Cold Weather Camping | Bushcraft Gear & Survival Knife Testing

kind of impromptu camping trip this weekend all the stars aligned had some

time called up some buddies and loaded up and drove out here and set up camp

now this is part of the state forest and it's a longer river and there's a small

road right down there that people drive back and forth and guys trout fish down

there but it's February there's nobody camping back here and we got permission

from the park office to let us camp up here so I'm setting up my shelter this

is just gonna be a tarp shelter going to put down my sleeping pad and my bivvy

sack and my sleeping bag and plenty of room so I've got the blue Walmart tarp

one Tigers pack that I did a review on use that this weekend all my gear even

though we're camping pretty close to the vehicles it's not a big hike but I'm

kind of up the hill from where we parked at kind of overseeing everything

weather wise it's going to be pretty cold tonight in the 30s I think last

time to get down to like 28 or something but then it's gonna warm up tomorrow

should be like high 40s low 50s by Sunday it's gonna be in the low 50s so

got some pretty good weather for this just gonna be chilly at night well I

thought I'd do is I brought out a bunch of different gear that I typically use

for winter camping and then some new stuff that I've been getting I wanted to

try out I'll show you guys so I've got this bivvy I haven't used yet this is

new for a while just haven't had a chance to use it

it's the AquaQuest bivvy even though I'm underneath a tarp the the bivvy helps

cut the wind and if there is by chance any kind of sideways precipitation or

dripping it's gonna protect my bag it just helps keep you warmer and then I've

got my Climate Static D pad I'm going to go up hill a little bit and have my head uphill it's always a good idea I got the end this end of the tarp set a little

bit lower this end set higher so I can come in lay down don't need tons of room

in fact a little bit less is good because then that kind of contains your

body heat. I got the Summit pillow and then I got the military I think it's called

the intermediate bag the cold leather bag keep that all zipped up

there's my buddies

let's go see what they're doing there's the river uphill

that is a pretty slick setup so what you do you tie this

yeah that's awesome

doesn't weigh anything all that stuff together is about a pound right

what do you think all these stars are? slept pretty good last night got super cold definitely below freezing and it

sounds like we've got a little bit of freezing rain which is weird because the

forecast was like 1% precipitation chance but this must be the 1% I slept

really great nice and warm the military intermediate bag along with the bivy

kept me super warm no issues whatsoever I slept in my clothes and that's what I

usually do I don't like to change into something different unless I'm sweaty

and I wasn't yesterday so I just take everything out of my pockets and loosen

everything up and then if I get too warm I can take a layer off but I needed

my layers last night to stay warm and then plus if I have to get up in the

middle of the night and do something I like to have you know clothing on so I can exit my

shelter quickly and I don't have to fumble around putting stuff on so another

great thing about using a tarp for cold weather camping is in the morning time you can be laying in your shelter you can get up and start making coffee and food and lay here and kind of relax and enjoy your morning that's exactly what I'm going to do so I'm going to get my stove out and I'm going to clear out a spot and make some coffee

there's plenty of ventilation with this tarp so I don't have to worry about

asphyxiating myself but I'd love just laying in my tarp in the morning when it's

cold and having my coffee and maybe having some breakfast so I'm going to do that right now

breakfast skillet with hash browns scrambled eggs with pork sausage peppers

and onions. It's been about 10 minutes. Add the Diablo sauce

If it was summertime I probably wouldn't go to the trouble of cooking a big breakfast I might just have like a bagel and some peanut butter or a granola bar or something something simple but with cold weather camping you definitely need calories and you need something warm in your belly to start your day

Okay here we go. Let's see what this looks like

It's not bad. Tastes like potatoes

They're easier to find. It tastes good

Yeah the capicas I have to order off of Amazon. That's the only place I can find them. And they're really sweet. They're awfully sweet. Yeah they are. That's why I have to cut it with some real coffee

So I'm out here doing some cold weather camping with some buddies and I wanted to do a couple different product reviews of stuff that I brought with me

And one thing that I recently acquired was this knife and this is what I chose to bring with me for the weekend. This is the Holtzman survival lava line. It's a 1095 beast of a knife

And I just recently got this and started playing with it and what I want to do is kind of talk about why I like this knife and also do a couple tasks with it and just kind of show how it performs

So this is a quarter inch piece of steel. A really nice textured handle which gives it good grip. And then beautiful orange liners. And then what's a bonus about this particular knife is the setup that it comes with

So you're getting an awesome knife but you're also getting a really nice kydex sheath, a ferro rod, a scraper for the ferro rod, and a really cool tech lock on the back. Plus there is a strap to help keep the knife secured in the sheath

So this really becomes a fantastic kind of do-it-all, all-purpose survival knife. Big and chunky for chopping tasks, for batoning wood

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