Luke and jake here with the outdoor boys youtube channel and we're in the chugach mountains of alaska and we're gonna do some deep snow survival camping you ready yeah i'm a spoon   foreign.

  uh  about five foot ten inches of snow  all right guys it's the heart of winter here in alaska and we're in the chugach mountains and we are in deep deep snow.

And we're going to be doing some survival camping we don't have any tents so we are gonna have to take a page out of the playbook of the arctic vole a little tiny mouse-like creature that lives up here and when it's winter like this they just burrow under the snow and that's where they live and that's how.

They survive we're gonna do the exact same thing all right there's the ground that's the bottom about six feet and change well we'll keep digging oh there's the blocks go.

Stack it right talk let me  will be easy   can you push so only thing these are our building blocks.

Uh  uh uh uh jake are you hungry you want a little snack i feel that it's warm all right there you want some cartoons.

Is that nice you got potato chips cartoons and a heater i love you i love you too buddy building a shelter like this takes some time and jacob's getting a little cold and hungry and bored we gotta make sure jacob has fun otherwise he won't go with me again oh you might have noticed.

Yes well it's not a great roof but it'll keep the wind off us and if we get a little skiff of snow shouldn't be a problem but if we get serious snowfall this whole thing would fall in on itself but this will be good enough for what i need it for the.

Shelter's coming along nicely but jacob just informed me that we left his blankie back at the car so we're gonna hike all the way back to the car to go get his blankie that's what we do well operation blinky was a success and we're back at the campsite i think i need to get the sleeping bags busted out.

And get things a little cozier because i got a boy who's winding down all right get it into the shelter along with your sleeping bag we got two caribou hides and these will add some insulation and also protect our air mats from being popped.

Well there we go that's our bed for tonight not much to look at but it'll keep us out of the wind that's got to be cold here i'll put hand warmers inside here when you build these shelters you want to make them in a zigzag s pattern so.

The wind never can have a straight shot into your sleeping area it helps a lot the wind's picked up a little bit we got about 5 10 mile per hour wind which doesn't sound like a lot but when it's cold man it makes a difference wearing snowshoes isn't just about staying on top of the snow when you.

Stomp down the snow with the snowshoes you can usually come back over the top of it and walk normally without snow shoes when i was a kid we used to do a lot of winter camping and we would dig proper snow caves where we dig tunnels under the snow and sleep in them like gophers but it takes a lot of snow to get away.

With that and it has to be the right kind of snow it has to be compressed frozen snow not light fluffy stuff and this stuff is about 24 30 inches of light fluffy stuff then there's a good solid band of crunchy stuff right there 10 more inches of fluffy stuff and then you don't really have the good solid compressed ice until.

About like right here so if i were to cut the tunnel like this i'd only have about that much before we get to all the flimsy stuff probably wouldn't collapse on me but it'd be a bit sketchy so i'm not gonna fuss with it really the only reason to dig a proper snow cave versus a trench like this is when it's really.

Cold i'm talking deep in the negatives you can get in a snow cave and you'll always be about 15 degrees 20 degrees no matter how cold it gets outside it'll never be warm in a snow cave but it won't get crazy cold like negative 20 or so if you build it right but tonight it's only supposed to get down to like six or ten degrees fahrenheit so we just.

Need something to keep the wind off i got a white gas cam stove here that i use in the winter time because the isobutane stoves don't work well in the extreme cold plus these things are really slick this one made by msr it'll work off of unleaded fuel white gas kerosene lots of different things you.

Can put in here so if you're traveling abroad or going to remote places you can get fuel really easy there you go you go lentil and veggie tikka masala i found this at a camping store it's a pizza apparently you just add some water into the packaging and it starts a.

Chemical reaction that heats it up so you can have hot pizza with just water so uh we're gonna give this a try here's the heater here's the pizza pizzas go back in here water's really cold i hope this works okay put this in here curious to see if it can work in these cold temperatures we got another one.

That's chickpea masala so we're gonna try that one out too okay seal that up see what that does oh there we go got some steam coming out feels warm oh it's nice on the hands let's see is it that kind of looks like pizza but it's warm here.

 little bit of difference between the image on the package and uh what we got well that's not the best pizza in the world but uh it's warm there we go lentil and chickpea tikka masala that looks so good careful it's real hot the pizza makes a half decent stand-in.

