[00:00:00] Tayson: Everybody, welcome back to the Live Ultralight podcast today, we've got a pretty cool episode where I won't be narrating or hosting per se. I'm gonna be turning the time over to Joe to interview me. So I'll try to take it back seat, not talk, much But by the way, a quick introduction Joe came on the team, a handful of months ago now almost half year and specifically, who's working in video and
[00:00:25] Tayson: he had some expertise in the podcast, he's kind of been the guy behind the curtain with the podcast and it's fun to bring you on and let you be on stage now, I guess
[00:00:33] Joe: we'll see. We'll see if it's fun to bring me on or not.
[00:00:36] Tayson: Do you want to give everyone? Maybe just a quick background on your yourself and then we'll go from there. So they just want him to know you a little bit. So,
[00:00:44] Joe: Sure. Yeah. So I'm the content creator here. It's my job to get these podcasts out to you. It's awesome. My job to get the YouTube videos out to you and make occasionally, make some ads, whatever. Derek, my boss tells me to do, I got to do. But anyway, we, we made a video. Or you shot a video and I edited a video that came out last week. That was titled. What was
[00:01:12] Joe: it -41 or 41 below freezing? Winter camping, basically, and it was kind of a bit of a hit for our YouTube channel and it's cool to see all the comments and everything like that. But people apparently they want to know more. They want to know more about the trip. A lot of people who are probably new to the YouTube channel. Yeah.
[00:01:35] Joe: Probably like what's over you use and all this sort of stuff. Now we will have a gearless video that will be coming out along with this podcast. On the same day so you guys can check out every single piece of gear. Tasting, particularly went through it all, but particularly goes through every single piece of gear and even put links down for you guys to purchase the gear or at least to look
[00:01:58] Joe: at on Amazon or on our website at the Outdoor Vitals.com, whatever. Which by the way, this podcast is powered by Outdoor Vitals. This is the Live Ultralight podcast. It's all about lightening your gear and building your confidence. So you can start living your life full of Outdoor Adventures and memories. And of course Outdoor Vitals. We are a A ultra light. Backpacking gear company. And if you guys are interested in any of
[00:02:26] Joe: the things that we that we make here, please check the description below, we got a whole list of items that we We not only recommend, but we use ourselves when we're out on the trail. So Tayson, I have a list of questions here inspired by comments on the YouTube channel.
[00:02:45] Tayson: What I do a pretty like we appreciate those comments. We've been reading and watching them it's
[00:02:50] Tayson: been awesome to see all those comments and one of those comments actually spurred the thought of like yeah we do need to jump on and do a podcast of the behind the scenes. And stuff. So, yeah,
[00:02:59] Joe: someone specifically asked for this. So whoever we forgot his name, whoever said, you should do a podcast on this. Thank you very much. What got you into winter camping in the first place?
[00:03:14] Tayson: That's a really good one because I definitely didn't grow up doing it or wanting to even do it. But the more I got into regular backpacking, the more I just wanted to spread that out. So one of the reasons was I hate being cooped up all winter long and inside less sunlight stuff like that. And so that was a poll. But I also just really love winter and like the beauty of
[00:03:36] Tayson: it. It's just totally different experience. So you can go to the exact same place. You would go in the summer or fall or spring and have a completely different experience with it. The snow. If you're going to a place of snow, it deadens, all the sounds, so it's just always incredibly quiet. The it diversifies that the views of what looks, you know, green and this way in the summer, just gonna look
[00:03:57] Tayson: totally different in the winter. And so that, like, peacefulness and beauty that all just really attractive and then, I can't lie. I like, I like to challenge. I like to push the envelope and, and experience that side as well. So it's kind of been a slower process for me, I guess, but Real slow like a dove in pretty heavily but I just continue to enjoy it more and more. I feel like
[00:04:20] Tayson: I'm probably suffer less and less. So yeah.
[00:04:23] Joe: Well, what was it? Like, what was your first winter camping experience? Do you remember? I've done, I did. I mean, before this job, I'd only done two. I had done. I was in the Boy Scouts. Yeah.
[00:04:36] Joe: And we had, there was a scout camp nearby. I was like Maple Dell Scout camp near Payson Utah and Twice, I believe we went up and did a what was called a Klondike? And we went up and camped in the snow and it was freezing Colts. Um, I think those
[00:04:56] Tayson: trips do more harm than good boy scouts big. So, I, I have a similar experience like, you know, just a not being ready for that kind of stuff. You don't have the gear for it. You don't have the know-how. Yeah, there's not like meticulous. My leader wasn't like meticulously helping kids get ready? It's just like, all right, bring sleeping bag and I forgot a pad. I slipped on the ground. You
[00:05:16] Tayson: know what I mean? Like, so sometimes I'm like, I think those trips for getting people out. I remember the most, I remember is the Frozen
[00:05:24] Joe: boots in the morning. That's always that was probably the worst part of it was getting out of the sleeping bag. Assuming you got into the sleeping bag dry and getting out of the sleeping bag and putting on like the Crusty, like ice covered boots. Even hard
[00:05:39] Tayson: to get your foot, in in them, you know, I've had them freeze like
[00:05:43] Joe: And then like, I don't want to get my hands out to tie the laces, you know, at a tighten them up, my dad was in the Special Forces so we always had like gear, but it was always heavy. It was always big stuff. So it's interesting coming here and working here and everybody's like ultralight all this stuff like it all does the same job, right? But
[00:06:01] Joe: this is more premium gear and it's lighter and more flexible and all this, all the sort of stuff. And it's very interesting seeing that my dad's, my dad's biggest fear was getting wet, like, at all. Yeah.
