Survival With Style

Have you ever been struck in the woods and needed to make a temporary shelter for overnight?
If you needed to make a shelter would you choose the lean-to style placing a long limb between two trees, forming a ridge pole and adding more limbs to form a rack to place evergreen boughs, to protect you from the weather?

Or would you use a different form of lean-two with notched limbs and a ridgepole for a shelter five feet high and narrowing down to a length of seven feet or less depending on your height?

Some people talk about making a tee-pee shaped shelter because they had a plastic sheet with them to cover the sides. Or a tarp draped over a limb to form a tent.

Maybe it is the fact I read to many Boy Scout magazines, but I think I like the first choices best to provide a dry spot to sleep for the night. For fun I have in younger days built the first model of making a ridge pole and then forming a rack with other poles and using evergreen limbs to form a tight water survival shelter. But I never had to stay in one over night.

Have any of you ever had to use a lean-to in the woods? If so give your thoughts about how well they work for keeping someone dry and comfortable. Others with opinions on this subject please share your views as well.

 

I wouldn't suggest trying to make a stable tent using sticks as supports. If you have a tarp and can get rope I would recommend tying the rope taught between two trees and hanging the tarp over top to form a peak then securing down the sides using sticks as stakes or rocks if the ground is very hard.