5 Min Shelter Option Double Wedge

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Tags: Dave Canterbruy,Pathfinder,Pathfinder School,Survival,Bushcraft,Camping,Trapping,Hunting,Fishing,Primitive,Search andRescue,SAR,Wilderness,Trekking,Archery,Hiking,First Aid,Boy Scouts,Scout,Scouting,Bow,Drill,Fire,Making,Shelter,Scout (Scouting),Outdoor Sports

Video Transcription

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afternoon guys I'm Dave Canberra at the path on your school I wanted to do a short video for you guys today I want to give you a little bit of advantage from the training session that I had teaching the wilderness emergency medical services trainers so I was doing a train-the-trainer session this past couple days in West Virginia for the state of West Virginia what I wanted to show you was some of the things that they carry in their pack for emergency services or for emergency dealing with a casualty if they get stuck out overnight is two space blankets two reusable emergency space blankets just like we saw on our website at the Pathfinder school LLC comm they carry some type of ground pad this case this one happens to be a thermal rest i'm the ones they carry our cheaper model in this they're just blue you'll see them in this video when i show you some clips and segments from that training and they carry a wall casualty blanket

there's our greg probably 70 30 not 100% wool i'm sure that was not a hundred percent wool either but i want to show you a very effective way that you can set up a shelter with these items that will protect you from the three main things that we have to worry about conduction convection and radiation those three things have to be manipulated in a survival situation to control your body's core temperature and to make it comfortable for you to sleep or make it comfortable for a casualty or a patient to sleep while you're doing other things so what we're going to do is we're going to use these two space blankets to set up what i call a double wedge shelter and i'm going to show you how to do that right now so stay with me what i've done already here is one of the things that they carry with them as a hundred feet of paracord for their cordage okay and we discussed the benefits of bank line over paracord during that class but they had 100 feet of paracord so that's we're going to use for this demonstration paracord makes great shelter as it always has so you've got one Ridgeline it's stretched between two trees right here at the pathfinder school this is what we're going to use for the base for our shelter okay so what we're going to do now is we're going to find the middle of our paracord line or about the middle here doesn't matter because we'll be able to adjust it what we want to do is we want to tie out two of the corners of this space blanket so will this take two front corners a week the space blanket is long okay it's not a square is a rectangle so we're going to lay the rectangle side out this direction all right so the rectangle side is straight out from us now and we're going to tie one of those corners like this with a prusik knot now what I'll usually do is I have a piece of paracord in all four corners of this tarp already this emergency space blanket I'll pull that out of the hole take it in my hand and untie it and what I want to do is I want to tie a prusik knot on this line so that I can't tighten loosen this thing without tearing up this tarp because obviously we know that a reasonable space blanket is an emergency piece of gear it's not meant to last forever and it's not going to so it's not something I'm going to use for shelter every single day of the week once I've got that prusik knot on there which basically is just three clove hitches then I'll go ahead and tie the tag ends back through my tarp grommet where my space blanket grommet just like this and I'll just tie you know a granny knot on there or some type of a square knot so I get it off there very easily when I need to and I'll just leave that laying there for the moment just kind of slack like that then I'm going to take my other tarp and I'm doing exactly the same thing except what I'm going to do what this one is I'm going to overlap it let's stay with it here and I'll reposition the camera so you can see exactly what I'm doing with that okay now with the second corner I've got it laid out the same way that is a rectangle going straight out I'm going to overlap on this side and do the exact same thing so I'm going to tie that same project on which means I'm going to take that loop that would be a clove hitch if I go twice around again now I've created a prusik knot okay and that's a self tightening tight knot it's actually meant to be used on ropes that are different diameters for climbing applications but it will work real good for this and it will bind against itself pretty decently without ripping out your target lets you make fine adjustments if you need to after the fact and at the same time if a good heavy wind comes up it's not going to be so tight that your tarp is going to rip out on you that's important too so I'm going to shove that through this others grommet hole here and do the same thing and just tie it off with a pretty loose square knot or a granny knot so I get it out easy enough and then I can manipulate both of these up and down this line anywhere I need to okay and they will stay pretty tight once I pull on okay so that's important to understand okay so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to take this thing out I generally will carry four or five ABS take something sometimes six makes it very easy to take things out very quick I don't have to search for stakes they don't weigh anything they're multi-purpose I can use it for a digging stick I could use it for a weapon I can use it for a killing device and a trap multi-purpose that's what it's all about and they don't weigh anything so I don't have to expend a resource by dulling my blade or spending calories to go look for things to make steaks out of if I'm in a five-minute situation where I got to make a shelter right now these ABF steaks don't weigh anything and they don't take up much room I'm going to pull that straight down from the ridge and you shove it in temporarily actually I think I'm going to pull the other side out for stick this up with my overlapping so I'll stick this side down to the ground first if I want to shrink my loop up a little bit I can do that so they get this closer to the ground it's not a big deal just tie a quickie half hitch in there pull it straight out stick it straight down then I pull my other side over the top of it to make sure I have that overlap and do the same thing just like this once I have accomplished that now I can go to my other corner come over here

