Debris shelters: an observation

Bushman5, you get my vote. I've built a couple of debris shelters, when it was dry and tons of leaves around. It takes quite awhile. I think we even used a leaf rake.

No reason not to experiment with them, but here's another vote for some kind of tarp. BTW, anybody in Canada know where they carry silnylon tarps?

Doc
 
DOC-CANADA said:
Bushman5, you get my vote. I've built a couple of debris shelters, when it was dry and tons of leaves around. It takes quite awhile. I think we even used a leaf rake.

No reason not to experiment with them, but here's another vote for some kind of tarp. BTW, anybody in Canada know where they carry silnylon tarps?

Doc
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MEC has one thats pretty decent.
 
Thanks for that, Fonly. I'm going to have to check into these. I used to carry a 8 X 10 blue tarp, but they are bulky and heavy. More recently, I've carried a Coghlans Survival bag #8765 shown here (halfway down the page on left side). Lately, I don't carry anything, but also, I haven't been going any where remote.

If the silnylon tarps are small enough, light enough, and cheap enough :rolleyes:, I might pick one up.

Doc
 
DOC-CANADA said:
Thanks for that, Fonly. I'm going to have to check into these. I used to carry a 8 X 10 blue tarp, but they are bulky and heavy. More recently, I've carried a Coghlans Survival bag #8765 shown here. Lately, I don't carry anything, but also, I haven't been going any where remote.

If the silnylon tarps are small enough, light enough, and cheap enough :rolleyes:, I might pick one up.

Doc
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Im gonna do a review of a colghans reinforced heat sheet in a little bit, that might be something for ya to look into aswell, it is made very well. and 10 bux I think:thumbup:
 
^ DOC, is that the body bag one? i have one and they are great cheap bivy sacks. We used one once for a snowshoer extrication by sled. we put the girl into a sleeping bag with handwarmers, and then into the "body bag" and then onto a sled. She was toasy warm and dry. (she had tripped and broken her arm)
 
Okay...I guess I need to qualify a couple things:

Top picture as I stated was a dry day - that got very warm. The bottom picture was build during a lull in a 31 day continious rain/shower spell. Everything was soaked. The day of the photo was mid 50's and overcast. It hadn't rained since the evening before. It took 12 students 1.25 hours to build this large shelter. Yes it is labor and time sensitive. Yes the students got wet building it as they became a human sponge. We had a fire closeby.

The roof was built on an incline pitch and was lined with other materals you cannot see under the brows. It does not leak. This student spent a night in it and it rained. The shelter held up fine. The area where this class was conducted is on a large, no huge, logging plot of land in the Wet Coastal Range of Oregon in the late winter/early spring. The loggers had just thinned the area and left some debris, timber and limbs down to create habitat. The class used what was available. No power tools were allowed. In fact students had 5 minutes to unload their car, put everything on their backs and walk into this area. Most packed in axes in their packs and a few had some buck saws but no power tools. The top photo was taken in a similar class where logging occurs.

I never said the debris shelter is the best or most efficent use of one's time in a wilderness setting or even in an emergency setting. The class we teach is for a "specific" purpose of which having a larger primative shelter as a skill set could be potentially useful in some situations. It isn't taught as a primary shelter but as a primative back up.
 
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I definitely agree but then again here in Oregon I think a little like you.:D Large trash bag and AMK's heat sheet on my person and a tarp in the pack. Although, I do think a debris hut on it's own is capable of keeping you alive. You're definitley going to be wet, cold, and miserable. I have no illusions of that.
 
A little while back there was a thread about tarps, I posted this link, which I really enjoyed:http://www.naturalbushcraft.co.uk/tarpology.htm

Here is the link to an image from that page, the last two tarp configurations look awesome for the wet weather we experience in the NW: http://www.naturalbushcraft.co.uk/images/tarpology/Tarp-Configs2.jpg

I too would like to pick up a light weight tarp to experiment with some different configurations.

I've got one of these, http://www.cabelas.com/spodw-1/0045518.shtml, a nice "wing" tarp, but I'd rather have something that is more flexible to different setups. I haven't really had much time to test this wing out though, especially not in the rain yet.

Just some thoughts!
 
