What a beautiful spot first things first i need to find a place to sleep needs to be sandy flat and dry there's standing water down there looks like more eyes more frozen water more ice there i can see some gravel under that log.

 this logs froze into the ground so gotta free that we've got a pretty stiff breeze coming from this direction so just getting underneath this log behind the snowbank really makes a difference i'm a little worried about my sleeping situation though i need dry sand or gravel to.

Sleep on i've got clean gravel here got clean gravel here but i've got a giant frozen puddle right here with probably three to five gallons of water frozen so i need to go and thaw out this ground and dry it out.

In order to be able to sleep on some warm dry gravel melting ice takes a lot of heat and energy it's going to take a lot of fuel a lot of fire and a lot of time to thaw this all out got a bunch of these root balls here i can chop up get a lot of good dead firewood out of that there's a lot of wood around here but.

It's all frozen and covered in snow i likely found a little stash of some dry stuff look at all this this is bone dry driftwood that is going to help me out a lot got all this nice dry wood i want to keep it dry i'm not going to lay it down in the snow.

 uh all right got the fire going but now we need to make it big real big so i better get more wood it's getting hot in there but i gotta keep adding wood  i've been chopping and hauling firewood.

For three four hours now i keep going i am exhausted that is a lot of wood i can feel the heat of the fire all the way over here and that heat is getting stored inside that big log and in the gravel and in the surroundings that is hot i want to get in there and start fussing.

With it but it's so hot it's hard to stand near that thing i'm just going to kind of let this fire die down a bit so i can get in there and then i'll start scraping the coals around and we'll see what we got underneath uh the gravel's coming along better than i.

Thought right over here is all thawed and mostly dried so i'm gonna dig this down really deep pile it all up right here make a nice little trench i'm gonna build a fire over this frozen part to thaw it out i'm gonna put some fire in that trench as well well we're making good progress but it.

Looks like i'm gonna have to get a lot more wood all right off we go tell you what i'm tired i'm working non-stop i haven't eaten i've been doing nothing but cutting wood and stoking this fire for hours all right we'll let all this new firewood dry once it's dry i'm going to.

Stack it up well right now the fire's going where my bed's gonna be so i'm gonna move the big pieces of wood over to where the fire pit's gonna be i'm gonna try to get a fire going over there then we're gonna take care of the bed all right got a nice bed of coals some really hot sand we're spread it out nice.

And even get my bed ready i'm trying to bury the coals with the dry sand so that it doesn't extinguish the coals it just kind of smothers them well just for fun i brought along one of these laser thermometers and we're going to take some readings of the ground and see how well this sand and these coals.

Radiate heat on top of the coals right now we're getting about 108 over here we're getting like 115 and we're getting like 130 right here so it's about 100 degrees on top of the coals but we have a few hot spots where it's over 130 degrees oh my it is toasty in here just getting the heat from the fire and from the wood.

And from the ground but i am hungry i think i need to start cooking some food i've got this bread dough that i made up and it needs to rise just a little bit so i'm gonna get it warm so i'm just gonna lay it down on this warm gravel i'm sitting on i'm just gonna bury it just a little bit and i got some honey and butter in this.

Little jar here let that honey and butter melt right there a nice little steak we seasoned earlier let's go ahead and put that straight on the coals the steaks just cooking away on the coals let's check out our temperature here.

That 320 on the surface man that's pretty close to what i would be cooking at in a skillet that's pretty cool for having cooked that just on the coals that is a pretty beautiful medium look at that man that hits the spot all right there we go mix up that honey and that butter it's.

All melty there we go oh nice heavenly butter and honey just dripping off it oh it's been a long long day it's about 10 30 at night right now and uh i need to start thinking about getting ready for.

Bed here i'm gonna bust out my blanket all right you want to use wool blankets when you're sleeping next to the fire because they're fire retardant you want to be really careful when sleeping next to fires before we get ready for bed let's see what the temperature of the ground is got 74 degrees right there.

54 72 so definitely a lot cooler definitely a lot cooler but still not too bad well right now my feet are warm but they're kind of wet because i've built up a bit of a sweat so i got to pull off my boots my socks and dry my feet off.

