Bivy Camping with No Tent or Mat - a simple, adventurous, solo journey in the New Zealand mountains

Hello, I was hoping to be saying good morning but unfortunately things haven't quite gone to plan today. I had a fantastic trip planned up to the lovely remote location. The spot that I was going to did not require me to have a tent and it did not require me to have an insulated comfortable camping mat. I'm heading out without those today because I thought I can either go home or I can adapt my plans. And equally as important as the preparation you put into your trips is the willingness to compromise and to change your plans if things become potentially unsafe. And that's the situation I found myself in this morning. I'll tell you all about it later on once we're at camp but needless to say I'm on mission plan B. And mission plan B is not going to be as comfortable as plan A but I have a feeling it could be a lot more exciting and a lot more adventurous because that's the great thing. When things don't go the way you're planning in the outdoors there's usually a whole lot of adventure involved. For now I better get going because it is now mid-afternoon and I've got about three hours of walking to get to our spot. It might be uncomfortable but I think it's going to be a whole lot of fun. I'm intending it to be. Might as well go out there and enjoy ourselves. There you go. It doesn't always rain in New Zealand. I wanted something a little bit different. I don't want you guys thinking I only ever go out in the rain and snow. I just love the challenge of it and I love the fact that not many people are out in it but it's a random what is it Wednesday? So only two cars in the car park so we might pass someone. There won't be anyone where we're going though because I don't go places where other people go. I like to find trees down everywhere through here. The force of nature is amazing. Right we're getting close. I've just consulted my maps and we're about three quarters of the way there. Well this is the spot that I was thinking of but I've just been for a bit of an explore because even though it's nice to go back to a place you know it's also nice to try something a bit different and there is quite a lot of noise from the river so come with me. I found something else and I'm pretty tempted to camp down there. I found this lovely clearing with this beautiful what do you call it? Like a babbling brook. In fact it branches off and all through this clearing there's these little brooks, streams that are flowing and they're just beautiful with the lovely grasses and weeds I suppose. Pretty little grasses and things in the rivers. I'm loving the fact that I've got the last of the sun. The only thing here is the ground's pretty firm that's because it's dry in this area so that's a bonus and I haven't got my air mat with me so I'm just trying to think do I want soft and spongy if it's going to be damp which will be cold. No I probably don't. Probably better off having dry and firm ground. All right I'm going to go and get everything out of my pack and show you what I've got with me today. Drink bottle, PLB, personal locator beacon, paracord bracelet, car keys, toiletry bag, mushrooms, dinner, toilet tissue, the rest of dinner, first aid kit, raincoat, pan. Oh yeah I'm gonna enjoy that soon. Water containers, sharp knife, knife, fork, spoon, a bit more food. I've got a saw, a bunch of clothes, got my cooking pot, cooking stove and fire lighting equipment, a sleeping bag liner, rain tarp, pegs for the rain tarp, gas canister, towel, warm down puffer jacket and right at the bottom is my sleeping bag and what I think I'll do is I'm going to take this bag that I use to keep my clothing and sleeping bag dry in my pack and I'm going to cut it here and here and make a little I've got the sides of the tarp up nice and high because I want to allow lots of light in because being black this is very dark but I won't keep them up at night. I will peg them down into an a-frame so I'll put my bed in the middle so that it's where it needs to be later on. I was thinking I might go and collect some grasses or leaves or something to insulate me underneath my little makeshift ground sheet but I'll see I'll see what I think once I'm set up. What's probably going to be a better idea is in my first aid kit I have a foil blanket it's gold I bought my winter sleeping bag because I was thinking I might bring my summer one because it's spring and I was intending originally to be sleeping in that bivvy. I'm so glad I've got this one. In New Zealand when it comes to firewood and this probably applies to a lot of places there is nothing so exciting and satisfying as finding a big branch that has split off a tree but not landed on the ground, stays up in the branches dead and dries out up there. As soon as the wood touches the ground in New Zealand it starts to rot, it takes on water. Our ground is really wet all year round. That is very satisfying, plenty of firewood here roughly and then a bit of really nice dry kindling in between them. That'll just make sure that there's enough air to get up and under because I've got this probably corrugated iron around it. It has got a couple of holes in to let air in but well that was probably just from people taking shots at it. It will let a tiny bit of air in but not as much as the firewood normally gets. I'm just going to try and set it up in such a way to sit on. I'm going to go and get myself a seat, that's what I need. I didn't have time for a cup of tea earlier. I've just made myself a rooibos chai which just is rooibos tea with spices. It's really nice, so nice. So one thing I forget to do is to drink I get really busy. It's so good, the wind has died off. I knew it was going to lessen overnight but I wasn't expecting it to be this calm so that's really good. It's probably just because we're in a little bit of a protected area with trees around us. What is that? So I better tell you about what happened this morning. I told you I'd tell you later on. Okay so the trip that I had planned was to a little mountain bivvy and a bivvy is short for a bivvy. In New Zealand we have these little basic shelters that literally, you know, four walls, a floor, a roof, a couple of beds and maybe a little stainless steel bench for you to cook on. I was heading to one of these, that was my plan, plan A. Now the reason I decided to go, can you guys see me or is my head getting cut off? It's really hard to tell because it's so dark. I might just adjust the camera slightly. Much better, much better. I think you can see me a bit better now. Yep so that'd be my plan and the reason I haven't done that that trip before is because I usually go out when it's raining. You know me, I love camping in the rain and in the snow but this particular trip needs good weather because there are multiple river crossings and the first river that you cross is quite wide and can get quite swift and has a really big catchment area so that one's quite tricky to cross and then further up the valley narrows into a bit of a gorge and because it's really narrow you've got to navigate through the river that's coming down through that valley and it's literally you know literally only I don't know 20 meters across so the power of the water can get quite