In this episode of the "Primitive Camping & Bushcraft" podcast, Chris Speir discusses essential shelter building techniques to keep you dry, warm, and safe in the wilderness. Learn about various tarp shelters and the importance of proper clothing and site selection.
Welcome to the Primitive Camping and Bushcraft Podcast. Have you ever been caught in a sudden downpour or a chilly night without adequate shelter? I have, and it is not an experience that I'd recommend. Today, I'm going to go over essential shelter building techniques to keep you dry, warm, and safe. My name is Chris Speir, and I'm your guide to mastering the great outdoors. Let's get started.
Shelter is crucial for protection from the elements and providing warmth, as well as ensuring you have a good night's sleep. Today, we're going to cover five essential shelter types from my book, Primitive Camping and Bushcraft. For more detailed information, check out my book, available at all major online retailers like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Books a Million.
Shelter, fire, and water are the key priorities for survival. If it's raining and chilly, you need shelter first to avoid hypothermia. Once you have shelter, you can build a fire to dry your clothing and then process your water to make it safe to drink.
Your clothing is the first part of your shelter. Layer your clothing according to the climate and always have rain gear to keep dry and warm. Damp cotton clothing is dangerous, so ensure your clothing stays dry to prevent hypothermia.
Various shelter options include tents, hammocks, and tarps. A tarp is versatile and can be set up in multiple configurations. We'll cover five different tarp shelters: Lean-To, A-Frame, Diamond Fly, Adirondack, and Plow Point.
Lean-To Shelter: Simple and effective, affix a tarp to a ridge line and stake it down. A-Frame Shelter: Create an A-frame shape with a tarp over a ridge line, providing excellent protection from the elements. Diamond Fly Shelter: Arrange a tarp diagonally over a ridge line, offering more coverage and ventilation. Adirondack Shelter: Use a tarp to create a three-sided shelter, perfect for cooler weather. Plow Point Shelter: Attach a tarp corner to a tree, stake it down, and create a simple, protective shelter. Hammocks are also a great shelter option, especially in warm climates. They can be used with various tarp setups for added protection.
Always practice setting up your shelter before heading out into the wilderness. In our next episode, we'll dive into fire-starting techniques. Don't forget to pick up a copy of Primitive Camping and Bushcraft and join our Facebook group with over 6,000 like-minded members. See you next time!
(upbeat music)
- So welcome to the Primitive Camping
and Bushcraft Podcast.
Have you ever been
caught in a sudden downpour
or a chilly night
without adequate shelter?
I have, and it is not an
experience that I'd recommend.
So today I'm gonna go over essential
shelter building techniques to keep you
dry, warm, and safe.
My name is Chris Speir,
and I'm gonna be your guide
to mastering the great outdoors.
Let's get started.
So shelter is crucial for
protection from the elements
and providing warmth,
as well as ensuring you
have a good night's sleep.
Today, we're going to cover five
essential shelter types
from my book, Primitive
Camping and Bushcraft.
And for more detailed
information, check out my book.
It's available at all
major online retailers
right now, including
Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
Books a Million, stuff like that.
But when we get up in
here into this book,
it's going to have different sections.
And we discussed last
week about primitive camping,
and I know I said that
we was gonna do fire,
but I got to thinking
about it afterwards.
I was like, hmm, I wrote
that a little ahead of schedule,
because you're gonna wanna
worry about your shelter first.
Shelter, fire, and water, all right?
And so, and it depends on where you go
or who you listen to
or what books you read.
They will have those
three in different orders.
But personally, if it's raining outside
and it's kind of chilly,
I want shelter to
keep me from getting wet.
That way I have no chance
of catching hypothermia.
Then I wanna build a fire
so I could dry the clothing off.
And once you have a fire,
you're able to then process your water
and make your water safe to drink.
So in this book, what I tried to reflect
was that shelter is, it could be natural,
it could be manmade, it could be a cave,
it could be inside a hall of law,
which I don't
recommend in South Mississippi
in the spring, summer, and
fall times, or the winter.
Snakes are everywhere.
And so, what do you think
about when you think of shelter?
Now, the first thing
that probably comes to mind
is your house.
And that is a huge thought
because your house, all it
is basically is a shelter.
All of our homes are shelters
that provide shade
from the sun on hot days
and protection from the rain
and the snow on cold, wet ones.
And most homes have air
conditioning, heating,
cooking appliances, and plumbing,
making everything that you need right
there in your house.