[00:06:12] Joe: Um, when here, it seems like getting wet. You can, you can still be okay if you're wet in some of the equipment that we have. Yeah, I would say though,
[00:06:22] Tayson: like, getting wet in the winter is maybe a little bit different than you see us react to getting wet in the summer. That's just a really good thing to note about winter camping. Is, is it getting wet? You cannot dry your gear out the same, like, it's just The temperature. I mean, it's like, like I'm gonna summer, you have heat and sunlight. And in the winter, you're lucky. He gets sunlight but
[00:06:43] Tayson: the Heat's never gonna be there. And so it's really hard to dry stuff out and that's just a really good thing to just always remember when you're winning camping, is You can like, spend the time. Stop delayer, relayer to not sweat too much. At any time, you can avoid, getting wet, just do that, you know? So sometimes you get rushed in right, let's say and then you on the snow, your pant
[00:07:06] Tayson: gets wet and you think nothing of it and, you know, it can it can become a problem later for, you know,
[00:07:13] Joe: Yeah. So um, -9 Fahrenheit or 41 below zero because Freezing is 32 degrees Fahrenheit. A lot of a lot of confusion in the comments from people, probably not in the United States variants. That's pretty much as cold as it gets around here, right?
[00:07:32] Tayson: Yeah, I mean, that was the biggest reason I did. This trip was just watching the weather and seeing this massive cold front command. I'm like, oh, this is kind of an opportunity to go test. A negative 15 degree bag that we had underdevelopment and kind of getting refreshed and just looked like a good time to get extreme testing done. So,
[00:07:51] Joe: so that's what made you decide to take this trip. That was the biggest one. I think
[00:07:58] Tayson: all. So like we've done YouTube for a long time and I thought it would be fun to try to film something in a little bit different way than I've done and see fit how it work. And so I filmed at that way and you edited it really well and people responded. So we'll probably have to do a little bit more of it that way too.
[00:08:15] Joe: Yeah. I mean that's the kind of videos I like I love, I love travel videos, a lot in the more kind of like on the ground and realistic, they are
[00:08:26] Joe: Um, the more I'm like invested in it so I don't know. I really liked. I liked making this video. It was a lot of fun to see you out there kind of suffering in the wind. Then eventually like I felt like cozy I sent the video to a friend he's like wow that made that makes me
[00:08:43] Tayson: want to get Outdoors again. Like that purpose. Scare him from Good. Yeah. The part where you're like, oh
[00:08:52] Joe: My mind or whatever. Yeah,
[00:08:53] Joe: um, So you saw this big cold front coming in. You were gonna leave with someone else in the office, right?
[00:09:00] Tayson: Brigham had talked about going, our lead designer our lead designer talked about going. I don't remember I think I had kind of been thinking about in my head and he vocalized it and I was like oh let's just go together and then he had some stuff come up so he wasn't gonna go and I was like I'm still gonna go so it wasn't super ideal timing for me, which will get into
[00:09:22] Tayson: but made it work. So how did you How much time did you have to prep for it? I think from the time I was like, I'm gonna do it was probably, like one or two days ahead, but yeah, it was pretty rushed. I just didn't like a busy for us this time of year, busy for me. So it was pretty much like I Like, I do most trips. I grabbed our checklist,
[00:09:44] Tayson: I went in my gear room and I threw everything in a backpack, and came into the office and wait, a few things, grab the camera gear, and that was about it, which is why I packed a few things, extra things like an extra pair of gloves and so it was a little rush, nothing like major because that's why, that's why I love working on a checklist for sure. But how did you
[00:10:07] Tayson: Extra accidentally had in the bag, I think from just being rushed but it was quick. It was quick. Turnaround
[00:10:11] Joe: quick, turnaround. And How far? So you went up near Brian Head? Right. Tell us about the area.
[00:10:18] Tayson: Yeah, so we were I ended up going up the canyon straight above us, so kind of across Cedar Breaks. There's a National Monument up there, Brian heads on one side of it, the peak I was on it was on another it's called a blowhard peak probably named to properly and it's it's over 10,000 feet and yeah, just it takes a lot of wind because it's really the highest peak coming off of
[00:10:44] Tayson: the Mojave Desert. So Cedar. You know, an hour south of us is the very tip of the Mojave Desert and then as that air starts to just climb up in elevation, we get a lot of snow here because of that the clouds will start to dump as they come up over the mountains, but it also just creates a lot of wind for us. So people farther north from us, typically in Utah
[00:11:06] Tayson: or in the center of the state, don't see nearly the winds that will often see right here is that is we're just getting so much turbulence from the wind or that are coming up in elevation temperatures changing and yeah. So it was just straight up the canyon, not too far.
[00:11:20] Joe: I've learned a lot about geography. Since since moving down here to Cedar City, we're in the southwest part of the state, pretty close to Zion National Park. About an hour out from there, he's yeah.
[00:11:34] Joe: Or another hour out from from Saint George Utah, which is kind of like the bigger Metropolis area and this in this part of the state and Saint George is known for having no winter.
