It was time once again to hit "the greens". We had an almost summerlike week, loads of sunshine and temperatures dangerously close to 20C. Then the wind turned north again and those temperatures plummeted. The sun made itself a lot less seen too. Today was supposed to be reasonably sunny with temperatures about half of what they had been. It'll get much worse, starting tomorrow.
First things first. Since it still is april, we have april showers, so an emergency shelter is setup using my plash palatka and bungees in the fashion I came up with last time out, meaning one bungee around the center toggle.
There is this area that last autumn has been cleared from its undergrowth in order to give the bigger trees room, so they can become even bigger toward harvesting time in a few decades. That means a lot of useful debris on the forest floor, which "allemansrätten" allows me to use. And that gave me the inspiration for today's exercise; gathering skills in shelter construction.
After the phase 1 shelter was erected, it was time for a phase 2 shelter; a 1-man shelter of the type I had built once, way back in the beginning of my outdoor adventures, inspired by Ray Mears. Enough talk; it was material gathering time! There were heaps of spruceboughs and small trees all over the place and I used the smaller sprucetrees as sleds for transporting a load of boughs toward the campsite.
The limitation I had set myself was to use nothing but my hatchet and so I set to work!
I erected a frame of thinner birch trees. The top pole is my length with outstretched arm and the supports are forked, so that they catch into each other and support each other and the pole. The joit can be strengthened using birch twigs. Fresh ones are best, since these are very flexible. Mine were already a few months old, so snapped from time to time. I then laid out the "ribs" of the shelter, using the thicker branches of the birches. Onto those I added the spruceboughs, which overlapped one another, creating a lattice as shown.
First things first. Since it still is april, we have april showers, so an emergency shelter is setup using my plash palatka and bungees in the fashion I came up with last time out, meaning one bungee around the center toggle.
There is this area that last autumn has been cleared from its undergrowth in order to give the bigger trees room, so they can become even bigger toward harvesting time in a few decades. That means a lot of useful debris on the forest floor, which "allemansrätten" allows me to use. And that gave me the inspiration for today's exercise; gathering skills in shelter construction.
After the phase 1 shelter was erected, it was time for a phase 2 shelter; a 1-man shelter of the type I had built once, way back in the beginning of my outdoor adventures, inspired by Ray Mears. Enough talk; it was material gathering time! There were heaps of spruceboughs and small trees all over the place and I used the smaller sprucetrees as sleds for transporting a load of boughs toward the campsite.
The limitation I had set myself was to use nothing but my hatchet and so I set to work!
I erected a frame of thinner birch trees. The top pole is my length with outstretched arm and the supports are forked, so that they catch into each other and support each other and the pole. The joit can be strengthened using birch twigs. Fresh ones are best, since these are very flexible. Mine were already a few months old, so snapped from time to time. I then laid out the "ribs" of the shelter, using the thicker branches of the birches. Onto those I added the spruceboughs, which overlapped one another, creating a lattice as shown.
