Winter Camping

One of the great things about skiing is the wide variety of forms it can take, and I enjoy pretty much all varieties. I mix it up between skate and classic skiing on groomed trails, mellow backcountry, and more extreme telemark, backcountry mostly and sometimes at a ski hill. With last weekend dedicated to some tough skate ski racing, this weekend we opted for a different experience and settled on some winter camping.

We have a rough goal of trying to get out winter camping once a winter. And only on relatively warm-ish weekends. None of this -30C stuff. Actually, none of that -20C stuff. Or -15C stuff… Nope, we’re pretty much -15C or above type winter campers. Which is darn cold enough, really. This weekend was forecast to be sunny and fairly warm, so it fit our criteria. Last year we only camped for one night on our winter trip, and decided to ante it up a bit this year with two nights out. This schedule had the added bonus of allowing for a good ski on Saturday, without dragging along all our gear.

We left on Friday right after work. We started skiing sometime around 6:15, and skied 6.5km into Mash Lake, where we set up our camp. Managed to have everything set up while we still had some daylight, and then had dinner in the dark.

And of course, the setup included digging The Cooking Trench:

On Saturday morning we took ‘er easy, and set off skiing at about 10:30am. Neither of us were feeling super energetic, but we did a nice tour around Old Woman Lake. On the way to the lake we saw some neat wolf prints:

Skied around the lake, checking out the shorelines and the islands. Last time we were here was in a canoe in the summer, so it was fun to come back in the winter again.

And of course, we did the requisite stop at the creepy, ghetto cabin to sign the guestbook. They should really rip that thing down before it falls down.

After we’d explored the lake we headed back to camp, chilled out in the tent reading for awhile, and then had dinner before settling in for the night.

Sunday was forecast to hit +5C, so we got a move on in the morning and skied out to the car before the snow got too heavy and sticky.