[00:11:46] Tayson: Yep, just like 45 minutes away doesn't snow
[00:11:49] Joe: 45 minutes away. No snow nothing. I come down here and I moved down here. I don't know month in get dumped on by by snow and I really October. Yeah. Like what is happening like is this an unusual winter? And like, No it's just it's just the elevation unpredictable. Yeah,
[00:12:08] Joe: that's crazy to me. So it's also crazy to me that like we're here at like 6,000 feet I think right. Yeah, right.
[00:12:15] Joe: Yeah. And then it's just like, just go up in the canyon Europe and the Alpine area up like 11,000 feet, 10,000 feet.
[00:12:22] Tayson: Crazy to me just goes straight up. Yeah,
[00:12:24] Joe: it's crazy to me, like, just how close all that stuff is like within 20 minutes?
[00:12:30] Tayson: 20 minutes, you can Summit on the highway still at like I think it's 9 900 feet or right around there. Right up, like 15 miles up the canyon. You just climb straight up. My other Assumption of this area
[00:12:44] Joe: was that you know, west of us was just, you know flat Nevada. It's like kind of area actually this beautiful mountains on the other side, very green, very cool.
[00:12:56] Tayson: Yeah. I I found a whole different Wilderness Area out there that I hadn't even seen on a map. It's just this tiny little one and now I'm like I gotta plan a trip to go hike through that now, explore this area. Yeah.
[00:13:07] Joe: Um, so how far are we did you hide from the
[00:13:10] Tayson: car? Not very far right? Yeah. So, that was the biggest issue is timing. Like I had stuff to do. I couldn't leave the office till like 1:00 so I couldn't start hiking until like two. And then I hiked just under two miles in, but it was all uphill. It was A climbed about 500 feet in elevation getting up there. So had snowshoes in the snow. Obviously it was really fresh powder, so
[00:13:36] Tayson: it wasn't packed or anything like that. It didn't have the crust, which is kind of nice like on a snowshoe. Sometimes the Crusty you have to step on it and then it breaks like a cars layer of snow on top of the side.
[00:13:46] Tayson: Yeah so that was kind of nice to have to go with but at the same time it It was soft snow. So maybe a little bit more effort in that Mark. So yeah, I didn't have a ton of time and I was self filming. So when you do that you kind of gotta go set up the camera loop back around walk walk by loop back around, get the camera. And so it
[00:14:06] Tayson: took me a couple hours to get in there. I was really hoping to be a camp by like 3:00 And I didn't get there till 4 and it's dark at five, you know? And that that was the probably the biggest mistake is just not getting out of the office early enough to set. Camp up early enough, right? Or just plan on the amount of time it took me to film. So I
[00:14:27] Tayson: was even planning on going farther in but when it came down to him, like I've got not enough time to go any farther. So so there's a good chance that the podcast listeners are listening at home on their
[00:14:36] Joe: on their phones or whatever might not have. Seen the video you want to. Just tell him what happened that night.
[00:14:42] Tayson: Basically. Yeah, so hike in absolutely stunning, beautiful the trees are just flocked with snow and just had this amazing peaceful hike and I was feeling great about it and then get up there, and I can see all these winds Swirls. And I'm thinking, man, I'm gonna need to find a place out of the Wind. So I hiked a little ways away and I like this looks decent as just barely getting into
[00:15:04] Tayson: the tree line. But really, I was just kind of checking my watch thinking, I got it, I gotta find a place for Camp. So take this spot. Just right on the edge of the trees and Snow, I didn't bring a shovel. I ended up just thinking I could kind of dig it out but the shelter I had was pretty good size. So it took me a little bit longer to kick the
[00:15:23] Tayson: snow out of place and pack it down with the snowshoes and kind of get it to be ready for the shelter and once that was all done, I then Put the shelter up and the shelter. This is the first time I slept, I slept in it, I'd set it up in my backyard which I can advise anyone and everyone to do out of bare minimum before you take it out. But I
[00:15:45] Tayson: set up the shelter and in the backyard, I couldn't get it to pitch just how I wanted a little like It's not great type of a pitch and I played with it for like 30 minutes in my backyard, you know, on flat grass and just couldn't get it a pitch, right? And so I was I figured I'd be fine still but right, as I'm getting to this point, the wind just starts
[00:16:05] Tayson: picking up really bad. I know I don't know how fast the guests were whatever, but they were really intense and you can see it on the
[00:16:12] Joe: fancy it in the footage. It's, it's pretty rough.