Bushman5 brings up some very good points. I teach hasty shelters based around tarps to our SAR team. For us we generally have to set up in the dark and under less than idea situations. Also we may need to get a subject under cover and begin active rewarming to stop and hopefully reverse the effects of exposure to the elements.

I do encourage our members to practice building shelters based on natural materials for their own benefit and to increase their skill sets.
 
I have to agree with the OP...I have often thought that a debris shelter would be a big problem to build in heavy rain, after weeks and weeks of heavy rain.


In fact my general position is that the number one thing to build is fire, 99% of the time. Once you have a fire going, everything else can be dried out. Once you have a fire going, there are visual and olfactory clues for any rescuers. You have greatly reduced your chances of dying of hypothermia, which is probably the quickest way to go short of falling off a cliff. You have a cheerful, warm thing in front of you and you have probably boosted your morale. You might have a bit of extra light to build shelters with...the list just goes on.

If I were in a dry, deciduous forest in late September, I guess I might muck up a debris hut first thing, because it would be so damn easy! But out here, my number one concern would be fire, 99% of the time.
 
"Keep a set of dry clothing in your pack to wear inside your shelter. Don't even attempt to dry out your wet clothes... just put them back on in the morning and put the dry stuff back inside the pack."

This is SOP for Brazil as well. We normally carry a pair of sweats and a long sleeve T-shirt with a fleece and a change of dry fluffy socks for "PJ's" and BDU's for day clothes. It makes no sense to carry extra clothes because 20 minutes outside your shelter and you're soaked and filthy anyway. You pay a heavy price to be in clean clothes for less than a half hour. In rainy season the smell is no big deal, yesterday's stink washes out in today's rain.

In such conditions there is no way to get dry without a fire and a shelter that protects you from rain. In Brazil the debris hut would be a sick form of torture forming a cocoon of biting insects around a person. Mac
 
I also agree that shelter building is a PITA in this area (Kitsap Peninsula, Washington). I have been doing this kind of thing since a child. Tarps and/or large garbage bags are a necessity, but building in the rain is just plain miserable. I would usually make things better with some heated rocks from a fire to warm and dry the floor after construction.
 
Peeling large piece of bark from trees can be quite effective.
Problem is you won't do this from a live tree unless in a genuine emergency situation, so not many occasions to try.

Having space blanket, trash bags or a proper tarp can make a huge difference.
 
This GREATLY adds to the build time, but if foilage/sticks can be placed like shingles - repeated overlapping layers of pieces oriented the same way (downslope), you get the same effect as a thatch roof. Drops are carried from piece to piece until they fall outside the structure.

Placed at random, foilage/sticks can insulate -- if dry -- and stop snow, but rain will get in and keep dripping.

A 6' x 8' coated 1.9 oz. nylon tarp ($28.00) weighs under a pound.

A 4'4" x 9'10" poncho weighs about a pound.
 
My preference has always been to build the debris shelter first. Even if it isn't watertight, you get more of a drip rather than the full force of rain. I also like hooching up under the best natural cover available, usually a thicket. I know that the Boy Scouts say not to do that because you'll get rain dripping off the trees long after the rain has stopped, but I rarely use a real tent. And, out of habit I guess (military), I've always preferred sleeping in the treeline.

If I have a poncho or space blanket, I use it inside the debris shelter rather than on top. This is in part because putting a small space blanket on top doesn't cover much of the "roof", in part because I think they are more effective directly on you or directly over the sleeping bag (in the cold, at least), and partly because I often need to take the poncho with me in the day time. If it's just wrapped around my sleeping bag or poncho liner (warmer weather), I can take it with me more easily than if its integrated into the debris shelter. I also find that putting a space blanket or thin tarp on a debris shelter results in holes pretty quickly.

Someone mentioned that the debris shelter will be wet. That's true, but you can use your fire to help dry it out inside of the debris hut. Even while its raining, a large enough fire will dry out the debris somewhat. And even wet debris is better than braving it in the direct rain and wind.

A pitch to the roof is necessary of course. Hard to comment about that pic because the pitch could have been going away from teh camera, if that makes sense. Like a lean-to.

I'm talking about improvised shelter of course. If you are the type that always carries a bivvy shelter, the obviously don't face these challenges. Don't get yourself in the mindset that you MUST have the modern high tech stuff. Men survived long before the ultralight tent or tarp.

Just my .02
 
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