I have taken up the hobby of hot-tenting. (A hot tent is more or less a winter specific tent with an internal wood stove.) To facilitate this new adventure I’ve ordered this* and this*. Once I overcame the stroke induced by the price tag I’ve been nothing but smiles since.
It’s gonna’ be awesome!
Like anything else I do, this isn’t for everyone. Just as my beloved TW200 dirt bike can give you a broken collar bone, overnighting in the winter can lead to:
- Spending too much money on gear.
- Figuratively freezing your ass off.
- Literally freezing your ass off.
If you are inspired by me I’m delighted. However, I implore you to go into this with open eyes. A certain personality (myself included at times) can be perfectly happy crouched under a spruce bough in a blizzard… but if you’re of that ilk you already know it. Mother nature is a harsh mistress and she’ll kill you dead if you’re poorly equipped (or mentally unaware) in true winter. I don’t want to hear about it when you are down to eight toes.
As for me, I’m working on the learning curve of new (and quite impressive gear). I’ve already slept overnight and already nature has gone batshit insane on me. Sorry but I don’t have many pictures yet. Then again I don’t have hypothermia. So far so good.
Here are some videos that explain the ridiculous objects I just purchased. Note that they’re filmed in Alaska and Siberia. Also, two of three were filmed in snow. This gear isn’t for snoozing in Florida during a mild freeze.
The first video is from Far North Bushcraft and Survival:
The next two are from Survival Russia:
*Note: Amazon gives me a small kickback if you buy something (anything!) from a link on my blog. It costs you nothing but I get beer money out of it.
Lonnie from Far North lives a short ride from me. He sounds like he’s on Quaaludes but he knows his stuff.
Last time I voluntarily did the winter camping thing happened to be on the coldest night of the year in Feb. 1996. Windy as hell, too, being it was at the top of Mount Bohemia, and two buddies and I were just dug into a drift just below the top.
We had my snowmobile and snowboards and a 12-pack of Old Mill, a fire at the mouth of the bear-den that blew most of the smoke back inside, and our good sleeping bags. Got dug in, fire lit, and cracked the first beer… Crack-FFFFFT!… an ounce or two of liquid escaped at rapid velocity and you were left with an aluminum-cased ice-block and a dumb look on your face. The other cans were opened in front of our mouths, as the poor-man’s anti-freeze seemed very needed.
Pretty easy to predict if we had checked the forecast instead of just piling in my little Mazda truck and heading out, because it got down to 20 below.
The couple feet of virgin powder was worth it the next morning, weaving through the trees, wiping out and getting buried, and even having to lay it down at the end of a nice tree-slide because of the barbed-wire and open mine shaft just past the end of it. A whole day of nobody crazy enough to join us local boys.
Two would ride down and a third would snowmobile to the bottom, pick up the other two, and ride doubled-up with one dragging off the bumper while laying on a board…
Then they had to go and put a resort and chairlifts there, cap off that mine shaft, and charge douchebags from around the world to ride single-black and up runs. They even have yurts and hot-tubs now, the pussies.
My attitude is that you can have the best gravestone in the cemetery or you can spend it on stuff like that. I reckon you have the same mindset as me. >};o)