[00:16:14] Tayson: The wind indicator of my beard was straight sideways
[00:16:18] Joe: at times, you know? So
[00:16:19] Tayson: I get this thing set up and I get the stakes that I have down and there's a couple extra tide points but this thing is just blowing like crazy and I did it dig quite deep enough to get really good into the ground. So it's kind of re digging and reworking things to try to get solid Stakes because with that wind pulled the state out at one point and I want it
[00:16:42] Tayson: to be really a tight pitched to handle that win. I didn't bring enough extra Stakes. I did the the cardinal sin of not pulling out stakes and checking, how many and not realizing, I could probably use a few extra. So then I ended up having to Sticks and logs and I figure out what is called the Dead Man's hole or something like that, where you kind of dig a hole, drop the
[00:17:02] Tayson: branch in it, recover it and tie that to the guidelines which works really well with takes time. And it's cold. When you're have to pull your bare hands out the tie a little knot because they're, they're not already tight on his brand new tent that can zap the cold audio. So, I'm doing all this stuff and then I get to this point where The tent is like almost acceptable level almost but
[00:17:24] Tayson: it's still blowing around like crazy and I'm like, this is just not looking good. but, No, no sight before. I did the extra tie out. So before I did extra tiles, I'd throw all my gear in the tent on a pad. And I was just poked my head in there and I just see all my gears covered in snow inside the tent, right? Just, it's a floorless shelter and it's just covered
[00:17:43] Tayson: in snow and I'm just going. You gotta be kidding me. So that's when I go and tie it, tie it down a little bit better and get all that done. It's like, all right. Now, it's almost dark like I need to get firewood. So I just start running around and grabbing as much firewood as I can. And I'm breaking a branch off of One Tree. And I was getting one thing. I
[00:18:08] Tayson: feel like I still need to figure out is like how much fire would I need? Because every time I get way more firewood than I think I need like and then I cut it all up in the tent. I've got all this nice firewood and then I don't burn it all on like, dang, I always did a lot of extra time, you know, getting wood. But so I so at one point,
[00:18:23] Tayson: I breaking his dead branches off this tree and I don't know what happened. You know, I'm just kind of scrambling trying to go really fast. The Sun is setting at this point. The wind still blowing and I just hiked in what I've typed in it, which is a dragon wolf piece and no, I was actually Polyester Sun hoody, just a super light, little Sun hoody. It works pretty good as a base
[00:18:44] Tayson: layer and then aventus. So that's all I had on and Frozen, I don't know. The Ventus is just a super lightly insulated. Hoodie lens weapon through, I'm getting freaking cold, my hands are cold from having to set up the shelter and breaking off this branch and it just snaps. And the piece in my hand was still in my hand, but another piece like rocketed off the tree and slapped me in the side and
[00:19:09] Tayson: it, it really rocked me. Like I bought one to my knees, like gasping, you know what I mean? Like, that's like, oh, I'm
[00:19:16] Joe: still trying to whenever you tell the story. I'm trying to figure out the physics, so I
[00:19:19] Tayson: don't need either. I don't know what it is, either, right? Like, I think back and I'm like, what did I? Something it's just so cold in. The branches are so stiff and Frozen and when it popped, you know it I think it just launched something at me or something which Anyways, so that took me like 60 seconds of just kind of like days. And and then I kind of was like, oh
[00:19:41] Tayson: my heck like I don't even have my other jacket on. What am I doing? Like I was scrambling and so cold. I just wasn't thinking properly in that scramble and with that extreme cold. And so I went over and I grabbed my Nova Pro, our bigger jacket that we make out of my bag through that on and it was like oh that was like a big breath of fresh air because it
[00:20:05] Tayson: Thing about the Nova is the fabric cuts, the wind so well. And so getting that on Cut The Wind and then also out of just a ton more warmth and so that that only helped me kind of calm down a lot, but it reminded me a lot of on the beaver. Fastback. We did the touchet skyline Trail. Yeah,
[00:20:22] Joe: and there's two podcasts about that you guys can go listen to.
[00:20:25] Tayson: Yeah, at the end of the second day of that one, we got into Camp, the temperature sort of dropping it. It actually kind of started snowing raining and I went and walked over to this bathroom because where we camped actually we were crossing a road right there and I got Super cold, and I didn't realize it at first and I was walking back. I couldn't keep my teeth from chattering. I just
[00:20:47] Tayson: realized like how much cognitive ability I had lost. Like my brain wasn't thinking as clearly luckily, my tent was already set up. My bag was already set up, so I just had to walk a couple hundred yards to my tent climb in and I could be safe essentially. And but it really reminded me that I'm like, man, I really am not, and was not thinking very clearly. And so that's when it
[00:21:07] Tayson: got more real for me, it was like, okay, Is getting pretty serious. If I can't, I need to get this stove built and a fight. But if I can't get this stove built and have like some heat sources here pretty soon, I may need to turn around and Hike out of here and it's too cold for me to take down the tent and to go all through all that I will just
[00:21:29] Tayson: have to leave what's already kind of set up and just hike out and get warm. When you're moving and stuff, obviously generate a lot of body heat and the layers I had would have been just fine to keep me plenty warm hiking. They just weren't, just weren't cutting it when I'm sitting and trying to build a stove and all that stuff. And so I kind of set this limit in my head
[00:21:50] Tayson: of like, all right, if I can't get this stove, built in a fire going, within 15 minutes, I need to call it. It's not just not safe anymore at this point. So I'm sort of building that still, and I don't think this was even on the camera, but My fingers just would not work and and I thought stove, I mean, it collapses to nothing. So you have to build it. It can
[00:22:10] Tayson: be kind of hard to build. I hadn't built it in a year and so I'm trying to like, kind of remember with my foggy brain, how to rebuild it, and it took me a minute and my fingers, I just could not get the little, like, screws on the right place. The side. Had to go take my glove completely off, and I'm trying to pick up, you would have to, like, screw things. Yeah,
[00:22:27] Tayson: you have, like, little nuts going on like this all thread that goes all the way through the stove. And, and I the amount of times I dropped this wing nut, like, I just dropped it. And I'd like, pick it up and I try to drop it on them. Yeah, they're just so numb that I, I was really struggling and that's what I was like. Holy like, like again, like like all right.
