Middle Earth Ranger Forum

Aahh, I'm so jealous of everyone here! You guys have such gorgeous places to explore and wander!

cool observations Elleth I need to start paying more attention to things

I have a new camera and went a bit mad taking photo's in the woods at the weekend, it took me until now to get around to looking through them





I can now do panoramas, but it doesn't work unless everything is the same brightness:



..and Elleth, I did my homework I found one of these:



I have no idea what made it? I'll have to do more investigating next time I'm there

How lovely...if a bit intimidating! The forest brings The Old Forest very strongly to mind.

ooooh.... that mist is just glorious!

SierraStrider wrote:How lovely...if a bit intimidating! The forest brings The Old Forest very strongly to mind.

yeah, it probably would be intimidating if I didn't know it so well, I do love misty days

Awesome!

OH WOW :O

What an absolutely spectacular landscape! Would that it ever looked quite that wet and green and lush around here.

Not as much an adventure as preparing for future adventures, but last weekend I camped out in the yard and since it was forecast to be a clear night, I decided to not use a tarp. I usually use one for the psychological benefits of cover, even if it's not supposed to be rainy or windy, but conversations in this group and others got me thinking about working on getting comfortable sleeping without one. I did make a debris bed and covered it with my half-blanket that I use as a cloak sometimes, and I used my big blanket - it got into the low 40s (F, about 5 C for the metric folks). That woodpile was a lot bigger the night before than when I took this picture in the morning!

Awesome and your so lucky to have woods in your yard

Fantastic little outing, Taurinor! Sometimes all it takes is sleeping in the backyard to think of an improvement or tweak the kit in some way!

How'd you sleep in your altered setup?

Iodo wrote:I have a new camera and went a bit mad taking photo's in the woods at the weekend

Of all the locations that appear on here I am most envious of yours Iodo. It looks amazing.

While fog and cold set in for most of you, spring welcomes us onto the Lake.

Iodo wrote:your so lucky to have woods in your yard

Some woods to play in was pretty high on the house-searching priority list

Greg wrote:How'd you sleep in your altered setup?

Better than I thought I would, to be honest. The fire was obviously important for warmth, but it was also very helpful psychologically-speaking. I was up and down a fair bit, adding logs as it died down, but when I was sleeping, I felt like I was sleeping pretty well. There was certainly much less laying awake and staring out into the darkness than I thought there would be!

I (once again) underestimated the amount of debris I needed for a bed - it wasn't too bad, but it compressed a bit more than was optimal and I would have slept warmer with a deeper pile. Dialing in the right distance from the fire also took a little bit of doing. My bed was about a pace from the fire, but I ended up shifting the fire slightly closer during the night. It had to have been less than six inches, but it made a big difference!

Taurinor wrote:Dialing in the right distance from the fire also took a little bit of doing. My bed was about a pace from the fire, but I ended up shifting the fire slightly closer during the night. It had to have been less than six inches, but it made a big difference!

Might I suggest a fire wall to you? It provides several benefits. The most obvious one is that it reflects more heat back towards you, it also aids in concealment, dries damp timber and shields the fire from wind. You can build them from rocks, soil or mud as well but your timber stash looks ideal for a wooden one.

Eofor wrote:Might I suggest a fire wall to you? It provides several benefits. The most obvious one is that it reflects more heat back towards you, it also aids in concealment, dries damp timber and shields the fire from wind. You can build them from rocks, soil or mud as well but your timber stash looks ideal for a wooden one.

I actually had larger logs drying on the opposite side of the fire through the night, so while it wasn't as deliberately constructed a barrier as the image you provided, something was there! It got shorter as the night went on and I added the logs to the fire, of course. If I had been worried about concealment or if it had been a windy night, a barrier certainly would have helped. I'm not totally sold on the idea of a wooden wall functioning as a heat reflector (I've seen arguments and "experiments" that claim that is works and that it doesn't work), but that's neither here nor there!