So when you head out to the woods
and you think about shelter,
all you're doing is
making a microclimate,
you're making a micro house,
and you're just making
something that is capable
of keeping you dry, keeping you warm,
and keeping you safe from the elements
and sometimes safe from predators.
Shelter from camping will do the same
thing as your house.
And I'm just kind of
following along here in the book.
A tent, a hammock, a tarp,
they all protect you from the elements.
But first, you have to know
what to look for in a campsite.
There's so many
different options out there.
And one of the things
in South Mississippi,
when you're camping on
rivers and stuff like that,
they have the high
watermark on the trees.
And all this is is a mud
ring where the water come up
and all the mud and everything just
coated around that tree.
And you can actually see
where the high water was
the last time it flooded or the last year
or within a couple of months
or something to that effect.
But shelter, you don't
want to build it anywhere
inside that high watermark.
And the reason why is because
if it has a very high downpour,
a lot of rain, and you are prone,
and you're in an area
that is prone to flooding
or flash flooding, you
don't want to be caught
in the high watermark
because that water will come up.
Now, a little trip I took years ago,
and me and the boys was
out on the river camping.
And we found a nice little embankment
and we found a nice
little place to camp out.
And we got out and set up our tents,
collected our firewood,
did everything we did.
We normally would.
And we just started having a good time
and joined the great outdoors.
We were running trout
lines and catching some fish
and stuff like that.
Now, it started raining north of us
pretty substantially.
Not one drop landed on us.
We didn't get wet and
we were safe and dry.
But throughout the night,
the water from the river started rising.
And it came up about two or three feet
in just a matter of an hour.
And so halfway through the night,
it started reaching our tent.
And I thought we was gonna be good enough
because the water does come
up, the water does go down.
Sometimes you'll be camping
and you'll park your boat.
And the next morning you'll get up,
you have to push your boat off
because the water dropped a foot
or two feet or something like that.
But this case, the water was coming up
and it was inside our tent.
It was heading inside the tent.
So what we had to do was just go ahead
and pack everything
up, throw it in the boat.
And in the middle of the night,
start heading back up to the boat launch
and get ready to go home.
So that wasn't a very good trip,
but that has happened
and it can happen to you.
So whenever you camp inside the mud ring
or inside the high water
zone, the high water mark,
you're gonna get flooded if
the water decides to come up.
So the first aspect of
shelter is gonna be your clothing.
Typically, no matter where you are
and what part of the world you're in,
your clothing is the
first part of your shelter.
So you're gonna layer your clothing.
You're going to, depending on the climate
that you're going in,
you're gonna dress according to
the climate that you're gonna participate
in outdoor activities.
If you're going skinned, you're gonna
wear layered clothes.
If you're going camping, you're gonna
wear layered clothes,
long johns underneath, an outfit,
and then underneath a
heavy jacket or some heavy bibs
or whatever you're gonna wear.
Your clothing is gonna be
your first layer of shelter.
And this clothing can
also include rain gear
that is gonna keep you dry
and keep heat trapped inside
and keep you from
having a bout of hypothermia
or coming up with hypothermia.
Now hypothermia is any time your body
loses its temperature
below 96 degrees and it
can happen in the summertime
or it can happen anytime.
You know, it don't
necessarily have to be just wintertime.
You can get out and it's
happened, not in hypothermia,
but to the point of starting to shiver.
We were out on the boat one day,
we were pulling a tube behind the boat
and just having a good old time.
And then it got overcast
and then the wind picked up
a little bit and whenever
it got out of the water,
the boat started, the wind that was
created from the boat
driving the boat, we were
just started getting cold.
And then the temperature
dropped several degrees.
And then next thing you
know, we're all shivering.
It's the middle of the summertime.
And it was warmer in the water
than it was outside of the water.
And so something like
that in the summertime,
you still can come up with hypothermia
and it's not a good thing.
Damp cotton clothing is a killer.
And you've heard this, you know,
if you've been around in the bushcraft
and in the survival
community for a while,
you've heard this, that damp cotton
clothing is a killer.
And you don't wanna get
your cotton clothes damp.
So you wanna keep
everything nice and dry.
You wanna have your rain
gear, you wanna have a poncho,
you wanna have something
to keep you from actually
getting wet and keeping
your body temperature up.
But when we get down to shelter,
you got various
different aspects of shelter.
Some people like to bring tents camping.
I do not.
