Winter overnight adventure with skis | Taival Outdoors
How's it going everyone welcome back to Taival Outdoors my name is Joel I’m on this great looking bog today it's Friday stopped working early to get outside spend the night here it's actually the same place where I was last spring but then I was with fat bike and I think my camp was somewhere over there but now wind is coming from south southeast so I’m thinking that I'll get to treeline over there looking towards the bog and set up camp there to be a bit more sheltered on the wind Thanks for joining in let's have a great little winter adventure! I think that rock over there looks like pretty good wind block it's definitely quite liberating skiing on a bog hard work but I've seen mostly just game trails around here so I’m guessing I get to be all by myself, so this is the rock that I mentioned Now I’m thinking that instead of staying down here maybe I should just find my way up there and set up camp there could be a nice view from up there sounds like a plan to me. One final push. All right I made it up here I’m looking around I still have those trees to block the wind that is coming from that direction and I have these two three three these two trees here which I’m probably going to use for my shelter I don't have a DD 3x3 tarp with me at this time but a bit smaller shelter so I might be able to fit it in between but first I need to hydrate oh okay so that took absolutely no time at all I have that one piece of paracord running there over my seat but I figured that I will build a new cooking area over here in terms of the shelter itself this is 2GoSystems Trifecta it has a reflective surface here underneath I’m not going to have any open fire or anything but still nice to have and also blend in quite nicely in terms of the size I do fit underneath just about I can also sit up good head room so just by eyeballing it in terms of the height I think it came out pretty nicely next up I will lay up my new sleeping pad we'll see how it looks if it's any different from the old one and also my sleeping bags then it's time to make some lunch very late lunch all right so there's the sleep system my winter sleeping bag and a bivvy bag and this sleeping pad I don't know looks exactly like my old one except I think these texts were black in the old one so in case you're wondering what I’m talking about old versus new Exped sleeping pads I will put a link up there or a card but basically my old one broke on me but luckily the Exped warranty held and I got a refund and I bought a new one what I thought would be exactly the same but the name had changed slightly and some specs also slightly but it should be more or less the same pad at least by the looks of it, it is. As the first dish I’m making spicy noodle soup and actually I’m testing out this Tactical Fire Pot and seeing if that truly works during the winter so there's a bit of a flame visible there let's see how it goes well my tests with the Tactical Fire Pot didn't go super well you can see all that in the video that I going to link up here once it's done I decided to come under this tarp anyway since I have a good seat that lifts me up from the cold ground and if this reflects back some heat then I’m happy to have that one I’m in the process of melting snow now to my first meal of the day spicy noodle soup all it needs is a bit of beef jerky to, well, beef it up that should do it hmm oh yeah we are maybe one hour away from sunset and this is my first meal of the day okay so while I’m waiting for the main dish to become ready and rehydrated I think it's time to put a warm layer on although I really like this Ace Winter Combat Shirt especially when moving this was again today very warm excellent for carrying a backpack and moving during cold temperatures it's still you know it's still not enough when I’m stationary just sitting here I just checked and it's only minus eight maybe minus nine degrees so not super cold but anyway better to put an additional layer now that I’m still not chilled to the bone this is of course Keli Luppo merino wool jacket I've been using and testing as a part of my cooperation with Keli for quite many months now it's a simple product but I've found it to be quite versatile oh yeah I think there might be still enough juice for one batch let's see I've placed again this lantern here solar lantern waiting it to get dark enough to light it up definitely although it is cloudy immediately when the sun went behind those trees I could begin to feel that temperatures are dropping at least a bit but then again if it stays cloudy like this it won't get won't get down to I don't know down to -15 or 20 or anything like that I think it's going to hover very close to -10 tonight funnily enough it was -22 -23 a couple of days ago in the morning and looking at the forecast it's supposed to be +1 this Sunday so now it's Friday evening so in just two days but strange week in terms of weather and also next week looks fairly warm around here as well so I figured that this is time when I need to get out and stay outside out in the woods for the night testing now the new old sleeping pad and see if it's still the same and anyway there can never be enough of these winter trips I think then I still have a beautiful curious dessert I'd say winter survival food honey I have honey quite often but rarely in this format I think I’m going to put some into my cup and maybe a bit of hot water on top to get a honey tea going on cheers this is life all right I guess it's time to call this a night this lantern really is quite a bit of light considering that it's a solar powered lantern so it's not that bright but in this snowy environment with this reflecting tarp seems to work now I will just fold up this shirt and put it here to get a pillow for myself like so seems about perfect this Luppo jacket I will keep close by either right here or tuck it in the bivvy bag just in case it does get cold during the night I highly doubt it but you never know it's easier to pull it out of the bivvy bag than this dry bag during the night so it doesn't hurt to be prepared all right I think that's everything I’m ready to go to bed I'll see you all in the morning good morning looks like we've received a bit of a fresh snowfall last night like I said in my previous winter camping video it always snows when I’m out winter camping regardless of the forecast every night always snows yes there has definitely been some build up but the tarp held up nicely nicely no problem bivvy bag of course did its job kept my sleeping bag dry still does snow a bit not a lot very light snow I think it might be a bit warmer day today than it was yesterday which isn't necessarily a good thing when it comes to skiing but it is what it is now the first thing and the best way to improve my current situation is to make some coffee so I packed up my sleeping bags still leaving the bivvy bag and sleeping pad out here it's time to try to find my cookware