[00:22:47] Tayson: I got not much time to get this done. Or is this is gonna become a problem? Anyways, so thank the stove. It wasn't probably the best. Pitch of a stove. Like it was a little wobbly and I got it. Got it, you know, good and stable enough got it set up. And right about, then the wind started slowing down because the sun was going down the sun's gone. Like it's still, like
[00:23:12] Tayson: light but the sun is you can't see it anymore. That's, I guess would be the problem or something like that. anyways, so get the stove going, grab some pyro putty, and start it up, and it took me a couple little trees, but got it going just because trying to get the right wood and get the Pyro putty in the right spot with numb fingers and but it got it going and that
[00:23:38] Tayson: was like, Big breath of relief, you know, big sigh of relief, right there. So at that point, really it all started calmed down sort of coming out of town won. The wind kept slowing down, more and more and more. I had a fire. I could warm my hands right there. I had enough wood to like Keep it going, I would stacked outside. I needed to cut it still but I could I
[00:24:00] Tayson: could keep that fire going the rest of the night I like kids. So that's started to fill a lot more relaxed and started the settling and from there, the rest was honestly great like sat in there cut up firewood you know got the tent nice and hot blew up my pad pulled out. My sleeping bag. The tent was at that point of been able to pitch it a little bit lower and
[00:24:26] Tayson: everything was more secure so I wasn't getting snow blowing in the side or anything like that and I had some stuff pushed up against the side and spots too and so really at that point it was it was pretty cozy and got better and better and better other than the fact that like I didn't have a ton of firewood already cut. Like, I in an Ideal World. Shelter's all set up Woods
[00:24:49] Tayson: cut. Everything's ready when Night hits so that you can just sit in their watch, the fire. There's no go, there's no Panic. But I still like I had the wood outside of the tent, but I was kind of having to open up the tent. Bring in a few branches break them, cut them. And anytime I took my focus off of that for a little bit. The fire would start to get low.
[00:25:10] Tayson: I'd start to get low so that was like the only thing that was still just kind of had to keep some pressure on until I built up those stocks. And as I'm trying to get the bag out, let's get lofted up and then I look
[00:25:21] Joe: back. Oh man, the fire is doing this and just wait, you pay is the price you pay for going in late. Yeah, yeah. One extra hour
[00:25:28] Tayson: would have made that the whole thing, nice and peaceful. Like, other than like still, like, I just didn't love the shelter, but
[00:25:35] Joe: so you had like four hours of sleep, did the stove goal like, did it burn out when you were asleep?
[00:25:42] Tayson: Yeah. So those shelters The very interesting, it's almost hard to explain, but like in the real close proximity to that stove, it gets down, right? Hot in there, it can but then I could turn around and look at the far end of my like 11 foot, long shelter in the other end is still frozen on the inside. Like, there's condensation Frozen on my liked by down by your feet. Because they just
[00:26:04] Tayson: don't retain the heat. They're hot and
[00:26:05] Joe: they retain it right in that proximity. But not an insulated tent
[00:26:09] Tayson: know you're talking about ultra light Fabrics, right? They're not gonna retain heat. So, I'm gonna space all your question was originally. But yeah. Like so you're just really huddled in the one end. So when you said you slept for like, oh, yes, yes, so you could still cut fire up and if you've got the right kind of wood burning wood, there's been times. When I've had like Cedar branches. It's a very
[00:26:32] Tayson: dense wood that thing will will almost like keep at least Kohl's in it. six hours, but the stuff I was burning was was Pine and like when I stopped it up to go to bed, put as much as I could in there, and then you just go to bed and I would say it probably was done, kicking off much heat. Like, within two, three hours. So I so I slept, I don't
[00:27:01] Tayson: remember what time I went to bed. It was Was like 10
[00:27:04] Joe: to get up, right? Yeah. Get up at
[00:27:06] Tayson: like, start trying to get a bit early and by but it was a little bit later than I still wanted, but I slept from like 10 to like two or three in the morning just straight, which was really impressive. I'm usually tosser. Internal I'll roll over. Almost every hour, maybe two hours in the summer. Any time of year when I'm camping and a tent. And so to get that like locked in
[00:27:26] Tayson: sleep was really good, that might have been because of the, I had some some it's called Sleepy chai like a drink from Mountain Ops and I don't know if we still sell it or we still have it on the website but it's got melatonin in it and stuff so that might have been a contributor. I don't know. I was also exhausted. Yeah, that's the night before but I woke up and I
[00:27:48] Tayson: was like all right I'm gonna restore the fire so I threw some stuff in there and hoping like the coals it's still be hot enough and they weren't so I didn't get it restocked in the night. I just went back to bed and then woke up in five something and got it going and kind of laid there and let it heat up and then slowly that was
[00:28:05] Joe: something I didn't expect when I was going through the footage was that you actually restarted the stove in the morning. Yeah.
[00:28:12] Joe: Why do I do that? Why not. Just pack up and go.
[00:28:15] Tayson: Um one. It's freaking cold outside, that bad?
[00:28:19] Joe: Yes. But I want to warm up my shoes. Still cutting the bag and you were just like,
[00:28:24] Tayson: yeah. So I just kind of pulled my arms out of the bag rolled over. And Pull it back in there and grab another chunk of pyro putty and started it up. That's really just I mean one there's there's tons of condensation and Frozen condensation in the tent and and just, I'm gonna have to do chores and use my fingers and stuff. So, rolling up my pad stuff in my sleeping bag, all
[00:28:47] Tayson: that kind of stuff. If I'm warm is just way more enjoyable. The nice thing is with Titanium because that's a titanium stove, which will have to touch on. So we got a lot of comments, but The second that fire goes out in a titanium stove. Specially in those temperatures that titanium will cool off in second
[00:29:05] Joe: really second. That was something that's like, you know.