pull this one out let's take it down and come to the other side and stake it down it's like this again I want to shorten that loop up a little bit at this time though they're not in it it's not a big deal you shove that in temporarily as well okay so once I've got that shored up in the back and I've got to stick down I want to pull these tight to make sure I got my overlap you can see how going across a little bit then I'm just going to come down here and stick this out I'm going to come right down here take this out straight in front of me and again if my loops a little bit too big it's not a big deal just to pull it under not in there and again I'm shoving this in there kind of temporary right now because I want to see what it's going to look like when I'm done and then I can move my stakes around if I need this okay so at this point we've got as we've got a double wedge side by side we have a very low peak and that's important because our pitch controls how much heat stays in the tent and how much comes out okay for the emergency shelter in this case if we have a high peak heats going to rise so he's going to go out if we keep our peak low or a pitch low we put a fire break out here just like a log or something like that in front when we build our fire that convection we take advantage up will heat us all night long now all we need to do is take our foam pad and throw it on the inside to battle any convection problems we have the whole back of that shelter back there to store our equipment or you know in this case you might have two people in here if you had a casualty okay you can put your wool blanket on top of this wrap up in it correctly and there are right and wrong ways to use the wool blanket holding in his hat in half like this is the wrong way okay I'll do a video later on down the line on the right way to use a wool blanket but this gives you an idea of what you can do and then you've got do you maintain that low pitch you've got your fire right out here in front of your shelter you've got the reflective side of this tarp right by your head and you're going to get that convection and that shortwave radiation all night long now I will put a video tag at the end of this video I'm showing you some of the footage that I took at the West Virginia exercise for the wilderness EMS personnel and we had shelter set up like this it was 33 degrees and the inside temperature these shelters ranged anywhere from 71 to 84 depending on the height of the fire so you can control what temperature the shelter is by how high that fire is you have to maintain a large fire it just needs to be a lengthwise fire as long as the shelter is open that's how long you need your fire and just low bits of fire along the back break like a log or something like that we'll throw that convective heat in that shortwave radiant heat into the shelter all night long and keep you warm and cozy the outside temperature is about 24 degrees we set up this double wedge earlier this evening got a small fire built in front of it just a little bit of reflector and we've been able to raise it up to about 74 on this 75 depending on the heights of the fire to time right now we're reading 73 3 so we're seeing about a 30 degree difference here and it was not burning through a lot of firewood at all well I'm Dave Canterbury the Pathfinder school when I hope you've enjoyed this short video on how to make a back and back wedge using the reusable emergency space blanket and how to make a quick 5 minute shelter this thing goes up in no time at all and it will give you the life-saving heat that you need on a cold night with very little material used to save your life and affect your survivability

I appreciate your views I appreciate your support I'm Dave Canberra at Pathfinder school I'll be back as soon as I can you

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wildernessoutfitters

wildernessoutfitters

From the lore of bushcraft to all things related to self-sustainability, the Pathfinder vision is to pass on the knowledge of outdoor self-reliance. Providing basic to advanced self-reliance training and survival gear, our goal is to offer both practical knowledge and survival gear that will stand the test of time. From emergency preparedness to sustainability, the Pathfinder way is to share and educate.

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