Four things make a camp: shelter, fire, cutting tools and ground insulation. This page is the map of how they fit together and where each one is covered.
Nothing here is theory borrowed from a manual. Each branch below is drawn from the night sheet, and each guide it leads to opens with the night that produced it.
In what order should a camp be built?
Site, then bed, then fire position, then roof. Building the roof first is the single most expensive mistake in camp craft, and it is the most common one.
The order matters because each step constrains the next. Where the bed sits decides where the fire has to be to reach it. Where the fire sits decides how open the front of the shelter can be. The roof is sized to what is already underneath it, which is why it comes last and why it takes the least time when everything above it is done.
- Site. Drainage first, deadfall overhead second, wind third. The view does not enter into it.
- Bed. Get off the ground and insulate underneath before anything goes overhead.
- Fire position and reflector, set against the bed rather than against the shelter.
- Roof, sized and pitched to the bed and the fire already in place.
Students always want to build the roof first. The roof is the last problem. Get the bed off the ground and the fire in the right place, and a bad roof is survivable. Perfect roof, wrong bed, and you are awake at two in the morning.
Wendell Tokarz, retired outdoor program instructor, Marquette
Shelter frames and cover
The frame decides what the cover has to do. Get the ridge height and rafter spacing right and a thin cover works. Get them wrong and no amount of material fixes it.
This branch covers ridge height against occupant height, rafter spacing against the material you are shingling with, shingling direction, and the thing almost nobody plans for: where the drip line lands relative to the bed. Every shelter on the sheet is written up with its build time and the conditions it was tested in.
Start with ridge height and rafter spacing, the two numbers that decide whether a thin cover works, then how many notches a lean-to actually needs, which counts the joints that carry load.
Fire in wet and frozen wood
Dry wood is a solved problem. This branch is about the other case, which is most of the year here.
Standing dead against ground-lying deadfall, splitting down to a dry core, fatwood, feather sticks off resinous stock, and the sequence to use when nothing on the forest floor will take a spark. It also covers the long fire: what it costs in wood, how often it needs feeding, and where a reflector earns its build time.
The two write-ups here are feather sticks from resinous standing dead and what lights when everything on the ground is wet.
Cutting tools and edge geometry
A knife, an axe and a saw do overlapping jobs. On most trips one of the three is dead weight, and which one depends on the wood, not on preference.
This branch covers what each tool earns in the pack, and then goes further down than most gear writing does: bevel angle, thickness behind the edge, how a Scandi grind behaves against a saber grind across several nights, and what happens to each on frozen knots. The recurring finding is that edges fail on the third day rather than the first, which changes how you plan sharpening.
Three write-ups sit here: what a bushcraft knife actually does on a four-night winter camp, Scandi or saber grind for frozen wood, and knife, axe or saw on a one-night build.
Sleeping warm on the ground
On a clear night the ground takes more heat off you than the air does. It is conduction, and no amount of insulation on top of you addresses it.
Spruce tip beds, raised pole platforms, what thickness of duff or boughs actually buys in degrees, and where the returns stop. This is also where the arithmetic of a long fire lives: how much wood a seven hour burn takes, and whether a reflector or another four inches underneath is the better use of the same hour.
The direct comparison is in eight inches of spruce tips or a second sleeping bag.
Which shelter suits which night?
Start from the forecast. A build that works at 30°F and rain is the wrong build at -10°F and dry snow.
| Shelter | Best conditions | Build time | Heat strategy | Nights on sheet |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tarp and brush lean-to | Dry cold, still air, down to -3°F | 50 min | Open front, fire and reflector | 19 |
| Spruce bough A-frame | Deep cold and wind, to -14°F | 3 hrs | Fire at the entrance, long burn | 11 |
| Raised bed under flat tarp | Saturated ground, 28°F to 40°F | 4 hrs | Fire optional, insulation underneath | 7 |
| Leaf debris hut | Still nights above 20°F, no fire | 5 hrs | No fire, body heat only | 4 |
| Hot tent with box stove | Multi-night base camp below 20°F | 40 min pitch | Stove inside, fed twice a night | 8 |
What this section does not cover
Two things, deliberately. Neither is a gap we intend to fill.
- Permanent or semi-permanent structures. Everything here comes down when we leave, and is built from standing dead within a short carry.
- Regions we have not slept in. Our numbers come from mixed hardwood and spruce on glacial till, with dry snow. They travel badly to wet cold, to altitude, and to anywhere the material we rely on is not present.
Where should you start?
If you have never built anything, start with the tarp and brush lean-to: it is the fastest, the most forgiving, and it carries more nights on our sheet than the other three combined. If you have built shelters and still wake up cold, skip to ground insulation instead, because that is almost always where the night is being lost.