Surviving

Survival in the Desert

Burning Man is held in Nevada's Black Rock Desert near Gerlach. The flat expanse of the dry lake bed is commonly refered to as the Playa. It is beautiful place and harsh place.. all rolled into one. It can be over 100 degrees in the daytime and 50's-40's at night (it's at approximately 4000 feet elevation). We've personally experienced winds in excess of 55 mph in 2000 but it has been known to blow in excess of 75 mph at times. If it rains, then your really stuck.... deep in the mud. Any attempt to move a vehicle is sure to get it stuck even worst. Walking is real challenge when it rains, so your best bet is to stick close to camp and stay warm. It seems that most years the weather has been pretty good but never take the Playa for granted.

You need three things to survive in the desert (in order of importance): water, shade and food.

Water

Water is life in the desert. It is such a dry place that it draws water out of your body. You will dehydrate in only a matter of hours. Drinking beer or a caffinated drink only makes it worst since they both draw water out of your system. You need to consume about 1 gallon a day (more if it gets over 38C (100F)). Of course you'll probably want to bring more for cooking and maybe some to take a shower. We like to bring alot of water with us to the playa..... five 5 gallon foldable containers for drinking and four 7 gallon containers for washing & other activities. Comes in handy if we do alot of washing or we need to help people out with some water.

Shade

I've seen so many people who come to Burning Man for the first time, just driving their car and maybe having a tent with them. Then around the middle of the day their tent is hotter than a pizza oven and they've gone off to take refuge from the heat at center camp. Bringing a source of shade is really essential to a enjoyable time. Also allows you to enjoy a nice nap in the midday heat. Our shade structure is about 20 ft long and 18 ft wide. We have plenty of room to relax and have over some people to hang out. You can see the layout of our shade structure here.

Food

I think everybody can agree that you gotta eat no matter where you are. There are two extremes when it comes to bringing food to the playa. Some people are very content eating energy bars and crackers with their water through out the event. At the other end of the spectrum are people who pull up in their RVs with the fully decked out kitchen and have their personal chef preparing meals. We'd like to think we fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. We love to cook and bring a pretty standard menu of food. We bring a small set of pans & dishes to cook and eat off of. Our menu can range from chicken fajitas to mac & cheese to just sandwiches. To keep all of the food and drinks we bring cold... we use a three cooler system. We have a big 109 quart cooler we use as the freezer. We put about 40 lbs of block ice and about 30 lbs of dry ice in this cooler. Then in a 50 quart cooler we have about 20 lbs of ice and small chunk of dry ice to use as a fridge.... keeps the cheese and other stuff we don't want frozen at a nice temperature. The final 50 quart cooler becomes our drink cooler. We only stock it with ice and try to keep it drained of water. We also stock it with ice from the freezer cooler during the coolest part of the day. Never needed ice once from Camp Artica.