Simple Shelter

Well, it has been a few days since I last updated. Bad me.

I have been to visit a new website:

http://internationalpreppersnetwork.net/index.php?sid=35c60c2c08b86cbb24d7953a6dc17569  , and I have been given a renewed sense of purpose for writing here. Just in case I get more visits from those on the prepper site.

So, I wanted to mention a little about shelter, specifically simple shelters. These pictures I took while training in Suffield, AB in the Spring of '95. Here we have two army issue shelter-half's zipper together. The wind was extreme at times so you wanted your shelter to be low to the ground. Being professional soldiers, we were quite accustomed to digging, so we dug sleeping platforms below ground level. Had we known the weather was going to get worse, we might have made a better effort to build walls from the excavated dirt, before it froze solid! In the second picture, you may notice we added another tarp to seal the wind from getting in through any cracks that may have been exposed on the windward side of our "hotch". We lived in this location for at least 7 nights.

Points to observe:

• Take the location, environment and weather into consideration when siting your camp - if you have the choice
• In high wind areas, keep your shelter as low as possible
• In raining conditions, keep above the water and away from gullies and low spots where water will pool and flow
• If conditions change, modify your shelter to meet these changes - this is not the time to be lazy
• Use all available resources to construct your shelter - rocks, logs, dirt, bungie cords, steel pickets
• Keep the door to your shelter out of the wind if possible, if not built a vestibule to minimize the heat loss to the wind

Those are just some thoughts on shelter for now.

Remember cold and dry is uncomfortable but cold and wet is deadly!

Mountainman.