Building A shelter pointers

When your building a shelter, try to think of the other factors you might have to deal with later before building. Here is a breif list of things to remember:

For your location:

First the 5 w's, Les mentions these in the Canyonlands episode:

Wood: Do you have a good supply to build and burn?
Water: The source of life, make sure you have a sufficent clean supply
Widowmakers: From experiance i'm telling you this, look out for hazards. I was building a shelter last winter and the next week I came back and there was a tree about 3 feet from it. If i was in there or around I might have been hurt. So look out for harards.
Wigglies: Look out for the creepy crawliers when choosing a location
Weather: Dont build your shelter in a gully or dip, if it rains it can flood

When building:

Wind: Check for dirrection, you dont want to make your shelter a wind tunnel or have it plaqued with smoke
Bedding: Try to keep yourself as high as possible, to keep you as dry as possible. If it rains it might go under your bed. Also your body wont lie on the cold ground, thus lowering body heat.
Supplies: Dont make your shelter out of rotten or poisonous materials. Dont use wear branches as your main support, use stronger supplies
Fire: Make a spot for a fire (firepit) so you dont burn your whole shelter down. Place the fire at least 1 foot away just incase (in a windy area).

Hope this helped for you guys who are new to this!

TM

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"There dosen't look like there's much shelter over in those mountains, but that's the only choice I got right now, this is gonna be a long week" - Les Stroud Arctic

Wise Words for the new people to survival & shelter's. Cool

Cheers Max.

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A Knifeless Man is a Lifeless Man
Canadian To The Core
Carry Less by Knowing More
Knowledge Weighs Nothing

Good points. I think ill print out all of these tips Les gives out and keep it in my day pack.

"A shelter is never finished"

You can always add more onto your shelter, and using this mentality can really improve the quality and effecitvness of yuor shelter

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"There dosen't look like there's much shelter over in those mountains, but that's the only choice I got right now, this is gonna be a long week" - Les Stroud Arctic

When building any kind of shelter here are a few good items to have:

Knife
Axe
Rope
Tarp

The most important is probably Axe and rope, but I highly recomend those 4

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"There dosen't look like there's much shelter over in those mountains, but that's the only choice I got right now, this is gonna be a long week" - Les Stroud Arctic