Fire by hand drill

Fire by hand drill

Sunday 17 April 2011

A personal challenge

Hi,

For a bit of fun and a personal challenge.

Yesterday afternoon I went off to the woods with a small amount of kit to spend the night and see how I got on.

I had,

My trousers, t-shirt, microfleece and a Paramo Pajaro Jacket, which is excellent by the way!! And a Montane Bivvy jacket.

A bag and first aid kit

Torch

My Leuku
Small folding pruning saw
A Fallkniven u2
Fallkvien dc3

Ferro rod

Metal cup
Full water bottle

I am going to get some new batteries for my camera to download pics.

I really enjoyed the experience and I was lucky in that I got very good weather.

I arrived at about 2.00pm yesterday and set about building my shelter in a seclued spot I know.

I went for a simple lean-to structure with a debris roof. I had to put a support pole in the middle of the cross bar because it was to thin and sagging a bit with the weight of the roof. I built up a thick layer of larch branches and then spruce bows to sleep on. I managed to get the bed about 1 foot thick which actually worked well.

I build the fire about 1 pace from my shelter in a long format to provide me with warm.

My mistake here was cutting lots of willow for the fire to feed it over night. Of course it burns to quickly and I was left cold with no fire wood. I should have known better really.

I managed to forage alot of plant foods to munch on and had 2 meals over the period.

Beech leaves, Willow herb pith and leaves, nettles, Wood sorrel, New Spruce needles for tea. Golden Saxifrage, Plantains, Lime leaves.

i also caught a frog which would have helped get some protein but I didnt eat him and in fact we had a good chat.

However i did find that after building my shelter I had a serious blood sugar drop. I think I went at it a bit hard as I often do and wasted alot of energy.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

4 comments:

Gorges Smythe said...

If you want carbohydrates when there are no nuts to be had, you might want to bone up on wild edible roots and tubers.

Keith said...

Sounds like you did very well, & you have an impressive list of edible foods. Well done.
http://woodsrunnersdiary.blogspot.com/

Gary said...

Nice one Andy. Sounds like a good learning experience.

Fimbulmyrk said...

Should do that myself sometime soon, but my knowledge is somewhat thin still.;-)

But looks and sounds like you had agreat time, and you did well on that! Great post, thanks for sharing!