 5-gallon bucket filled maybe a quarter of the way with hot water (just a touch hotter than tap water, right at the edge of burning my hands), and a 1/2 cup of salt. Stir constantly for 45 minutes. Next I rinsed the shirt out with warm water until the water was running near clear (not actually clear, I got bored). Then I ran it through a washing machine with a little soap and salt.

The only funny thing is I think the shirt shrank just a tiny bit. I'd swear this shirt used to fit perfectly and now it's just a tiny bit tight. Still, it's good enough and now the shirt is usable again as a general wear shirt, or even a casual dress shirt. We'll see how colorfast it is.

So, assuming it lasts I'd call this a success. This was my first ever dying project, as in general I don't care much what my clothing looks like. But the white stains to easily. So, now I can keep the shirt presentable much more easily. Why throw things away, when you can reuse them.

Yellowstone is like a zoo (but better)

2013-12-23

Jess and I only spent a few days in Montana, but they were awesome. See http://www.blog.smalladventures.net/2013/12/theres-cold-and-theres-cold.html and http://www.blog.smalladventures.net/2013/12/buffalo-field-campaign-bfc.html

On our way to the North gate of Yellowstone park we passed a group of bighorn sheep! Sadly, I lack photos. Just down the road from them was a bighorn sheep crossing sign - apparently they didn't get the memo.

Our plan was to go to Yellowstone for the Volcanic activity. We figured we'd seen buffalo and such. We didn't have time to really hike around for a few days like we normally would, and we figured we wouldn't just pass a Wolf while driving around or something.

Well, we quickly found the Buffalo, a lot of them:


But we also saw Mule deer (no pictures), and Elk:



Most ridiculously though, we DID just drive by a wolf! The photo is bad enough that I won't bother posting it. A couple of days prior we'd seen what we thought was a wolf, after seeing a wolf I'm pretty confident that was a Coyote. You will never mistake a wolf for a Coyote, the whole body-build is different, and while I expected a large animal they are larger than I expected.




Right after we got into the park we decided to go on a short hike down to the steaming river near the entrance. We saw some Coyote's up on the hills and were following all of the cool tracks. Soon we found these. My first thought was wolf, but then I thought no way it's too huge! But no, this is one of the most distinctly canid tracks I've ever seen. Check out those oblong toes, the narrow foot (relatively speaking), the small surface area of the main pad, and those huge non-retractable claws!

In fact if you look closely their is no meltout at all. And in fact there was significant hoar frost the night prior from the steaming river nearby making it look smaller than it really is if anything. It had snowed the day before, and given the quantity of frost these tracks were almost certainly less than 24 hours old

These prints were all leading away from the river. When we got to the river there was a kill out on the ice. It had a femur that could only have belonged to a cow or a Buffalo, given the location it had to be Buffalo. The joint was enormous. We scared off a coyote that was feeding off the few remaining bits of the carcass. This is clearly where the wolves were coming from. A few ravens and magpies were picking on the carcass as well.

Later actually, while looking at the Volcanic springs we watched a Magpie chase down, kill, and eat a small songbird. I had no idea they were THAT carnivorous.



We're pretty sure this was a mother bird, it's chick (verging on juvinile) was yelling at it the whole time from a nearby tree



And just after this we saw our first snowshoe hare. Sadly, no photos of that one either.

So, apparently if you want to see wildlife like... in the wild... and you don't want to walk very far or sleep in the woods, go to Yellowstone. It was great seeing this many animals where you could see the animal right *there* and look at the print it had JUST left in the snow. My ability to identify all these animals (and anything related) made a huge jump.