Tents to me are very overweight
because of all the, you
know, the size of the tent.
I mean, granted, they do
have little smaller tents
that are capable of actually being
lightweight for hikers,
but I don't prefer
sleeping on the ground.
Now, if I was hiking in a
situation in the mountains
or something like that,
where they didn't have trees all over,
where I can go hang a hammock, you know,
then I'd be having no
choice but to bring a tent.
But me personally, like
I just said, a hammock,
that is my number one go-to.
Hammock and tarps are
the perfect setup for me,
especially in South Mississippi.
And down here in the deep South,
it is warmer more than it is cold.
And you can pretty much
use a hammock 365 days.
Now, it does get kind of
chilly down here in the wintertime.
You know, with the
humidity and everything,
humidity and everything,
it seems like it is a
lot colder than what it is,
but in the wintertime
and then in the summertime,
it is a lot hotter than what it is
because of the humidity.
But one of the best things
that you can ever have with you,
and I recommend everybody
purchasing one and having one,
is like the one that I
use is the DDD or DD,
three by three tarp.
And this is not three foot by three foot,
it's three meters by three meters.
You know, it's a big square.
It has several attachment points on it
to where you can set
up a shelter for a tent.
If you want to make a tent out of it,
you can make a diamond fly,
you can make a plow point,
you can make all kinds of
different various shelters.
And that's what we're gonna go over today
is setting up your tarp as a shelter.
And we're gonna go through
five different configurations.
And just like I did here
in Primitive Camp in
Bushcraft, the book, you know,
there's a couple of
things that you're gonna need
to learn how to do in order
to use a tarp as a shelter.
You're gonna have to learn
how to make a ridge line.
And, you know, on one
end of the ridge line,
you're gonna make a
loop, be it a bowline knot
or a bowline or a overhand loop knot.
There's 14,000 different ways to do it.
I prefer the overhand loop knot.
People all the time on
my videos comment that,
hey, you know, you just wasted that rope.
No, not if I'm gonna
reuse it, and I typically do.
I always use an overhand loop knot.
It's quick and it's easy.
And once you put that knot
in, you wrap it around a tree,
and then you insert the
line through that knot
or that loop that you just
made, and then insert a toggle,
and that dude is there.
And I have demonstrated
that countless times here
in this book.
Now, another aspect of
it on the other side,
you're gonna find a
tree on the other side.
And this tree, you're
gonna use a trucker's hitch.
And you, yeah, it's kind
of difficult to explain
over a podcast, but, you know,
a trucker's hitch is gonna be used
where you're gonna wrap it around,
and it allows you to pull
tension on the ridge line,
and then you can tie it off.
If you don't know how
to use a trucker hitch,
check out some of my
videos on my YouTube, TikTok,
Facebook, all those pages right there.
And I can really, I'll demonstrate
how to make a trucker's hitch.
And I've got several videos on that.
Then, once you get your ridge line,
you're gonna need to know
how to make a prussing knot.
And a prussing knot is used to attach
points on your tarp.
And so, in South
Mississippi, a lot of folks here
will use a prussing knot for a trot line
or on a trot line.
That way, they can run
a line across the water
wherever they want it to go,
and then they come back and
they add the prussing knot
and they're hooked and they bait it,
and they just move on to the next one.
Now, the benefits of a prussing knot
is that once you get it
positioned where you want it,
when you pull tension
on it, either direction,
it's not gonna slide.
It clamps down on that
string that you made the knot on.
So, the prussing knot
allows you to adjust
where you want the knot to be,
but once you put tension on
the knot, it locks into place.
And that's straight out
word for word from the book.
So, we're gonna go over a couple of
various shelters here
that we're gonna make, and
you're gonna need a ridge line.
You're gonna need to know how to make
a either overhand loop
knot or a bowline knot,
and you're gonna need to make
a trucker's hitch, all right?
So, and a prussing, and you're gonna need
various number of
prussing knots for this.
So, to make a lean-to shelter is simple,
and it's a very effective
shelter, it's very simple,
and it does exactly what it says.
It looks like it is just
leaning up against something.
In this case, our lean-to
is affixed to our ridge line,
and in the back of the
tarp, you pull it out
and you stake it down.
And so, finding you a
sturdy horizontal support beam
between two trees, and so
you could do it with a stick,
a long stick, or you could
just use a piece of string.
