Lean-To is a great way to quickly make a shelter, but the environment must be just right. There should be plenty of trees around, with available downed branches, or the level of effort to make one is too high that other options are better. In a nutshell, a lean-to is you lean several long branches against a support and cover with either tarp or leaves and/or smaller branches.
Items needed to construct a Lean-To:
- 2 trees that are about 5 to 6 feet apart or a rock wall at least 4 foot high
- 20-30 long fallen branches about 5 feet long
- Some cordage
- Leaves, grass you can cut and peel, smaller branches with leaves, or a tarp
- Guy lines and stakes if using tarp
How to construct a Lean-To:
- Either take a long sturdy fallen branch or tree and place one end on one of the 2 trees and then place the other end on the other of the 2 trees. If the long sturdy branch is parallel to the floor, that would be best. If there are not 2 trees that are about 5-6 feet apart, then use the rock wall as support.
- Begin placing each of the 20-30 long fallen branches and lean them to the support. Tie off the end pieces with cordage and continue placing the fallen branches side by side until you have good cover. If using a rock wall for support, make sure that the ends are supported by 3 long branches bunched with a cordage like a tripod, 2 sides of the tripod against the wall, and the other is leaning towards the wall.
- Once you have about 5-6 foot of coverage begin, placing the leaves, cut grass and smaller branches on top of the leaned branches to provide better waterproofing. Or you can place a tarp on top of the leaned branches and take the hanging end by the opening and tie it down with guy lines. If time allows, cover the sides with more branches to keep wind from coming in from the sides.
- If the support branch looks like it is bowing, take another long branch that has a Y shape top to push it back up as a weight bearing support near the center on the open side of the lean-to. You may want to put 2 weight bearing support at about a third apart from the entire length.
It’s that simple, only if you can find the materials required to build this. I have built these in about an hour by myself, but I had all the materials I needed around my basecamp.
