Stranded in the Wilderness, Can I Survive? Dual Sport Motorcycle Survival Gear Test!

Today's objective is not to ride as much as it is to get to the spot and then practice some skills. So here's some snow for you. We will surmount the obstacle. All these tracks are mine, so it doesn't look like anybody else has been down here. See if I can get this going. Tarp good. Fire starting. I need to practice more. Hello everyone. Welcome back to the dork side. I am the dork in my garage. Tomorrow I'm headed up into the wilderness to test my survival gear that I carry with me every time I ride in the woods. So I thought it might be helpful if I showed you what I carry before I take off up into the woods and actually attempt to use it. So really quickly I just want to give you an overview of the survival gear I keep on my bike. This is just survival stuff. It's not the tools that I carry. I just want to go through all the survival gear that I carry in my Giant Loop Mojave saddle bags on my CRF250R. So it's important to remember, one, I'm not an expert on survival, so these are just suggestions and ideas. This is what I'm doing based on my limited knowledge. Please don't take this as gospel and please don't take my advice and get yourself out into a situation where you could hurt yourself. It's important to be as prepared as possible in the woods, but don't do anything dumb because dork told you so. Okay? Okay. Got that disclaimer out of the way. I'm just going to start here and work across and just talk about what each of these things are. This is my Sawyer water filter and it comes with a bag. This is my Bear Grylls survival knife. It's a Gerber knife. It's full tang. It's got a hammer pommel. Ferro steel rod here, which you can strike with the back of the knife. It's got a sharpener on the back and I keep it wrapped in paracord and I also keep this. This is a butane lighter at the end of it so that that whole thing is together in one. This is sort of my fire making woodworking kit. I mean say what you will about the Bear Grylls label, but this is got, there's a ton of useful tools in here and it's actually a really good knife and you're going to see that tomorrow because I'm going to use it to baton some wood. This is my Silky Gomboy. I carry this not only for survival, but also for trail clearing. This is my first aid kit. I actually need a better one. I'm going to look to upgrade something with more wound closing stuff. This is a Bivy reflective mylar on the inside and it's totally waterproof. So I also carry fire making stuff. So these are zip fire starters. This is a fat wood stick. So this is useful as kindling, but also if you shave it down with a knife, it becomes really, really good tinder. And then this is a tarp. So it's not a fancy sil nylon tarp. It's not a backpacking tarp, but it is a nylon tarp made out of the same stuff like your tent is made out of. And this is about 50 feet of paracord. So this is for rigging up a tarp shelter. Every time I'm up in the woods riding by myself, I have all of this with me. So tomorrow I'm going to load my bike up and I'm going to head up into the woods to a spot that I found not that long ago in a previous video you might've seen. And I'm going to attempt to set up a tarp shelter and build a fire. I've never done a tarp shelter before. So this will be brand new to me. I have built fires many times in the woods, but never, um, harvested wood in a wet forest and then batoned it down like I'm going to do tomorrow. So it'll be interesting challenge. Might be a total failure. I don't know, but what good is having the gear if I don't know for sure, if I know how to use it and I'll, I'll put links to all this stuff in the description so that you can check out anything that's here. If you're interested, I'm going to pack this all back up on the bike and start getting everything ready for the morning. And I'll catch up with you in the morning as I load up. Thanks for hanging out. Here we are. So I came up a little farther this time because today's objective is not to ride as much as it is to get to the spot and then practice some skills. So, um, I'm unloading at a little bit different spot. This is about two miles up from where I normally do. Today we have two objectives. I'm going to test the survival gear and make sure that, um, I have the skills and the equipment necessary to do two things. One, build a shelter and two, build a fire. So if we can accomplish both of those things today, we'll call it a complete success. It's about 43 degrees, uh, so about 10 degrees above freezing according to the thermometer in my truck. I'm wearing, this is a merino wool base layer and then of course my fashionable dork in the road dual sport riding shirt. It's a little chilly, so I'm going to throw my jacket on. Um, so the fire will definitely be helpful assuming I can get one lit. Everything is packed up in the Giant Loop Mojave saddlebags and I'm going to get this truck unloaded and take off into the woods and we're going to go try to get to the spot that had a little snow last time. I don't know temperature wise if it's melted or not up here, but we'll see when we get there. And I swear guys, I'm not cherry picking nice days. I've just been super lucky. I can't believe it's January and it's not raining or snowing right now. I said that and it'll probably start raining on me any minute. So I'm gonna try to get unloaded before that happens. Supposed to be showers today, so could rain on us, could not, I don't know. We're