So, now, I demonstrated
how to do lean-to shelters
in the book with primitive means,
with your own natural materials,
and that is another
thing for another video,
but you can just lean
sticks and everything
up against that ridge,
and then you could just
pile leaves on top of it,
and I think I discussed it
in one of the last
podcasts there, you know?
So, but anyway, the ridge,
at the top of the ridge line,
on each side, you're going, of your tarp,
you're going to put a
prussing knot, a prussing knot,
and you're attaching
it to your ridge line,
go to the other side, do
the same thing, pull it tight,
and then, so once it's
tight, then you take your tarp
and you pull it out, and
you're gonna make a lean-to.
It's gonna look like
it's leaning from the top
of that ridge line down to the ground.
It's gonna look like if
you took a piece of plywood
and laid it on that ridge line,
it's gonna have an angle there.
It could be 45, 30,
whatever degrees that you want,
as long as your tarp is.
And this is one of the
simplest, most effective ways,
especially for the
spring, summer, and fall.
Winter time, you wanna set it up
to where the wind's
blowing from the rear.
That way, you don't
get windchill all night
blowing into your face.
Now, you can set your fire up
right in front of your shelter.
So, the next one's gonna be
called the A-frame shelter.
And I know a lot of
you, if you have the book,
the A-frame shelter is
basically, essentially,
the same thing.
You're gonna use the same ridge line.
And then, you're going
to take that ridge line
and you're gonna throw
your tarp over the top
of the ridge line and center it.
And you're gonna have equal
parts on the front and the back.
And then, you're gonna go ahead
and use the same
prussic knots and the toggles.
And you're going to stretch it out
until it's real tight
or taut in the middle.
And then, from there, you
just go ahead and stake it out
to where it looks like an A-frame.
You're gonna stake it out
where it looks like a triangle,
like an A.
And then, inside there,
it's gonna resemble a tent,
except for it's gonna
be just the natural floor
with the leaves and the dirt.
Now, if you had a large enough tarp,
you could do this and fold
the bottom, fold it under,
and you could stake it out.
And then, you can have a
floor on the bottom of your tent
or your A-frame shelter.
And so, one of the useful things
is it provides excellent
protection from the elements.
A-frame is great because
it provides wind protection
from two sides, and it
also provides rain protection
from two sides, and it
offers more space for sleeping
and storing your gear
and keeping your gear dry
and in inclement weather.
The next one's gonna be the diamond fly.
And it's essentially the
same thing as the A-frame.
As except for you're
gonna turn your square tarp
all the way to where
it's gonna be one point
on the bottom right,
one point to the top left,
and you're gonna make
those all the way across
on your ridge line.
Now, you lay your tarp corner to corner
over your ridge line,
and that's gonna
produce a diamond-like shape.
And you're gonna use the
prosuit loop and toggle
to anchor the corners of the ridge line
just like with the A-frame shelter
and the lean-to shelters as well.
And you're gonna make it tight,
and you're going to pull each in till
it's nice and tight.
Now, step three, you're gonna take down,
stake down the wings.
So there's little points
off of the front and the back.
You're gonna stake those puppies down
like you would an A-frame shelter.
And this is gonna offer you
just a little bit more coverage
than a typical A-frame, and
it's gonna actually give you
a little bit more ventilation as well.
Now, the Diamond Fly is
great for hammock camping.
It actually gives you a
little bit more coverage
when you're camping with a hammock
than, let's say, just the
A-frame or a, you know, A-frame.
And the Diamond Fly
is actually pretty cool
because it allows the rain to drip down
and, you know, at the
angle from point to point,
it's gonna go down that way
instead of dripping right off the edge
right there onto your hammock.
So it actually works as
channeling the rain away from you,
so it does a pretty decent job.
So the next shelter is gonna
be your Adirondack shelter.
Now, Adirondack shelter is traditionally
a three-sided log structure,
but you can make one using a tarp.
And it offers three sides of
protection from the elements
to make it perfect for
whenever it's kind of cooler outside.
I've used one of these
with natural shelters.
I made natural Adirondack shelters.
So it's actually doing
pretty good with that
because it actually
keeps you warm in the front
and it funnels all the
heat into your shelter,
and it keeps the heat in there
when you have a fire
set up in front of it.
So first, you wanna lay
the corner of your tarp
over the ridge line.
And I demonstrated that in this book.
And so the first corner,
like you did a diamond fly,
you're gonna lay that over
and then until you get
to the first two tie-outs
and then our grommets on your tarp.