[00:29:08] Tayson: Yeah. Like oh wait for it to cool off like know as long as you can dump, like get it to the point where you can dump the coals out of it in the wood out of it, right? Yeah. I think we'll cool off in second. Wow. Incredible, because it's just really thin titanium. If you've got like a titanium pot, you'll see that you'll boil water. He'll dump it out, you'll set the
[00:29:28] Tayson: pot down and nothing will be cool off and second. So that is one very nice aspect to the with those as you can relight it in the morning and still Dump out the coals. And Be on your way pretty quick. So
[00:29:41] Joe: as you make it to your son's Delia
[00:29:43] Tayson: I did I was I was like a couple minutes late. I was running, you didn't, I didn't film this but I was running in the snowshoes down the mountain. it, you know, whenever it was permissible because some of it was real Steep and Could I got home at the time? I thought, but I missed managed and plans, so I was about five minutes late. I didn't miss anything from him, but I
[00:30:07] Tayson: was trying to get there at like 9:00 and I had A terrible there like 9:05 nothing happened, but
[00:30:13] Joe: that's good. It was I made it. So I made it so about winter. So I didn't know. Hot tenting was a thing. Yeah. Until I saw what
[00:30:23] Joe: are your guys's older videos? so I I asked you about winter camping, we kind of like, Kind of glanced over it. What did you find out? Hot tip was a thing. When did you first try that?
[00:30:37] Tayson: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, there was always like the big sheep herder Walton's Outfitter tents that have like, big stove. But I don't know if I remember anyone besides those people doing it and tell a company called seek outside started to get popular. There might have been, I think there were some people like DIY and stuff. Maybe there was like any a really small company that never, you know, got
[00:31:05] Tayson: bigger. It was started to make little stoves and people are making the first out of just still and stuff like that and then and then eventually titanium kind of became a thing. But Yeah, so for me, it was probably five years ago when I just started to see him here about him and then I don't know, I probably bought that stove. Three years ago might be around there and if you've used
[00:31:31] Tayson: it a little bit sense, I kind of hodgepodge to one of our tents ones which I don't talk about a lot because I don't I didn't feel like it was super safe. I didn't really want to recommend that to people. It just wasn't designed for it. So then I eventually got this shelter and tried it out. And well last year actually, when I went took it, I tried to just do it
[00:31:53] Tayson: tarp. So just one of our tarps and my stove that was kind of an adventure. Probably not a good way. No.
[00:32:05] Tayson: Because one, it's so Airy underneath the tarp even pitching. It kind of as low as you can, there's just still so much draft in there and that thing like you need to be sealed in there for that heat to stay at all. So unless I was sitting right next to it, it really wasn't very warm. And then like there's the other considerations of like the tint holds the stove. So when I
[00:32:25] Tayson: got there I'm like there's nothing to hold the stove. So I had to tie string around the very top of the stove or be the coldest tie it to trees. So the stove would just stand up. Oh yeah,
[00:32:34] Tayson: Sarah some things like that. So again, I kind of retro fitted stoves into our products for about two years and then I was like this is dumb. I'm a fish bottom design for it and then now I'm I bought a second 10 at this point. That's better design. More
[00:32:51] Joe: information on the gear Loadout video that we just put out on the On the Outdoor Vitals YouTube channel. So about the stove, I guess tell us about the stove is a seek outside and it's like two
[00:33:10] Tayson: pounds, right? Yeah. So they have a model called the U-turn which just collapses, really, really small. In the video I showed at basically got like one square that's like an inch tall and then just a tube that carries everything else and the whole stove is right, about two pounds. I wish I would have weighed just that piece of it. Maybe I did. But it's right about two pounds. I have the large
[00:33:33] Tayson: size too so that I could put more wood in there and bigger pieces of wood and not to cut them. So short and so small, they have even lighter ones than the one I have. But I think it was like you say about a half pound and I just figured for the For the usefulness of having the larger. So, they actually talked me into it one time we were, I saw him
[00:33:52] Tayson: at the show and I was talking with them, but So, yeah, that's the stove. And it's, it's a phenomenal piece. It's an investment. It is an investment titanium. It's not cheap, and all the components that are titanium in. There are not going to be cheap, and it's kind of funny though. Like, you pull that stuff apart and the heaviest part of the whole stove. Are these pie? Of all thread but it's
[00:34:13] Tayson: like a bullet. That's just threading, the whole way, top to bottom oh
[00:34:17] Tayson: that goes through the entire stove and then as the legs coming out the bottom. So there's four pieces that one for each Corner.
[00:34:23] Joe: How long is that?
[00:34:23] Tayson: They're like 12 inches.
[00:34:25] Joe: Okay. So I'm like that.