prepared either way. Thanks for coming along. Hope you Welcome to today's adventure. That's right. I am the dork in the road and I want to be your internet riding buddy. My goal is to help new riders see that it's possible no matter how old or how experienced you are. Get out there. Adventures for everyone. So as I mentioned, today's goal is to get up and test some survival gear. Really the gear that I carry, shelter making and fire making. Man, there's a storm up here, huh? Lots of down stuff. So it's not going to be a lot of riding today. Just the rough riding to get us to the spot that I found last time that I think will work well. And it's a camping spot at the end of a spur road. In an actual survival situation, I wouldn't get to choose my location. But since I did, the purpose of today is just to make sure that the gear I have even works and make sure that I know how to use it. I think it's okay to cherry pick a spot. As I mentioned before, there are four things you need to be prepared to do anytime you go into the wilderness in case something goes wrong and you're stuck up here for an extended period of time. Make shelter, purify water, make a fire and signal for help. And if signal for help works, then you don't need any other stuff. But you need to be prepared just in case. If you've seen my backcountry survival tips video, you know that you also want to let somebody know where you're going to be every time so they know where to start looking. There's some snow. We're going to get some snow today. Hopefully, everything goes well. But if not, man, I'll learn from the experience and be able to share all that with you. Yeah, so here's the trailhead from the last video. This was all snow. Do you want to see it? I mean, you probably do. Let's go look. It's very muddy because of all the melting and runoff. So a lot more. There's been some traffic up here. Not just motorcycle idiots like me. Same spot. Way less snow. At least the snow is slushy and not icy. That's my favorite kind. Slushy is good. Easier to maneuver through. Anyway, same spot. Same trailhead. Oh yeah, okay. Well, some of it's icy. Could be interesting on the roads. We'll see what it looks like. So here's some snow for you. So here it is. Proof that I'm not screwing around like cherry picking some easy spot. I'm actually going up into the snowy woods to practice this. I mean, I wouldn't say I'm in super real danger, but it's definitely the type of situation, scenario, location, area, environment really is the word I'm looking for, where you could get yourself into trouble if you weren't careful. A few mistakes could be disastrous. Yeah, it's a little icy underneath. And that's why you want to be prepared. And that's why we're going up to test the gear to see if I'm as prepared as I think I am. I have never rigged a tarp shelter using paracord. Watched a lot of videos, practiced some knots, but I've never actually rigged one. I have actually gathered firewood and made a fire before, but I had a lot more tools than I'll have today when I did that, including a chainsaw. I don't have a chainsaw today, so it should be interesting. It's a good test. Worst case, I'm cold. I learned that I need to add more to my kit and I come home wet. It snowed more. So this is our intersection. Okay, it's not too bad over here. So this spot's just super exposed, so it gets a lot more snow. So here's the road we'll be going down. Let's go check it out. Looks like there's a lot less snow than there was. Well, I don't see any tire tracks through this. So remember, this was all snow and it's only been a couple weeks. Man, it's been stormy though. Look at all the downed stuff. Hopefully there's no trees across our path. That would end our precious field trip real quick. Look at this. Geez. We can get under it. Fold our mirror down. It's not too bad to move. I can do it from the bike. There you go. I'll just ride over it. We will surmount the obstacle. That tells me no trucks have been down here. Man, there's a lot of new stuff down. Crazy. Good, good. That's exactly what we want. Very secluded. We're riding over a lot of branches. Yeah. Okay. We're almost right at the same spot where that tree was a couple of years ago. Looks like there's more stuff here, but still clear enough. Well, no snow. So as cool as it would have been to kind of camp in the snow, there may be some around the edges. Visually, it won't look as appealing, but that's okay. Easier to move around in. So that hunting spot, the indoor spot from the last video is right here. Let's stop and take a peek at it. So this is a camp spot too. I just like the other one better. I think there's more wood available too. So right over here is that clearing where I did all my mildly impressive snow screwing around moves. Oh, there's a little snow on the ground. That's fun. Starting to get a little rain too. It looks like. There she is. All these tracks are mine. So it doesn't look like anybody else has been down here. So my thought is back here in this little area. All right. What do we think spot wise over here with a little tree cover? I thought it might be a good spot. It's not very flat. I mean, back in here would be ideal for a shelter. Like if I was actually building one, I would chop some of the branches off these trees and put it right here. So branches have to come down if this is going to be a tarp shelter. Over here is not bad. Oh, this is good. This is pretty perfect actually. Right here. These two trees. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's protected. It's covered. It's already cleared out. Okay. I think this is the spot. This looks like a good spot. Somebody set a tent up here before. So I don't have to reinvent the wheel. All right. Well, I think this is the spot. Almost too easy so far. So knock on wood, that doesn't mean that we're in for a lot of trouble later, but you can see this has already been cleared out by somebody. Somebody set up a tent here, obviously, but there's two trees, one there and one there. I can run a ridge line between them and set up a tarp shelter. And then I can have a fire right here in this sort of little indentation right at the front of the tarp shelter. So that's what I'm going to try to do. So let me walk you in a little bit and just show you what I mean. Here's one tree and as you pan over, there's the other. This is the whole spot and we'll just run a line between them and that'll be the top of the ridge line. I'm going to do just a simple lean-to shelter because I've never done this before. So I will just do top lean-to and then try to stake down the back as best I can. Once that's set up and I'm certain I can do it, then we'll think about firewood. But one thing at a time. So shelter first, I'm making stakes right now. Theoretically. Potentially. One thing I don't have is an axe, so I don't carry an axe in my survival gear, so I didn't bring my hatchet today. So all I have is my silky saw and my Bear Grylls knife, as you saw. So my plan is to take smaller wood when I do get to the fire, some of this, some of the lower branches of the trees, which are dead and dry, but for now let's put up a tarp shelter. Shelter stuff is in the bottom of this saddlebag, paracord, tarp. I also need the knife and potentially the saw. So I have black paracord, which I actually don't recommend. The ultimate stuff is like orange, so it's dayglow, but also has those reflective pieces in it. I ordered some orange stuff, it's on the way, but I'm just going to tie this up as high as I can and I'm going to put a trucker's hitch in it. And, you know, roughly the same height. The other side, since it's not super crooked. I'm going to need a little slack, but I also need to be able to take the slack out. And it tightens, see? I'll tighten that down. Useful. It may not be long enough in the back, but that's okay. Yeah, width-wise it's pretty good. Grabbed this stick a minute ago because I want to use it to make toggles to hold the tarp on. This is the easiest way without tying any knots. So we're going to give it a shot and see how it works. And if it does, I'll show you up close. That worked. Let me show you. Pinch a loop, stick it through the grommet, and then take a toggle. Oh, ----. I'm going to take a toggle, just a stick, put it through like this. That'll hold it up and also make it so once I get this tight, I can adjust these out. I didn't have to tie any knots. You see? Paracord right through it. Should really be going sideways. I don't know why it's not, but now I can tighten it up down here and then tighten this thing down. That'll be good. Trucker's hitch. Tighten it. Just tighten it like this. See? Since that's a constricting knot, it'll hold it tight. All right. For my next trick, I'm going to stake down the back of this. And I don't have a hammer or an axe, like I said. There is a hammer pommel on my knife if I need it, but hopefully this ground is soft enough that I can just push these little sticks into the ground and it'll hold this tarp back. Hopefully. Let's try this one. It should go right through the grommet. It's not perfect, but it'll work. Well, the back is staked down. That's not pretty, but actually that one on the corner could go out a little more. This is probably too steep. If this were a real survival situation, I definitely would want that lower. Good to know. All right. Well, this is the first time I've ever done this. So ridgeline worked. It's pretty tight. The stakes are in. They're not amazing, but they'll hold. Grommets on this tarp are pretty small, so I have to use pretty small stakes. What I need to do is probably put some loops in them. I'll do that when I get home. This is probably too tall if this were a real survival situation. It's too high. I can't really get out of the rain underneath it, as you can see. And there's a little bit of a hollow down here, so you definitely would not want this here. In fact, the way that wind's blowing, I probably would face it the other way. Or I would build an A-frame and sit underneath it in here, which is another thing, but I don't want to mess with guidelines today. So it's a proof of concept. This works. And as much as I'd like to lower it down and move everything, I think we're going to say mission mostly accomplished in terms of a tarp shelter with the gear that I have and move on to building a fire, because that's going to take a little while. I don't know what the weather's going to do. The only caveat being if the weather actually does kick up, I will want to be out of the rain. So if this is not going to actually keep me out of the rain, that'll be interesting. So we might have to adjust. But now I gotta find some firewood. As many of you know, I live in Oregon. This is the Pacific Northwest Rainforest, so everything is very soaked in the winter. So that can make finding dry firewood difficult. Two really good ways to find dry firewood are these low branches on trees that are, you can tell, some of these low branches that are dead because hollow branches shade them out. Often