For naan oh i'm so hungry i'm usually not a fan of lentil and chickpea curries but oh this is hitting the spot oh you gotta eat so quick your food goes from hot to ice cold in an instant all right you get down and just even back burrow down in there man it is cold.

The temperature is just dropping like crazy i'm gonna have some seconds here i'm hungry make sure that lid is on there good okay got this thermos full of boiling hot water here i'm gonna put that thermos of hot water inside my sleeping bag and.

Preheat the bag it is cold out here i got a second bottle here i'm gonna fill that up with hot water too make sure jacob's got one as well are you warm enough do you want some more heater down there you're hot you're too hot okay well i'll tell you one problem with.

Camping in deep snow is it's really hard to find firewood unless you've got standing dead wood you just you're not gonna find it and there's not a lot of standing dead wood around here and i really wanted to sit by a campfire so i kind of i kind of brought something just to just so we could do that a little bit.

I just got myself a number 10 tin can with a little bit of wire around it and you know these little logs you can buy for the fireplace if you don't want to build a proper fire well i got like half of one of those all right oh that feels nice on the hands my fingers have been so cold on this.

Trip this little chunk right here will last about two hours so between that and this i've got about four to six hours worth of campfire right there the temperature is dropping out here it is cold i'm gonna bust out my thermometer and see what temperature we got all right thermometer says zero degrees.

Fahrenheit i'll tell you what the wind is absolutely howling down in the valley it's wind chill is below negative 15. but we're really sheltered where we're at we're right up against a hill and next to some trees and then once you get down below the the snow line it's uh nice and still in here so you're.

Not you don't have that wind chill to deal with all right we're going to take the thermometer down here see what the temperature is at our bags we can see down here by the sleeping bags we've got about 16 degrees fahrenheit so definitely cold but a lot warmer than it is above the trench.

And that's the beauty of snow caves if you build them right they're always about 16 15 degrees fahrenheit no matter what the weather is like outside i'll tell you what i haven't heard a peep out of jacob i think he's falling asleep inside a sleeping bag i think i'll just let him let him rest i put some hand warmers on.

Him and offered to put a hot water bottle in his sleeping bag and he refused it and took the hand warmers off he said he was too hot those sleeping bags are really nice i got them from feathered friends in seattle and they'll customize the length for free and so i had them get one of their negative 25 women's bags and shorten it down so it's.

Perfect for tommy and nate and jake it's just absolutely awesome bag well it's getting late and sitting here on the snow is getting me cold i'm gonna get in my sleeping bag oh i got a set of down slippers i'm gonna put on all right guys i'm getting to bed and i set up a time lapse for you so enjoy.

That i'll see you in the morning  good morning oh my goodness we slept in so long look the sun's up it's about nine in the morning and i'm still in my sleeping bag partially it's because i'm tired and partially because it's really really warm in here i don't want to get out.

Biggest downside to this kind of cabbie is that you've got no warm fire to look forward to oh there's my pants they're nice and covered in snow but i get up and get some oatmeal made time to suck it up it's about nine degrees.

It's nippy oh hey jake you awake hey good morning you sit there and rest i'll get some breakfast made okay  well there's a little ice shelter right there and you can see why it was sheltered from the wind last night got that little hill right there against the.

Back and the trees but it was blowing out here blowing out here really hard the trail we made is pretty pretty frozen up nice and solid  all right let's see about getting some oatmeal cooked got a bottle of water that's not frozen.

Got some sausages here but they're a little frozen  that sausage hits the spot jake do you want a sausage don't get your bag dirty my honey's frozen i'll tell you what when you go winter camping don't bring metal cups bowls or.

Silverware use plastic the metal gets so cold your fingers just get like frost by touching it so bad this just looks so good that warms you up gotta stand up kneeling down that ice just makes my body so cold i really should have brought like a little backpacking chair or something.

But you know whatever it's a point of camping right having fun doing without yeah now i need to get this mess cleaned up ah that's where my spoon went whenever you're sleeping in these snow caves or in these trenches put as many insulators between you and the ground as possible reindeer pelts foam mat air mat.

Cardboard pine bow anything you can do just don't lay on the ground without a good insulator you will freeze it always amazes me how empty the sled is when i'm coming in and how full it is when i'm coming out if i just throw everything in the sled thanks for watching guys we hope you enjoyed this video if you want to see.

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