[00:34:27] Tayson: And those are the heaviest like those weigh as much as the rest of everything else combined. That's all titanium. Just those four pieces of just you know, I was like man if someone made some some all thread, that was titanium nothing would be shaving, other half pound. Pound off of the weight but yeah, they're really incredible. Stoves they are an investment. I have not used one, but there's another company called Luxe
[00:34:48] Tayson: hiking. That has a stove that I think is a little bit more affordable, but I really like the seek outside stuff. It's very well proven very well tested, very highly rated, but it's probably going to be a little bit more money and it will be for sure, lighter weight. But, yeah,
[00:35:05] Joe: yeah, I was, I couldn't believe that still was only gonna be like two pounds like he's going Ultra Lite. He says he's going ultralight. It's only if you and like that's when you did the gear load. I was like, oh okay, yeah, that
[00:35:17] Joe: really was It's hard to Fabulous Life
[00:35:20] Tayson: like my my winter set up. So the special, the one that I upgraded to, so I bought the 10th album using next is the seek outside Sill. Which is a pretty good size for one person and the stove, but it's just super light. They've done some really cool designs on it and that thing I want to say is like 20 22 oz. Then you've got my stove at 2 pounds and then
[00:35:44] Tayson: let's say, you've got a footprint that you gotta throw in there and Stakes. It's not a whole shelter with stove, everything everything is still like four pounds or less, which Half people's
[00:35:55] Joe: tensors. I got a pounds. I got a one-man tent. That's 3.5 pounds.
[00:35:59] Tayson: Yeah, yeah, I know stuff. No. Stuff. Yeah. And then The two, when you've got a stove. I don't need to bring my alcohol stove or a gas canister, and a pocket rocket or something like that. Or the one I use is the Crux Lite. So I don't need to bring that, so that's one. So that's eight ounces. Let's say eight to well, really eight to 12 ounces, depending on, if you've got
[00:36:21] Tayson: a full can or not, that I don't have to bring. So you can almost take that right back off to where it's like, dang, this is closer to three pound setup. Now, it's just, it's pretty phenomenal.
[00:36:30] Joe: Yeah, yeah. So, would you ever so this? Another question here, of course, winter hot tenting. New, to me, might be new to a few other people. Doesn't seem like it's that. I don't know
[00:36:45] Tayson: that big of a thing right now. Yeah,
[00:36:47] Joe: it's probably gaining popularity, thanks to YouTube and stuff like that. We're not the only hot tub video out there, right?
[00:36:55] Joe: Would you would you Winter Camp? Like, what would you do differently? If you didn't have a stove,
[00:37:03] Tayson: Yeah, because I done that a lot. Um, first off, the first thing you're going to want to do is get on Audible, or get on Netflix and download some some stuff to watch. Because as soon as that Sun Goes Down, You're Gonna like want to get in your sleeping bag. So just know that up front because that's that's the biggest difference with the stove. I can hang out my tent like In
[00:37:28] Tayson: my pajamas, you know, and my little down booties on and I just can chill in there and sit my hot cocoa and it's pretty relaxing. When you don't have that option. You're like at least gonna put your lower half in your sleeping bag, getting right away. Yeah and and you might have to get all the way in. So things to note are definitely things like compensation, especially if you're trying to like,
[00:37:51] Tayson: watch your phone and a lot of times you kind of end up like, getting down in your bag and so, beware of like breathing too much condensation into your bag and some things like that. But as far as differently, The stove is a fantastic catch-all. For if you get something wet your boots get moist or wet during the day you can
[00:38:11] Tayson: dry them out next to that night and the next day you've got a set of dry boots. Now if you've got if you don't have that option, that starts to compound. So the one time that I The first time I ever got frostbite in my feet was because of exactly that I was Seven Days. Inn in kind of the middle of November in the Colorado Rockies in the snow and my boots
[00:38:38] Tayson: just got more wet every day. I was rotating socks. Sometimes my socks wouldn't dry out very well because it just wasn't warm enough for this. It wasn't a sunlight and so, that would compound day after day, after day. And as, again the bag, I'd be warm. But the whole day long. My feet were just incredibly cold. And so towards the end of that trip, I finally got in the bag one night
[00:38:58] Tayson: and was like my toes are not
[00:39:01] Joe: like gaining their feelings back. Like they're so there's an issue going on and sure enough but took you know
[00:39:08] Tayson: two months to get feeling back and some of those toes. So just beware like there's things like that. You just the stove is like this big forgiving part of it. But it's not required and there are things going back to that Colorado trip, I could have done way different. Like I could have I didn't have the best set of boots. They could have been more waterproof and they could have been more
[00:39:27] Tayson: insulated. You can't just, I think you can't just rely on Switching your socks, you know, dry boot out or something in the snow. It just doesn't work very well or well enough. I should say. So other things, I do switch to a gas canister stove, and set of an alcohol stove primarily, which this is not a recommendation um, this goes against our terms, on our tenths and things, you should not have
[00:39:56] Tayson: a fire inside your tent just saying but I do I'll kind of trench something out dig it make it really safe and stable and then I can like cook inside the vestibule at least heat up water. Some stuff like that which is one other adaptation I do specially if I don't have Full on stove system.
[00:40:18] Joe: So, I have a question about this stove. This hot tinting situation, all these hot tents, they're floorless, they have to be. So, the air comes in basically and you get everything oxygenated. Yeah,
[00:40:32] Tayson: you can buy like nests for them basically enters. And I think if you bought the right setup, you could Enter and have the stove outside of it but the stove needs to be on the ground. You don't want it on top of a footprint, really, you know, because it's gotta go out of the mesh as well. So yeah, for the most part, they are all floorless You might be able to to
[00:40:56] Tayson: get one or two of them to kind of work with like a like a nest that's in half of the like a bigger shelter like a teepee but the most part they're all for us.
