Hey, Happy New Year. It's been a while. Been busy...
I don't know what you were doing on New Year's Eve. Maybe you were out at some bar or club, paying too much for drinks. Or you more sensibly consumed those drinks in front of the fire at home, or you were crammed into someone else's home with a bunch of other revelers. Perhaps you were snuggled into bed long before 2008 turned to 2009, or on a tropical holiday, or stuck in an airport. Like I said, I don't know what you were doing. I do know that, in all likelihood, your New Year's Eve involved a whole lot more heat than mine. Even if your house was unheated and you were huddled in the one room that makes it up to 10 degrees, your New Year's Eve involved more heat than mine.
Ten minutes before the official ball drop or whatever it is that is done to mark the changing of the years, I woke up, and I had to pee. Not really all that remarkable, except for the part where I was fully clothed, swaddled in two sleeping bags, with extra clothes sandwiched in my sleeping bag layers, on the downmat, under a tree, outside. And it was -25C (others say colder, but that's what my cheap little thermometer read), and it was a bit windy. So consider... no matter what I did, I had to worm my way out of my cocoon of precious warmth and either squat or walk the three minutes to the outhouse. I chose the outhouse, since I needed to generate body heat before re-entering the bags and running back from the pit stop gave me a chance at that.
Five minutes before the ball drop, the zipper on one of my bags got stuck. I took off my mitten to fix it, but within a few seconds I lost the dexterity. I was already in my bags up to well past my waist and wearing a puffy down vest under a down jacket, scarf and toque - I was fine to stick my hands inside between my thighs for a few seconds, and then worm that fabric out from the zipper.
At midnight, my world was back to a 10cm diameter breathing hole in the hood of my sleeping bag, and I fell asleep. Kevin later told me that he woke up right at midnight. I suspect it was all that rustling and perhaps quiet cussing about three feet away that did it. In any case, when you are both in winter sleeping gear, chatting is not really an option as there is too much insulation around your ears and your voice is muffled from inside your cocoon anyway. So maybe it wasn't my peeing operation, maybe it was his own call of nature. But like many men, he is very smug about his pee bottle, which hangs out inside his own set of down layers.
So yeah, that's what we did for New Year's. We are not nutjobs, we are experimental. I mean, do you know at what range of temperatures you would be comfortable outside, with what clothing? what sleeping system? I now know that my sheepskin boots, cosy and cuddly for hanging out at -15, are not enough at -25 if I'm inactive. But then, neither were the big stomping Sorels I borrowed from Kevin (though Kevin seemed happy with his newer, even bigger, moonboot resembling Sorels). I know that I can generate heat just fine - I even took off my toque and an inside layer during a relatively leisurely hike (it never got above -21 during the day either) - but I can't be sedentary unless I'm in the sleeping bags. I was kind of useless in camp - I needed to hop around and I was cold. By the second evening, I was wearing long underwear top and bottom, expedition weight fleece pants, insulated shell pants, wool long underwear over my polypro on top, with expedition weight capilene on top of that, and then Kevin's big puffy down vest, and then my own crappy down coat (fortunately cut roomy enough to accommodate the puffy layer underneath). The toque did not leave my head for 48 hours, and I only changed wool scarves because one of them was clogged with ice.
We had issues with stoves - the plastic pump on Kevin's Dragonfly turned out to be cracked (I think before the trip already - there was a fuel leak the first time I tried to use it), the Whisperlite melted itself into a big hole (because we didn't bring an appropriate base, and it was too windy at the picnic table) and then didn't function as efficiently as I'd like. We had issues with water, too. We were at Mew Lake in Algonquin, so there was running water (even if no heat, since the hydro was still out from the most recent storm event), but I didn't realize this right away so we were melting snow. Melting snow takes a lot of snow, fuel and time, and then, if you are in a treed area, you still need to figure out how to strain out all the pine needles and other detritus. 
I sacrificed a clean cotton t-shirt to use as a strainer, though I wouldn't be carrying any cotton t-shirts under normal winter camping circumstances. The Nalgenes froze within minutes, and if we didn't keep them thread down, the top would have to be put in hot water to even get them open. I couldn't get cold water down at -20, but hot water was great. Without the thermoses, we would have been playing with dehydration.
I could go on. I like winter camping, despite my well-documented dislike of being cold (and cold I was, at times). See, at that temperature, your camp skills need to be good. There isn't really much margin for mucking around if you screw up, you don't have long before things stop working (bottles stop unscrewing, hand stop being able to pull fabric from zippers, camera batteries stop responding...) So, for me, this is a challenge I haven't played with in a few years.
This blog hasn't been updated much the last year or two - and this despite the fact that I've been doing as much as ever, in the outdoors realm. It just seemed like I'm telling you the same thing over and over again - maybe I was paddling a different boat, in a new place, but really, kayak camping is not much of a challenge these days. This is not to say I don't love it anymore - because I do, oh I do, I like winter but I have moments of intense longing for summer because I miss backcountry camping - but that it's not interesting to write about anymore. For me, those trips are mostly hanging out with my friends, and the "new" in recent history has just been about how my camping style has been changing as we work out the wrinkles. I've come to appreciate that we as individuals work out a dynamic with each other over time. But that's not really new or interesting, it's just what happens.
But new and interesting is going to be getting back on my bike this winter. I managed to put the studded tires on yesterday, but cross-threaded the pedals (sigh...) and got to an "I can't fix this on my own" point so now the bike is in the shop, getting the threads in its crank re-drilled and new (plain, flat, non-cleaty) pedals put on. Then I'll start to futz with what clothes to wear at what temperature. If I'm lucky, after Kevin gets back from Alaska, he'll let me try riding the Pugsley on snow trails. See the Pug? Now that would be exciting, and something I've never done before.
Don't mistake any of this for ennui - I'm not bored with my life. I love doing what I do. But I also love the learning curve of the new. Back on those years where every weekend pushed my boundaries, because I was trying caving, and going all these places I've never been before, and learning to cross-country ski, and getting a sense of the limits of my body endurance-wise, and firming up my camp skills... well, I kind of miss that feeling too. It felt more like adventures then. Somehow, I got comfortable. I think I'll appreciate comfort more if I push beyond it from time to time...
I plan to sleep outside again soon.
(Some photos stolen from Melissa, who was nice enough to come and meet us for a hike our last day. She even brought coffee and donuts, and gave us water so we didn't have to deal with the melting mess again since by this time, there was no more running water in the campground. The Pugsley photo is stolen from Kevin.)
Posted by Johanna at January 11, 2009 09:36 AM