Man Camp

After a steady diet of Calvin Rutstrum, Horace Kephart, George W. Sears, garnished with a little Townsend Whelen, I thought I should quit reading about camping, and actually do some of it. I was most intrigued by Townsend Whelen's quote that a tent such as this one,

was more than adequate for anything short of -20 or severe bugs.

Or check out this quote from Steward Edward White in his book Camp and Trail. On page 83 he writes: "Undoubtedly the lean-to is the ideal shelter, as far as warmth goes. You build the fire in front, the slanting wall reflects the heat down and you sleep warm, even in winter weather."

I was game to give it a try, if a bit skeptical. So I picked the longest Friday night of the year, got permission from my wife to skip date night, for which we had no money anyway, and invited some friends over for man camp. Peter Dauk and Don Brown declined, being a little bit smarter than the rest of us, Matt Wilson was interested, but didn't know if he would be able to get together, and Jason Barrett was game, but thought he might have to work on an appeal brief that is coming due. It looked like I was in this by myself, and so I modified the plan, and took a lot of stuff, and then kept track of what I actually used, what I wished I had etc.

The location for Man Camp was Camp Cobra. Camp Cobra is on a tiny stream of clear cold water with a gravel bottom, and in some fairly dense fir trees. It is close enough that you can get to it, but far enough away that there is no temptation to run back home because you forgot something.

Another test was to see if it was true that ash was the ideal wood for a campfire. Kephart claims that green (i.e. unseasoned) ash burns with a clean flame, makes long lasting hard coals and puts out a great deal of heat. While there is some ash at camp cobra, I didn't want to cut down those trees, so I cut some down on a different part of my land. I decided not to use the chainsaw, because Gearge Sears, a.k.a. Nessmuk would have used a hatchet with a blade the size of a book of matches to build a log cabin. I cut down three tree about this size.



Then, I loaded them on my recreational skidder and dragged them the rest of the way to Camp Cobra.

Yes, I realize that Nessmuk generally frowned on imported Japanese ATV's. If that offends you, please check out my mechanical toboggan:



Before you get all indignant the last 5o yards was on foot, and involved a river crossing. Well, river may be a slight overstatement since you can step over it if you have long legs. Anyway . . .

Below is a picture of the mountain o' gear positioned at camp cobra. At this time its about 2:30, and about an hour or so before sunset. At this point I spent the rest of my time cutting and dragging tree length stuff back to camp, to cut up in the dark. The temperature at 2:30, according to the digital dangler, was 23 degrees Fahrenheit.

After the sun set, but before it got dark, I set up my tarp. It is an 11' x11' tarp from Tentsmiths, and it is a thing of beauty, at least to me. I love, probably too much, because I am reluctant to use it because it is so nice. Here, I set it up as a lean-to. The way to do it and have sides is to set it up on the diagonal. The ridge pole originally had a triangular flap that hung down, but I tucked it up around the ridge pole. There is also a corner that is flat on the ground on the back edge, and is underneath the ground cloth. Anyway, it works. The front is about 5' off the ground, the front opening is about 7' wide and the back wall is about 6' wide at the base. I also tied a rope from the center tie out to a convienient tree, which makes the interior quite about bigger. The lean-to is about 5 ' deep I think. By the time I got situated, it was almost dark, and about 10 degrees.

By this time, I could tell that I was getting pretty dehydrated, and I realized that I didn't have enough wood to last through one of the longest nights of the year, so I decided to get a fire going and heat some water for some instant soup and bask in all that sweet heat reflecting down on me. I filled a pot full of water, and then started a fire with my Swedish firestarter and a cotton ball. There were tons of dry twigs, so starting a fire was quick and easy. I didn't have a good way to get the pot over the fire though. I put it next to the fire, and I was surprised for some reason to see that it had frozen over. Obviously it was 32 degrees when I pulled it out of the stream, and sitting in the snow at 10 degrees in an aluminum pot wasn't doing much to insulate it, but still I was surprised.

I moved the fire a little closer to the lean-to, as I wasn't feeling the Miami heat toasting my back, and that about put the fire out. More twigs = more fire, but the pot wasn't heating, so I got two logs, and pushed them close enough together on either side of the fire so the pot would sit above the flames, that about put the fire out too. Eventually I got my 5 minutes of boiling time to kill any bugs, and drank my soup. It was good, but tongue burning at first and cool at the end. (Actually I set it down and cut up some more wood and it was frozen when I turned back to it.)

I started putting some ash on the fire. It burned great, except as the night wore on I realized that it put out a ton of smoke, and although it made great coals, the coals did nothing to warm the lean-to. Only bright leaping flames from softwood did anything to ease the chill. I think Ash would be the bees knees in a stove, but for a lean-to heater, the choking smoke was a downer, and there wasn't as much flame as I needed. Granted, it took a few hours to figure this all out. Here's what it looked like at about 7:00 p.m. and 6 degrees with light snow and swirling wind.


Against all recommendations I had no reflector behind my fire. I know better, and this may be a primary reason the experiment failed. I big reflector tarp, which I brought but never set up, may have acted as a chimney, and should have reflected more heat into the lean-to. There was no convenient way to do it, and I was playing catch up by this time.

I was sitting on an Ensolite pad and a wool blanket folded in half. That was not enough. I was coldest from the ground, more than the air. As you can see from the pictures, there was only an inch or so of snow on the ground. Not really ideal, but nothing that would have given pause to Townsend Whelen either. You might be able to see how close I was to the fire, but I was still fairly cold on my back, and failed to sense any heat reflecting down on me.



By about 8:30 I was tired, sore, and beginning to get cold. I thought I had probably contracted emphysema and maybe lung cancer from all the smoke I inhaled and was thinking about packing it in. I dozed off and awoke a moment later by the sound of someone crashing through the woods. Instead of laying down sustained suppressive fire with the m-6, which is my preference just on general principles, whenever I am startled while in the woods, alone, in the dark, I hollered to see who it was, when what to my wondering eyes should appear, but Jason Barrett, fresh from the doctor's office. It was a delightful surprise to say the least. We set up his tarp in an effort to block some more wind, and proceeded to cook up some venison steak and hot chocolate etc. It was nice to have someone to help saw some wood up.

Here is Jason, stricken with walking pneumonia, yet totally game for a winter camp out.


Here's me, affecting the nonchalant pose that a Calvin Rutstrum might strike in such a circumstance:


We stuck it out all night. It got down to 3 degrees with some wind. Then we left early in the morning. Like 1:00 a.m. early. Well it was a learning experience, and I still have a lot to learn.

What worked well:

Swedish Anorak
LL Bean Washable wool pants with suspenders.
Army Surplus Mukluks
Swedish wool mittens, keep your hands warm, but you can also pick up hot pots and burning logs with no problem.
Woodenboat mug was awesome: no burned lips, kept my hot chocolate hot.
I had a candle, that was nice, but would be better if I could hang it up like the stonebridge folding candle lantern that everyone likes so much.

What didn't work well:
One Ensolite pad and a wool blanket is not nearly enough.
The tarp did not stay warm. Next time I will make it narrower and deeper, more like a cave.
You definitely need some kind of reflecting surface behind the fire, the taller the better for smoke and wind management.
Fresh ash burns as advertised, but for radiational heat, standing dead softwood is the way to go.
Balancing a pot on two logs with the fire between them is not as easy as it sounds, at least for me.

If you have any other ideas on what I did wrong, please don't hesitate to comment.



Update: I got some good sugestions at Canadian Canoe Routes. Check it out here.