they're dry and will break right off. They snap right off. They're pretty dry. That's probably what I'll use for kindling and tinder. And also what you want to look for is something like this. So this is a dead tree that's fallen over, but it's not on the ground. So there's a good chance there's some dry wood in here. I just have to split it open to get to it. So I'm going to take this out and saw it up and split it, baton it down with my knife. And hopefully there's enough wood here and with all the, I'll gather some of these lower branches that we'll be able to get a decent fire going. A little one anyway. Obviously, if this was a survival situation, I'd be hunting for a lot of firewood. But since we're just proof of concepting today, I'm just going to find a few big pieces and try to get them to burn to make sure that I can. So we're going to drag this out of here. This one's not huge. Oh yeah. It's rotten at the bottom, but it's not like falling apart on me. So we'll see. We'll cut into it and see how dry it is. I found one more nice and dry. It's very snappy. See that sound? Yeah. Nice and dry inside. So these two ought to be enough. And then if I take the limbs off this, I'll have enough for kindling stuff too. So I'm going to do that. So we've talked about shelter building, fire building. The other thing you want to be able to do, like I said, is signal for help. So this is my Delorme inReach. I'm going to send my wife a message right now, just letting her know everything's cool, found a good spot. And I think it sends my location too. So then she'll know where I am exactly. All right. Sending. And I'll put this on top of the bike so that it of that stuff. I'm going to baton these down. Good fire starter. So you may be asking, how are you planning on getting to the dry wood inside if you don't have an axe to split it? The answer is I'm going to baton it. So if you have a decent knife, full tang is recommended. You can take it, put it on top of a piece of wood and just use another piece of wood to hammer down inside. So whatever your survival knife is, make sure it's good quality. Yeah, it's good wood in there. Do a couple of these to use this kindling to get this fire going. And then I've got some fire starters, so we're going to cheat. Jeez, it helps if you're pounding stick. We're going to give it a shot anyway. I feel like rain may be coming, so let's give this a shot. So here's what I'm going to try to do. I'm going to try to build a bed, and I am going to do it right here under the tarp. Not directly under the tarp where the heat from the fire would melt it, but where I could sit under it if I needed to to get out of the rain. I'm just going to put down a bed of some of this dry innards of this wood. Just a few pieces. So I have something to set on besides the wet ground. And normally in the summer, no, I would not start a fire on the wet ground, but because we're on the bare ground. But it is wintertime, and it's going to be hard enough to start a fire on purpose, let alone set the whole forest ablaze. So I'm not that concerned about it. I've got my bigger pieces here, and then I have a whole bunch of twigs and stuff that I pulled off. This is all lower branches off of these trees nearby, so they're relatively dry. And I'm going to cheat. I'm going to use my fire starting stuff. So I have two things to make a fire with. I have, this is fatwood stick. This works super good. You can actually just light the stick on fire, and it's like a piece of kindling burning already. But I also have these things, zip fire starters. I'm going to try one of those first and see if I can get this going. And they'll burn in very, they're very small, they're very cheap, and they'll burn in wet conditions. So let's see if we can use it to get this fire started. I have more wood over there, so this isn't all that I have. I'm going to give it a shot. This is a lighter. It's attached to my knife. This thing, you just light the package, and it goes up. And once it gets going a little bit, I'll put these sticks on it. They're very hard to put out, so theoretically this will work well. I want to give it lots of room to breathe and look around the edges, especially because it's kind of drying the stuff off as you put it on. Stuff is dry on the inside, but still a little wet on the outside, so that's why the fire starter is handy. A little initial help is good. I'm hopefully going to get some of my dry kindling burning in short order. But don't smother it. Don't go crazy. We'll put the dry side down, obviously. I want to get it burning hot enough that it'll dry out stuff as you put it on. It's still mostly going off that fire starter right now, so... Unfortunately, that'll burn for a while. Well, not at all surprisingly. Having some trouble with the fire, burning wet wood is difficult, and I always get too excited and smother it. Kind of rebuilt my teepee and put another fire starter in there, trying to get some of the drier wood I got going. Obviously, if this were a real survival situation, I would be spending all my time harvesting firewood. As it is, I don't plan on spending a night out here, so I don't need to stay warm for hours with this, so I've just got a little bit that I'm trying to make work. Kind of a proof of concept thing, but finding dry wood in this type of environment is really hard. The stuff that I split is kind of burning, but it's still moist on the outside. Really need something really, really good and dead and dry, and there's not