To celebrate my one year anniversary of living in Montana I decided to have a little winter survival test. Every winter I spend a good amount of time snowboarding in the backcountry and have gotten myself into some pretty serious situations, but lucky enough I have gotten out without having to spend the night in the backcountry. I decided it was time to put myself into a winter survival situation to be prepared if the time ever came where I really had to survive. The plan was to head into the backcountry with only the gear I would bring snowboarding: snowboard clothes, snowboard, snowshoes, space blanket, a bottle of water and a few granola bars. I headed up to the Beartooths, which is about 30 miles from Yellowstone National Park and hiked 3 miles to where I decided would be a good spot to set up camp for the night. Once I decided on the spot I found some tracks from a Lynx, that seemed like it had been following a deer. But I wasn't afraid of a little kitty so I decided to go ahead and start building my snowden. I had never built a snowden before, but I ended up building a pretty sweet one. What I did was dig a hole about 3 feet deep, then laid logs across the top and to insulate it I covered in pine branches. No doubt I have watched an episode or two of survivorman. It took me about 3 hours to build the snowden, it was a lot of energy walking back and forth in the soft snow to get all the logs and branches.
I ended up choosing a great night for this challenge since it wasn't too cold, it only got down to around 25°F and it was a crystal clear night. The Milky Way was brighter than I have ever seen it and I spent the evening stargazing by the fire. When it was time to retire for the night I crawled into my den and slept on my nice bed of pine branches. Using pine branches to sleep on kept me a little dryer and gave me some insulation from the snow. At first I was a little worried I might be cold using just a space blanket, but it worked pretty well. Definitely something everyone should carry with them incase of an emergency. When the morning came I got up and enjoyed the sunrise over the Beartooths. The only real problem I had during the whole excursion was putting my frozen boots on in the morning, that and the fact I had to hike 3 miles back wearing frozen boots...
That's it! I made it and it was a great experience. Now I am already looking forward to my next adventure! Below is a little video I made while I was out there.
If you have any ideas for my next survival test leave a comment and let me know! I am always up for a challenge!
till then, keep exploring!
Jonathan
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Actually, I vote for a grass hut on Maui or Kauai during the dry season for your next adventure, living on fresh pineapple and Mahi. What do you think?
Love when your mom sends us these adventures!
Be blessed! Gayle
I definitely think a grass hut in Maui or Kauai would be the way to go!
Thanks for the comment!