Another Snow Shoe Trek

 

Out for another snowshoe trek. Some light survival kit musings.

MRE For Breakfast

 Embracing the suck I packed up and headed out with a real feel of 4*. My plan? To heat up and eat an MRE and make some coffee. The MRE heater didn't really work out this time, so I ate a cold beef and bean taco with rice and corn MRE. Surprisingly, this ne actually had some coffee in it. But as my wife reminded me, I cannot have caffeine, so I guess it was a good thing when I went out with the first one there wasn't any coffee.

Fingers are still a tiny bit frostbit, but not bad. hard to wear cloves to eat and make stuff to eat and drink.

Snowshoe Hike

 

Annual Virtual Bushcraft Meet

 I thought I'd mentioned this here, and I know I've discussed it in a few videos, but it's worth updating.

For 6 years I hosted an annual virtual meetup for camping and bushcraft. It was called Night Of 1,000 Blades. Due to a few factors, I made the decision that it was time to make changes to this event and host it through my forum starting in 2026.

The object of this event was/is for people to go out in their chosen area and camp for at least one night. I had also deemed that you can even camp in your yard, but you must camp for a night. Then share your trip report with everyone in an report thread. It was started to be a motivational event, but I did add a few requirements to the gathering for the past two years. It's designed to more or less be a bushcraft event, so three bushcraft related tasks should be done. It's pretty easy, your camping and part of camping is making a fire, and cooking a meal over that fire. Twig stoves are allowed for those who might be under a fire ban or not have an actual fire pit in their yard. So that's two of the tasks down by simply going camping. The third was participants choice, go as easy as you like or as difficult as you like. Each year the attendance grew less and less, so I decided that the Fall 2025 gathering would be the last NOATB. I had even swapped it one year from Fall to Spring because people said Fall was not acceptable, and that did not go any better or have any more participants. I had also been asked one year to set up a Google map and did so, but no one bothered to sue it. So I feel it was just time to move on. I feel strongly that 6 years was plenty of time for it to run. 

So for 2026 it got rebranded and is now called Night Of Smoke And Blades (NOSAS). It will also be hosted through Firepit Outdoors exclusively. The forum is free to join, all we ask is you follow the rules. Everything is the same. The date will be selected of early to mid September, after the bugs have dissipated a great deal from most areas and temps for most areas have come down and are more tolerable. One must still actually camp out for at least one night on the selected dates, and may still do so in their yard as long as they actually sleep out of doors. The three tasks will remain as well. Make a fire, cook a meal over a fire, and a third of their choosing.

This is a great way to have a virtual gathering and for participants to see what others cook, do in camp, and what other areas look like. Hopefully those who participated in past years will continue to do so from the different base camp. Maybe we will even get some new participants.