I had nothing to pack basically, my camp didn’t need any attention, I had no food to prepare and I didn’t bother collecting more berries. You’re hungry and you know feeding time is getting closer so you start focusing on getting a proper meal. Hungry and facing a surprising challenge.Īs we entered the 22nd hour everyone was running out of pastime activities and I was really feeling hungry now. I built it to a level where I was sure to have at least a coal burning when I returned from foraging. So getting a fire going wasn’t a big deal. These were dry conditions though and I had brought my fire steel as one of my items. If conditions are wet you may want to look at the bottom of spruce trees instead of picking twigs straight off the ground. You just want to make sure they’re completely dry when using them to start your fire. It is also easy to find small twigs with no bark on in the forest. Mind you I didn’t cut down fresh branches. So I had plenty of small twigs at hand for building my fire. When building my shelter I cleaned the branches in the vicinity of my camp. It turned out I had plenty of time for both however. I would rather get a fire going first and risk not having any dinner than to have to sit in darkness all night. The advantage of this kind of shelter as opposed to an A-frame is that you can use it both as place to sit as well as a bed for the night.īefore heading out to forage I went to collect some birch bark to use as tinder. They’re easy to harvest and they effectively cover large areas. I built a classic lean-to using a young tree as one of the poles. You don’t want to get caught by darkness before you’re done with your shelter. It always takes a while to find the right materials and I think it’s a valuable routine to know by heart. My main concern was insulating myself from the ground as well as getting out of the wind really. The weather forecast had said it was going to be a clear sky all weekend and there wasn’t any signs that it was going to change. And I didn’t even bother to make it completely waterproof all over. It took me about three hours to finish my shelter. Water was already taken care of so after I had built my shelter I went out to forage the area. My approach was to follow the priorities of the rule of 3: Shelter first. After a short chit chat and exchange of thoughts and strategies we went straight to work. Every participant was allowed to bring 2 liters water.Īt 13.00 we all met up in Gribskov in Denmark on the specified location which was right next to Lake Esrum. And it’s long enough to feel miserable during the night without a fire. It is long enough for you to start feeling the effects of no or only a little food however. To get them used to get by with less gear than normal and learn from it.Ģ4 hours isn’t a long time. The idea was to encourage the participants to challenge themselves. Everyone can survive 24 hours in the wild during summer in Denmark. The idea was not to test whether you could survive or not. Even your backpack if you chose to bring one. The only rule was: EVERY item counted as one of your 4 items. You could choose to sleep in a tent, you could bring a rain coat or you could challenge yourself and go more primitive like I did. of August at 13.00 and ended 24 hours later. I set out to challenge a few of my fellow survivalists / bushcrafters encouraging them to bring less gear than they normally would. How little gear do you need to live in the wild? The biggest challenge came as a surprise though.
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