And dry my socks before i go to bed so i don't wake up with cold feet gotta be really careful i don't melt my boots i'm just sitting here drying my socks and shoes and i can hear the ice moving on the frozen lake behind me it's groaning and cracking and you can hear ice sheets being pushed up on top.

Of one another it's pretty cool actually look at all that steam coming out of my boot that's water that water will make you cold well my sons tom nate and jake have been coming with me on a lot of these campouts i bet a lot of you guys are wondering where they are tonight well tom and nate had school so they couldn't.

Come and jake well hey jacob you want to go camping with me  well jake's out having a good time with his mom and that's that's important one thing i gotta do tonight is i gotta.

Get all this firewood and organize it and put it within arm's reach of my bed so i can stoke the fire all night a lot of this wood needs to get dried out too so i gotta do that as well oh oh it's nice to lay down my back's killing me i'm gonna sit here and watch.

A movie and kind of relax we'll just kind of take it easy it's a lovely night tonight well it's been about five hours since i buried the uh coals let's check the temperatures got 89 degrees right there 76 and 59. definitely still got heat.

Man you can still feel it here's my pillow for tonight ah  i must have been tired because it's 5 a.m and i slept pretty good so i stoked the fire up really good and that feels really nice my feet are really cold so i rolled some.

Logs down that way and built a fire and hopefully that will warm my feet up here a little bit oh good morning it's actually nine o'clock well the ground's really hard but i'm warm the fire by my feet keeping my feet warm i.

Feel some warmth in the ground still not a ton but a little bit usually when i sit on the ground it just sucks all the heat out of you i mean even in the summertime but uh not not now it's pretty nice oh my back didn't melt my boots always a concern.

Well i'm curious to see how warm the the gravel is 46 i mean that's still pretty good 71. so we got about 60 degrees here and we got about 22 degrees over here so yeah big difference i'll tell you what sleeping on 70 degree gravel versus ice and water makes a huge.

Difference smoked pork jowl bacon all right we got our little set up here let's start cooking i need a better dinner plate we're going to make one look at that just cook the face of it till it's nice and crispy then you slice a little bit.

Off the edge eat it put it back on the fire crisp up the next beef look at that i still got some honey butter left i'm gonna make me another piece of flat bread yeah his dough is almost frozen gotta let it warm up a little bit there we go lovely piece of warm bread i.

Know exactly what i'm gonna do with this  wow it's so good smoked meat butter honey flour these are all survival foods of the past they're so delicious i love them oh that was good i'll tell you what building a big.

Bonfire and burying my coals worked great kept me warm and this was really comfortable but it reminds me that movie jeremiah johnson robert redford plays this mountain man and an old timer shows him this trick and in the movie it looks super easy they just dig a hole and throw some coals in it and it's a fun.

Movie but it's it's not accurate if you've got two feet of snow on the ground you can't just dig a hole you've got to thaw the ground out first additionally you need the right type of soil you've got to have something dry if you throw wet mucky stuff on top of your coals you'll just put them out additionally if you go into the woods.

Over there you're going to have 12 to 18 inches of moss and organic matter on top of the soil and you've got to burn all the way through that stuff before you can even get to the soil and it takes hours to burn your campfire down to soil when you build a campfire in there so you really need coarse sand or pea gravel or something like that so it has.

To be like a frozen river bed or a frozen beach or a sand pile or something like that in order for this trick to work well otherwise you're just gonna use an enormous amount of fuel and time and in survival situations time is a scarce resource but i'll tell you what if you have the opportunity and the resources to do this.

It works really well sleeping on 70 degree sand as opposed to 10 degree ice makes all the difference in the world well guys it's been fun i think it's time to pack this party up once again if you guys are gonna do this make sure you use a real wool blanket if you use a synthetic blanket it'll melt when sparks land on it.

Ah she's been a good shelter but it's time to go home it's been a beautiful spot and a wonderful trip i hope you guys have enjoyed watching this video as much as i've enjoyed filming it if you guys want to see more amazing camping adventures check out the camping adventure playlist from the outdoor boys youtube channel.

And don't forget to click subscribe we put out new videos every saturday morning i'll see you then if you like this video don't forget to check out the outdoor boys youtube channel where we have hundreds of videos just like this and don't forget to click subscribe so you can see other great videos every saturday morning and hit.

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