All this cold weather we’ve been having (at least by Mid-Atlantic standards) has got me thinking about cold weather camping. There is nothing like it. Last year we went on the coldest camping trip I’ve ever been on. Yes that’s right. I’m about to bore you with another backpacking story. If you don’t like it, go read a mommy blog.

My father, my brother, his dog and I decided it would be fun to go backpacking in February. OK, the dog didn’t get much say in the matter, but that’s what you get for being a dog. We decided we would hike to a cabin. That way when we got there, we could build a fire and warm up nice and toasty. That was the plan at least. Of course, it snowed a couple of days before we were supposed to go. It only amounted to an inch or two, so we decided to go anyway. Good thing we brought the snowshoes. Oh wait … we didn’t bring snowshoes. And an inch or two where I live translates to a foot or so up in the hills.

So there was more snow than we had counted on. We decided it wouldn’t be that big of a hindrance, we were well equipped (except for those snowshoes.) We were wrong. The walking was extremely slow going. We walked for three hours. We couldn’t figure out where we were on the map. It showed a shelter after two miles. Surely we’d gone over two miles. It had been uphill to that point, but in three hours even going very slow, we should have been able to do 4 or 5 miles. We walked a little further and found that shelter. Over three hours to walk 2 miles! We still had five to go! For the first time on one of these trips, I was worried about be able to make it to our destination. If we couldn’t get there by sunset it would get cold, very cold. We pressed on, understanding that we had to walk faster.

I’ve talked before about trudging. We had walked less than halfway and I was already trudging. As a matter of fact it worse than that. The snow had compressed some, so that there was a “crust” on it. If you stepped lightly, you could stay on top of it. Most of the time. Every few steps my boot would sink through the crust and my shin would slam into the icy crust that was there. Then to add insult to injury my other foot, still in stride and expecting me to be walking not sinking, would kick me in the calf. Step. Step. Step. Crunch. Sink. Ouch. Kick. Ouch. Over and over it went like this. I began to count how many steps I could take with out sinking. My record was thirty. Crunch. Sink. Ouch. Kick. Ouch.

Eventually, we made it to the cabin. It was starting to get dark out and was very dark inside. We found a candle and lit it, but it did not provide much light. My brother and I set about building a fire in the large fireplace, while my dad tried to figure out the woodstove. The fire in the fireplace only provided a little warmth and we couldn’t figure out the woodstove. As soon we’d get it lit the whole place would smoke up and it would go out. After having to open the doors and windows a number of times to let the smoke (and what little warmth there was) out, we figured out that the pipe leading out from the stove to the chimney was closed. We had a good evening, we ate and talked and worked on keeping the fires going. After a while there was nothing to do but go bed. The upstairs was very cold, but that was no problem … my sleeping bag is rated to zero degrees, it wasn’t quite that cold.

We woke up to incredible cold. Even though some embers still smoldered in the fireplace, no trace of warmth remained. I mixed up some gatorade to get me jumpstarted. I stirred it up to a sip and looked out the window. It was bright and beautiful out there. A stream meandered through the snow in front of the cabin. The air had a crispness to it that announced the cold. I went to take another sip of my gatorade only to find that it has ice floating in it. It had begun to turn into a gatorade Slurpee. I now have a small thermometer on my backpack, because I’d like to know how cold or hot it might be on any given trip. I do not know how cold it was that day, but my guess is that it was below 10 degrees when we started.

The walk out wasn’t bad. Someone had cross-country skied on this part of the trail so it was much more packed down. And that made for better walking. I wasn’t cold while we walking, like I said I have pretty good gear. But when we’d stop for a break I could feel the cold creeping in. We walked for a while until we came to another shelter. Someone had spent the night there the previous night. I don’t think that they had a very good night either. They left behind 5 bottles of water. The bottles were useless to them, they were frozen solid. They had built a fire, a big one by the looks of it, but it hadn’t even melted the snow a few inches away. We felt pretty proud of ourselves for thinking of renting the cabin that night.

It was a fun trip, and I’d do it again, but next time … I’ll have snowshoes.