[00:41:04] Joe: Yeah. That would be its kind of that's one thing that's definitely making me hesitant about it. It's just like that like at least on the tent that you set up. Yeah,
[00:41:14] Joe: it didn't pitch low enough and there was quite a bit of a gap there and just thinking about, like, Cold. It was that night, negative nine degrees, that's really cold. On top of the fact that there might be wind or whatever. Obviously, there was wind at a certain point because your stuff got
[00:41:30] Tayson: snowed in like, if that snow would pack better, you can go around the outside and just throw some snow around the whole outside and it would just pack down, and seal.
[00:41:38] Joe: Yeah, I saw a YouTube comment and like, why did you just do this?
[00:41:41] Tayson: Yeah, there's that option, but that snow is so fine. It was so fresh. It wasn't really working that well
[00:41:47] Joe: for that, is that you top powder, the dry dry snow.
[00:41:50] Tayson: It's like Sandman yeah, weird. Um, the other option would be to have a tent with snow skirts but really
[00:41:59] Tayson: I I just could not Pitch it low enough because my trekking pole, I would even put it on an angle. So in the foot and and it was too tall to get the foot down. So, they're just what I was just, I didn't love that. My maybe if I had a type of tricking pull that has four sections in it, I could have got it low enough to the ground to, like
[00:42:20] Tayson: seal a little bit better than that scenario but Oh, shoot, people don't have to see that. And think like, oh, I'm just not Wrapped inside of it. It's really not that big of a deal. There's no bugs, there's no snakes out, you know what I mean? So like that fear goes completely away. It's really just I'm trying to get it pitched, low enough to the ground or having snow skirts, or pushing
[00:42:40] Tayson: snow against it if the snow's works for you. Okay.
[00:42:44] Joe: So what did you, what else did you did you learn any huge? Big overarching arcing lessons from this thing or just little things. Like maybe try the tent a little bit more and return the tent, get a different tent. Say your biggest lesson from this.
[00:43:03] Tayson: Um, that's probably the biggest one is just I think you just gotta know your gear. You got to know really what you're you're dealing with and if you've got anything that's new, like make sure you're really familiar with it. I did set it up in the backyard but you know, it probably would have been better for me to have tied guidelines to it earlier on. Make sure I have a couple extra
[00:43:25] Tayson: Stakes, maybe a snow stake or two but if I could have used that same shelter In a less severe condition. I would have been better for me, just to be more backpacking with that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That would be a really good tip. As far as other tips. I mean I didn't do this in the video and someone made a comment and that would have been smart of me to do. And
[00:43:50] Tayson: I should have known this. Like I've done it this way before, but I could have used the snow. Shoes. As kind of shovels. That might have saved me a little bit of time, digging out the snow area,
[00:44:01] Joe: supposed to kick it.
[00:44:02] Tayson: Supposed to Kickin It and stopping it, you know, and stuff. Could have done that. Explain that on the cold. Yeah, you didn't. I wasn't thinking I was,
[00:44:11] Tayson: I didn't. I kind of like it's got started and realized it was a bigger project than I thought it was gonna be so it's kind of like all right just needs a little more just need a little more, a little more and then ended up being you know I don't know how
[00:44:21] Joe: big was the tenth. He said it was 11 feet across it's like 11 feet long so
[00:44:26] Tayson: they're really long plus you gotta Kick Out spots for the stakes to go longer than that. Oh
[00:44:31] Joe: okay we were saying okay yeah
[00:44:32] Tayson: so it's just really long with wise. It wasn't too wide but it's that shelter is pretty big. I was kind of the original reason I got that particular one over. Some others was I was hopeful I could get two people in it and that was a pipe dream. I was no.
[00:44:49] Joe: So are there ultralight hot tents made for more than one person? Yes out there? Yes,
[00:44:54] Tayson: most of them the most popular ones are teepee style and you can get them from, you know, two people type TP sizes up to shoot. I think seek outside will custom make one that is like 16 people size. Wow, yeah. So lots of options in that, but I would say most people are using like, four-man TP, size ones. And you got to, typically count that the stove is going to take up
[00:45:18] Tayson: at least a one person out of that. So if you
[00:45:21] Tayson: got a four, four person, TPU probably gonna get three people in it. Realistically,
[00:45:25] Joe: I foresee questions about Outdoor Vitals, possibly getting into the hot tenting game. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no,
[00:45:37] Joe: yeah, well, that's kind of what you alluded to it earlier.
[00:45:43] Tayson: People like to watch it, it's fascinating. Yeah.
[00:45:46] Tayson: But I don't like immediately. See. All of our people going out and getting real serious and investing in the titanium products, and the shelters because you're gonna have to put some investment into it. Not a lot. I will say, like, you can use three season gear in the fourth season, really well with just a few tips and tricks. We've done videos and podcasts on that in the past. We'll do them again.
[00:46:05] Tayson: So like don't think that you got a totally rekit for the winner by any means, but they're still gonna be some things if you want to do this way. But really it's just like, it's just a game of percentages. The percent of people of our audience that are going to do it by it, use it aren't high enough seek outside. They've done well with some hikers, extreme level hikers. For the most
[00:46:27] Tayson: part, Their audience is Hunters. Hunters are going to go out rain or shine during their season dates, and a lot of the time, the hunting is better in the colder months, and getting into November and times like that. And so, they've
