Survival Skills: Firemaking in Snow, Part 1

PART 1 of 5:
A complete series of videos by Nutnfancy and my friend chronicling firemaking in cold and snowy conditions using backpacking equipment only. The series shows the scenery, adventure, survival philosophy, gear observations, our standard joking around, and the good times with long time friend BuggetNuster (YouTube name) and Allie the Mountain Dog. We hiked into the snowy and cold Rocky Mountain bivouac location I had chosen earlier for my Wilderness Lean-To series of videos. A few shelter mods are discussed and shown but the focus of these vids is the making of the fire. I used few edits in the video making because I needed to demonstrate the work needed to create a sustainable fire in these conditions. I have found no shortcuts in the wood preparation for wilderness fire making. Several blades including the Ontario RTAK II, Ontario RAT-7, and KaBar Heavy Bowie are used to strip limbs and baton the logs into burnable pieces with the advantageous sharp edges. They performed exceptionally well in the outing and withstood some real tough use in 15ºF cold (shown of course!). The Sawvivor backpack saw again proved its worth as an accurate and indispensable wood cutter, lubricated with frequent sprays of WD-40. Fire tender used this time was Trioxane solid fuel cake and REI Stormproof matches. The resulting fire was quite manly and heated the Lean-To to incredible levels. We had planned to also build a fire reflector and maybe some other structures but as usual the winter fire prep proved to be quite time consuming and high effort. And we wanted to kick back and enjoy our work afterwards. The outing and fire prep was lots of work but resulted in another great memory made with TNP subscribers and my buddies, BuggetNuster and Allie. Thanks for coming along!///////////////// Please Note: Generally you will have to have an interest in survival blades, skills, outdoor gear, and maybe learning more about them to find these videos interesting. They intentionally show a lot of detail of the fire process (with lots of discussion thrown in) so as to completely teach and prove the Nutnfancy winter firemaking method. In this respect they function as TNP Foundation videos (I will refer to them a lot).

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Education

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[PrinceValorum]

Thanks so much for the vids you make! I finally took some initiative and went out in the woods today and made a fire. It was only 27* in NE Ohio with about 1-2 inches of snow on the ground, but I learned a thing or two that you only learn by doing. I had to use a kleenex to start it because we're out of cotton balls from when I made my dad a level 1 first aid kit for Christmas. Thanks, dude, you rock!

PS my Kershaw Skyline came in handy for the small tinder. Wonder where I heard about that.. :)

[Petegrin1]

Nutnfancy Sucks!... Joking

Thumb up if you wanted to kill me before you saw ¨joking¨

[STSCThomas]

@Petegrin1 cheater!lol

[STSCThomas]

great vids! very functional skill sets...

[mikehaggett40]

Cool Vid and your others as well. Basic Survival is a must. I love them E-Trenching tools. I've had to make a few shelters with them as well. Being in the Armed Forces for over 20 years and been thru Mountain Warfare and SERE, these vids are perfect for the beginners-

[hallberg93]

More surivial videos from you! Would really appreciate it!

[piltzy97]

What's a better knife the ka-bar heavy Bowie or the Ontario sp10 marine raider?

[xxTandersonxx]

Hey Nutn! What type of boots do you use on these snow hikes? But also hikes that dont involve snow?

[feetchermancj]

Worst thing about your videos is that it makes me want to get a lab again really bad. No better hiking dog than labs, especially black labs. Love your videos! Keep up the great work!

[superford500]

A pair of extra gloves?. . .Yeah We're in the Rockies :D

[multiverses2013]

Sooner or later you dudes are going to cut your fingers off when trying to split wood with a knife and a log. The engery both of you used up holding the log while cutting would be better spent on making a simple trestle to hold the log for you and you need to keep cutting wood to feed the fire, so the trestle is worth making. If you cut strips of old bicycle inner tube, they make great fire lighters. You are so close to breaking that saw blade, bad sawing technique.

WD40 sucks as a lub.

[skunkape49]

looks like fun i use a 2foot machete to split wood like that it works good and it caust about 5 bucks at the flea market