much because everything, even dead standing, is still wet on the outside up here. But this is going a little better, so fingers crossed. It's doing a little better. So here's what I've learned. I tried to get fancy and put just one fire starter on there, but I think if it were well and truly trying to survive, and I knew that my survival depended on drying out wet wood, I would put two or even all three on the fire and go all in, so I should have done that first. But this is kind of going. Hopefully, it's going well enough that I can put some of this wet wood on it, and I might chill out by this fire for just a little bit. And then, I mean, so far, reflecting lessons learned, which is good. That's the point of testing your stuff. I need to put loops on this tarp. I need to bring, I think, more fire starter, probably. It's easy enough to throw a couple more of those things in to just know that you're super well covered, and really just do a little bit more research on how to find dry wood, and know that I would put in more effort to find more wood than I have today if I needed to, especially if it was going to keep me warm all night. But this is going. I think I'm able to put some wet stuff on here and see if it'll take off. Not all the way wet, but wet on the outside, see if it'll dry it off and burn. So what have we learned? Tarp good. Seems to work. That setup will work. The knots that I know how to tie will work. I just would hang it lower and push it farther back if I was actually going to use it. So next time I might try it on in shelter. Fire starting, I would call it, the concept is proven, but execution, I need to practice more, and really what I need to practice is finding dry wood, and probably batoning more of it down, and having more of it ready, because that stuff burned. I just needed more of it to put on, and also giving the fire room to breathe, because I've smothered it twice now. And putting all the fire starter on at the beginning to increase your chances of getting it going well, or at least everything but one. Point of today was to come out, try to build a fire, and build a shelter. I've done both of those things. The fire could be better, so back to the drawing board a little bit on that, but I've learned a lot today. I would love to hear your hints and tips, if you have any suggestions, but for the most part I feel good about my kit, at least for fire making and shelter building, and water purifying, because I've got my Sawyer filter, and my ability to signal out, because I have my inReach. So I think I'm going to pack up, take the shelter down, shouldn't take very long, put everything back on the bike, and then think about getting out of here. Let this fire burn down, and then I'll put some snow on it to put it out. There's some snow right over there, so that should do the trick. All right fire, it's been real. Nothing's catching fire there. It's not even melting the snow. I'm just breaking the toggles to get them out. Not like the super approved version. I'd be interested in building this in the rain. I mean, like that wouldn't be fun, but I'd like to see. I want to do that at some point, just see how cozy it is underneath it. So the weather cooperated today, and I'm thankful for that, because I haven't done this before, but someday that would be a cool test. Get it out in the rain. These tarps never go down as small as they were when you bought them, so see if I can get it back in the bag. It was square before, now it's a little rounder. Nothing wrong with that. This is all very, very out. Yeah, it's real good. So no worries there. Always make sure your fire is super duper out, but the snow's not even melting, so it's all very dead. A little heavy saddlebag is crushing it. Nothing left to do, but put my gear back on and get out of here. Let's get back on the bike. Was that the most impressive survival gear video ever? No. Have I ever done this before? No. What's important? It's important that I'm willing to get out and practice, and make sure that what I think works, works, so that I'm prepared, or at least know how unprepared I am, were I to get into a situation where I was stuck out here. And I would encourage you to do the same. So really think about your gear. What do you take with you when you go up in the woods? Maybe you think I'm paranoid. Maybe it's overkill. Could be. But if the ---- were to hit the fan, I would rather be way over prepared than taken totally by surprise and unable to do anything. Take care of yourself. That's what I'm saying. I want you all to get out and enjoy nature, but in a safe way, and ensure that you always come home. Thank you for watching. I appreciate it. I hope you learned something, or at least got something out of this video. I definitely learned a lot today. Like how to drive right over branches at a crooked angle and slide down them. If you haven't yet, please consider subscribing for more dual sport adventures, dual sport beginner tips, dual sport advice, and suggestions, and things like that. My plan is to really be cranking out the new rider content going forward. Consider supporting me on Patreon if that's the kind of thing you're into. You know, maybe even like the video. You know, if your finger happens to slip on that like thumbs up button, that would be super awesome too. That helps me a lot. But for now, I just want to say thank you very much. Thank you for watching. Hope you enjoyed the video. And please, as always, do not forget to be excellent to each other. Thank you.