And then so you're
gonna have a little triangle
coming down in the front,
and then you're gonna
have a shorter bridge
on just back from that.
And so then you're gonna
attach your toggles to the tarp
by inserting your prussic
loop through the tie-out points
as you pull on the toggle,
the top of it's gonna get tighter,
just like it did in the
various other shelters.
Now, you're gonna go
around to the back of the tarp
and you're gonna pull it kinda tight
and you're gonna stake it down back there
at the same diameter, same
distance that you did the front.
Now, once you got that state down,
then you're gonna come back to the sides
and you're gonna swing those
sides in and stake those down.
So what you've done is
effectively made a side
on your left and right and
you pulled it out in the back.
Now, with the DD3x3,
whatever you wanna call it,
it has different tie-out points
or attachment points on there.
So you can go right behind this shelter,
grab one of those
attachment points and pull it up
and you can add depth or
dimension to your shelter.
And it actually helps with, like I said,
trapping the warmth of a
fire that's out in front.
So that's how you do
the Adirondack shelter.
Now, the plow point shelter is the,
it's gotta be one of the
easiest shelters you can make.
And it is very straightforward.
You just take a corner of the tarp
and you reach up as
high as you can reach up
and you tie it onto the tree somehow.
I fix it to the tree.
You can use a prussic knot.
You can use, I've used a bungee cord.
I've used just the
spare cordage that I've had.
And then you take it
and you come straight down
until it's tight and then
you stake it right there.
Now, this shelter only
requires one piece of cordage
and that's the beauty of this.
I've even seen this shelter
made with no cordage at all
and just like tripod from a video camera.
And so you're gonna take
that corner of the tarp,
attach it to the tree,
pull it down, stake it down.
And then you're gonna
take the further stems
and bring them out and stake them down.
And so it's gonna look like a plow.
That's why they call
it a plow point shelter
because it looks like an old plow
that they use to plow up all the fields
for planting their gardens.
And so that's it.
And with that, it's it.
And it's got plenty of room in there.
You got protection from three sides,
but the only problem to draw back to that
is there's not a lot,
a lot of room in there
as opposed to like an
A-frame or something like that
or Adirondack.
But other than that, the
last shelter I'll talk about,
touched on it briefly is a hammock.
I mean, hammocks are amazing.
They can be used with an
A-frame or diamond fly.
You just make your
ridge line and set it up
and then you got yourself a
nice little comfortable sleep
right there.
So, but then we can
get in a natural shelter.
We're not gonna touch
on that too much today
due to time
circumstances, but anyway, that's it.
And what we did is we went
over five different shelters
out of a tarp and this is, I mean,
tarps are, I can't
tell you how easy it is
to go camping with a tarp.
If you don't do it and you bring a tent,
we just try it one time.
Try it one time.
If you're camping out in places
where you got lots of
trees, bring you a tarp.
I'm telling you right now,
it'll change the way you camp.
And so, yeah, I mean,
it's done that for me.
So that's gonna wrap up today's episode
on essential shelter building techniques
and when you're primitive camping.
And remember having the right shelter
can make this a significant difference
in your outdoor experience.
So practice these
methods before you head out
into the wilderness and
ensure you're prepared.
And with anything, if you're
heading out into the woods,
make sure you practice it before you go
because you don't wanna be practicing
when you're out there and
not be able to start a fire,
not be able to filter your water,
not be able to build a
shelter or anything like that.
So you don't wanna be caught off guard.
You wanna be able to go ahead
and know what you're
doing when you get out there.
So in our next episode and the next one,
we're gonna go ahead and do the fire
starting techniques.
And we're gonna talk about the bow drill
and some primitive stuff, you know,
and we're gonna give a 30,000 overhead
view of fire starting.
Then we're gonna niche
it down in future episodes
and just take one thing at a time.
So yeah, I hope you enjoyed that.
Don't forget to pick up a copy
of Primitive Camping at Bushcraft.
It's available at Amazon,
all your online major retailers
and it's got everything
that we discussed today
is in this book.
And like I said, this whole series
is gonna be covering this book.
Don't forget to head over to Facebook
and like the Primitive
Camping and Bushcraft group.
We have over 6,000
like-minded members in there
and it's all based on Primitive Camping,
Bushcraft and Survival.
So anyway, don't forget to
pick up your copy of your book
and I'll see you next
time on the next episode.
God bless you.
I'll see you then.
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