from here aw yes most important piece of it all coffee pot and yeah I’m aware that my rucksack wasn't under the tarp but it's very limited space and I am a tall guy so I needed pretty much all of it but it doesn't matter if your rucksack can't handle a bit of snow accumulation then I suggest you get a better rucksack so while the coffee is getting ready I figured it's a good time to talk a bit about my skis so these are made by Kuusisto their snow line apparently I don't know what kind of other lines they would have besides snow NeverWax 680 and as you probably can tell they are not modern cross-country skis these are in fact my grandpa's which I then sort of inherited for anyone who's gone at least through the Finnish Defense Forces conscript service this type of binding system is very familiar with those so these attach to certain type of rubber boots and actually the boots I’m wearing are also from my grandpa and these are Finnish Defense Forces surplus boots and actually if I’m not mistaken a couple of years older than myself this is a bit wider than modern skis and of course my favorite part is the fact that this here never wax so I don't have to fiddle around with any type of waxes or anything I guess you could still do something to these but I've chosen not to because they work just fine enough for me they're still faster than walking faster than snowshoes so that's good enough and they do have a bit of flotation properties as well because they are a tad wider I don't know the if the length of these skis is good enough or suitable for my height or any other properties but I’m not that big of a ski snob yet that I would really care so very basic very sturdy you know full metal bindings a plane is flying somewhere over there that's a something that I haven't heard for a long time so if there's something positive out of this current plague situation that is going around the world is that there hasn't been a lot of planes and being outdoors has been a lot more enjoyable because of that but only thing that I’m a bit concerned is that how long these bindings will last on me and if there is in fact a place where I could get a replacement if these get broken I haven't checked that out but we'll see and I've been also thinking a bit about getting those fancy OAC sliding snowshoes especially the shortest model because I think the longer ones are too close to these type of skis that I don't really see a point in getting a pair of those but the more I think about that purchase the less I’m sort of interested about it after all because those costs I don't know 350 euros or something I’m sure they are really good but I haven't had a chance to test those out and I figured the amount of skiing I do outdoors I already have these so why not use these I thought that I would want to have those short and wide skis to be able to better go in deep woods but I came through some pretty thick bush yesterday and I didn't have any issues this provided enough floatation on that snow and and I managed to maneuver with this just fine of course I had rucksack on and didn't drag ahkio behind me so maybe that changed something maybe not but anyway if there's one thing that I need to consider getting is some type of overpants because with this setup there's always the possibility that if I brush off some branches or something the snow falls inside my rubber boots that's of course not optimal so some type of pants that would go over my pants and over these boots would be then maybe on the shopping list but I'll leave it that for the next winter season so NeverWax 680 pretty old school some would say compared to a lot of the gear that I use but I haven't never considered old stuff to be bad or worse than the modern gear in fact I started my outdoor hobby at least this current one with pretty much only using military surplus gear and I still have some and actively use but I've been just kind of upgrading to lighter materials and things like that more modern innovations MOLLE and PALS compatible things and so forth but every now and then they've done something so good that there is absolutely no need to upgrade it such is the case with these skis yes let's have a taste shall we another night spent in the woods another great morning coffee cheers let's see how things look underneath hmm bit of a heat loss definitely more visible from this back side of the pad it's wet and started to freeze a bit so as I said before although the name is SynMat HL Winter still I would recommend bringing another maybe like a summer sleeping pad something lightweight and easy to carry and bring that place it first and then this one on top not just for the warmth but to keep this pad also then dry good thing is that this is SynMat so synthetic insulation which I do prefer over down for certain products such as sleeping pads because again it's difficult to dry down but with synthetic insulation is not that big of a deal the best way to get all the air out of your sleeping pad very relaxing as well one two three all right I think I’m about ready now just one layer off and also what's really important at this point is to remember to open up these pit zips it's better to do this now before I get sweaty you should feel a bit chilled a bit cold that's how you know that you dressed properly for the activities you're about to embark on these Varusteleka merino wool liner gloves are very nice but don't last that long all right one final thing before heading out I want to of course fire up my GPS and then get some sort of bearing I’m taking a different route out this time or different route from yesterday let's see how long does it take for the Garmin to wake up this time I’m seriously amazed that this is the best thing that hikers and such have access to It's bulky heavy extremely slow in fact everything about this reminds me of the old Nokia phones from like 20 years ago and it's full of features that no one ever I just want to have a device that shows me map, tracks my location and my routes and that's it maybe that's too much to ask from a GPS unit I want to start to get going roughly to northwest not quite so maybe 340 degrees then I will just pick some kind of a landmark maybe those trees over there and that's my rough bearing for now okay a hood would be nice in this weather but I'll manage so getting closer to the edge of the forest now has been relatively easy going actually these skis really helped a lot this would have been quite a bit slower on snowshoes you can see a lot of game trail game trails here as well I guess my eyes are not playing tricks on me after all I think I have found a trail that I was looking for at least there's a clear path now going through this wood so easy to follow but anyway thanks for joining me on this winter camping and skiing trip do check out the videos here on the left there's more of the same goodness over there you've been watching Taival Outdoors my name is Joel I will see you all in the next one
2021-02-27 20:00