strong if it's up even a little bit so it hasn't been raining in this area for a couple of days and I thought oh yeah that's that's pretty good there's only drizzle forecast for overnight and I thought it would be okay but what I knew but hadn't fully appreciated the extent of is the spring snow melt so along with a little bit of warm rain a couple of days ago and yeah that has melted the spring snow and that is all obviously soaked into the ground and all of that is coming down the rivers at the moment and that means rivers even on a nice day like today are quite high so I headed out this morning it was late morning but I was I headed out and tried to cross the first river and the rule it's like you know one of those sort of rural rule but it's it's one of those tramping rules so tramping in New Zealand is hiking so one of the tramping rules is if you can't cross or it's difficult to cross the first river on your trip you should turn back you know you've got more rivers to cross and the first one is challenging don't keep going it's just it's like a rule of thumb that you should just live by because if the first river is challenging you can bet as you get further up the valley there's going to be more challenging situations that come along and you're going to be a whole lot further into your trip which is going to make it I don't know psychologically a little bit harder possibly to turn around I got to the first river tried to cross where I usually cross because I know this area really well and got about a quarter of the way through and it was right up to my halfway up my shorts so top of my thighs quarter of the way in I thought of that I tried to go back and cross in a slightly different spot where it was sort of divided into three bits like crossed across to sort of a rocky island then tried to cross the main channel and then go across the last bit the main channel it was just too swift the problem is normally in that river I can see the to the bottom all the time the whole way across I couldn't see the bottom of the river I couldn't see the rocks underneath me and that made it dangerous it was very swift and I didn't fancy getting washed down I wouldn't have necessarily gone that far wasn't like you know it's not like super super deep not like white water rafting type of river would have been okay but I would have hurt myself and I would have wet everything so I did have my stuff in dry bags and whatnot just in case I slipped into one of the rivers on the trip that I was going on oh no lost my tea bag but all the same I didn't really fancy a fall into the river so I hightailed it back to the car and the funny thing was there was an OENZ which is Outdoor Education New Zealand a big Outdoor Education New Zealand group like I'm talking 50 people probably who were in the car area like in the grassy flats of the where I parked my car and obviously they're learning all about outdoor education and it looked like they were doing river safety what do you call it like emergency procedures so they had someone lying on the ground and another person throwing this like throw rope to them and it looked really fun whatever they were doing and so the irony was here I was heading out solo on a trip with while there's 50 people learning about river safety and river crossing I got to the river and thought there are people there who've taken the time to learn about river safety how dumb would I be to cross the river now and then have a search party come along or like me sort of drag myself back up to the car park all wet in front of this group what an educational story that would be so anyway I backtracked hopped in the car and drove off and chances are you know one of the instructors might have seen me and said oh I have a feeling she saw how high the river was and made the right decision so there you go I didn't feel safe when I said earlier on I tried to head off on my original trip and I just didn't that we don't have wild animals like predators to worry about so I can just eat this quite happily without worrying that a bear or a lion or a baboon or anything is going to come out so I've pegged the tarp down into a simple a-frame except for this corner here just so I can see out and enjoy the last bit of the fire I might peg it down when I go to sleep can you hear that that's our native owl after I've put away the tarp is to dismantle the fireplace and cover it over with some moss I'll return the iron to where I found it and then it's time to go and I am contemplating going off track and bush bashing up through the trees to see if I can get to the track I'll have a look at the topographical map but I have a feeling the track crosses just up there and if I'm right it could be a good shortcut it also could be a bad shortcut so I'll just have to see what I think I should be rolling up all these guy lines now so they don't cause me hassles when I put my tarp on the washing line but in all honesty I'm just time poor so I'll do it when I get home I don't even think I'm going to need a raincoat for my walk out I'm back on the iPhone okay I'm just going to give this one shot oh that is so clear I'm going to give this one shot and if it's too hard I'm heading back to the track so there's quite a lip over there it looks a little bit less steep over there right let's go there we are you can see where we were right down there a bit of a scramble but I made it so we've got to find our way through these trees and estimations we should find the track what do I see oh there we are brilliant yay fantastic that little climb up that hill probably saved me 10 minutes which I really need because to make it out in time for my commitment in town I need to walk out in two hours and 15 minutes rather than the three hours that it took me to walk in I think it's achievable because I won't be stopping to film or take breaks so goodbye everybody thanks so much for coming along uh consensus on staying out overnight without a tent or air mattress if you're carrying an emergency shelter just make sure that it has some kind of way to create a floor because chances are in an emergency situation you may be in adverse conditions and not wanting to sleep straight on the ground so either a rain tarp with multiple tie down points that you can peg down to the ground or perhaps carry a really small little piece of waterproofing a bit like my sleeping bag sorry my pack liner that I used okay don't forget your emergency foil blanket in your first aid kit fantastic or staying warm uh if you're ever hypothermic at risk of hypothermia wrap yourself in it so lightweight such a great asset on a trip you can even rig it up probably to keep you out of the rain to everybody who supports the channel thank you so much thank you so much to my buy me a coffee members and my channel members and to my donors on buy me a coffee and youtube super thanks thank you so much for watching the video clicking the like button subscribing you're not subscribed maybe think about doing that so that you know when the next video comes out we will make it up to that bivvy that I was going to I was planning to go to yesterday that's on the cards when the weather dries up a bit but there's also going to be plenty of warm summer rain camping looking forward to it you guys take care bye for now