Deep Snow Survival Camping in Alaska - Building a Winter Survival Shelter

Luke and Jake here at the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel and we're in the Chugach Mountains of Alaska and we're going to do some deep snow survival camping. You ready? Yeah, I'm ready. That's 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 going to have to take a page out of the playbook of the Arctic Vol. 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 going to 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. There's the block. It'll be easy to get out. These are our building blocks. Jake are you hungry? You want a little snack? I feel that it's warm. All right there you want some cartoons? Yeah is that nice? You got potato chips, cartoons and a heater. 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 got to make sure Jacob has fun otherwise he won't go with me again. 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. Operation blankie 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 gotta be cold. 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 snowshoes. 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 camp stove here that I use in the wintertime 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. 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 we're gonna give this a try. Here's the heater. Here's the pizza. Pizzas go back in here. The water's really cold. I hope this works. I'm gonna 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. Let's 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. A little bit of difference between the image on the package and what we got. Well that's not the best pizza in the world but 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? 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 deadwood you just you're not gonna find it and there's not a lot of standing deadwood 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. 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 gonna 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 his 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 that it's perfect for Tommy and Nate and Jake. It's just absolutely awesome bag. Well it's getting late and sitting here on this 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 and I'll see you in the morning. Oh my goodness we slept in so long. Look the sun's up 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 and I don't want to get out. Biggest downside to this kind of camping 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 gotta 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? 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. Oh 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 frostbite touching it. So bad. This just looks so good. That warms you up. Gotta stand up. Kneeling down on 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 the point of camping right? Having fun doing without. 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 bough. 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. I just throw everything in the sled. Thanks for watching guys. We hope you enjoyed this video. 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