15 here.
We’ve been here 30 years and I remember only one time it has been this cold.
@Chuck von Yamashita said:
Beautiful New Year paddle in Whittier, Alaska
Paris had enough sense to stay home?
She wanted to go but she hung out in the car.
I used to love winter backpacking, on skis, snowshoes (a traditionally laced pair I made from a Sherpa Tubbs kit) or on foot. In fact, I preferred it greatly to summer trips. For one thing I’m one of those people who hates hot weather and being sweaty and besieged by insects. Heat enervates me and makes me cranky. In the snowy winter you have no bugs, no need to carry lots of water since you can melt snow in camp AND your pack functions as a refrigerator so you can bring any food that you want. Best of all, you usually have the woods to yourself and your party. The silence and beauty of winter forests and meadows and mountains is amazing. Our usual destinations were the rugged ridges of Monongahela National Forest in nearby West Virginia (which I call “the Switzerland of the Appalachians”) or the various trail systems that cross northern Pennsylvania, but we would sometimes head for the White Mountains of New Hampshire for a week of mountaineering training during the winter holiday.
There are some drawbacks, of course. You have to carry heavier clothing and sleeping gear. Though you don’t need heavy clothing during the exertion of hiking with a full pack, you have to dress warmly in camp. After getting tired of using a massive goose down winter bag, I switched to a two bag system I devised with a Fall-weight down mummy bag slipped inside a Summer-weight oversized polyester mummy. The two bags each packed down small enough (size of a loaf of bread) to carry inside my pack instead of awkwardly strapped to the outside. The poly bag could be carried on day trips out of base camp as emergency bivouac insurance or to use in a rescue situation. It also served to protect the inner down bag from moisture (winter tents tend to collect frost on the inside of the roofs and walls from condensation, which can dampen sleeping gear) and I could tuck my clothing between the two bags while I slept for added insulation and to keep the stuff warm. Few things worse than having to put on frozen socks in the morning.
The biggest drawback was always the short days and looooong nights. You had to make camp before dusk and after an hour of getting tents set up, stoves primed and dinner cooked and consumed, the most practical option was to climb into the sleeping bags for warmth. Which meant that, tired from an active day and with a full belly, you tend to be sound asleep by 7 or 8 PM. Which means that you wake up at 3 or 4 AM and lay there for 4 or 5 hours awaiting dawn. So you either better have a good book and headlamp with you or have a really interesting tent mate because you are going to hear their life story in the wee hours.
Oh yeah, getting up to pee in the night was interesting, especially during periods of falling snow. I carried knee high nylon overboots I could slip on and carried a 6’ knotted loop of climbing webbing that I could throw over a tree branch to hang onto to support my “hover” over the designated latrine spot we’d dig through the snow and into the humus below. We did have some amusing incidents around personal hygiene habits. Typically at early dawn everyone would crawl partially out of their tents to scoop snow from surrounding drifts to melt for the breakfast coffee. We noticed one morning that one of our companions had visibly scooped snow for this from a drift alongside his tent. We also noticed that the scoop mark had gone straight through a previous bright yellow stain on that snowbank. “Is that coffee you’re drinking extra tasty this morning?” I asked him. He was chagrinned when we showed him the evidence, then shrugged when he realized it was his own “yellow snow” since he had been too lazy to traipse to the “pee tree”. I got my own comeuppance shortly thereafter when I realized that the pot of snowmelt into which I had dumped my instant cocoa was full of pine needles – had to strain it though my teeth until my tent buddy figured out we could filter it through a corner of the tent door mosquito netting.
I also had an unfortunate run in with the designated cat-hole on that same trip when the branch I was using to support myself while squatting over it broke and I had to throw myself forward so that both feet slid behind me – right into the poop pile. The “deposits” froze instantly into the nooks and crannies of my Vibram lug soles and I had to leave the boots in a plastic bag out in the snow for subsequent nights despite much fruitless and unpleasant effort with my Buck knife to clear the encrustations.
We also ended up participating in several rescue operations when we encountered lost or floundering and ill-prepared winter hikers in the mountains, both in PA and NH.
But overall, my memories of winter camping are mostly that is was magical.
@Chuck von Yamashita
Frozen now, canal is 25" deep at points
@PaddleDog52 said:
I am just getting over the same crud. It wears on you. I haven’t tried to freeze any bodily fluids.
Long as heat on and fridge full I am fine. Just need to trim my food intake. Today oatmeal and turkey L&T on a roll.
After a long Indian Summer, temps abruptly plummeted. Lots of nights in single digits and low teens soon froze the water.
Oddly, although the large reservoir hardened enough that a speed skater made a practice track on it, the small one was still liquid when we looked. The small one is not that deep, so ???
More sun on it? Fed water from?
@PaddleDog52 said:
More sun on it? Fed water from?
Plenty of sun on both, and both are reservoirs with stream inlets. Both get wind. AFAIK, neither has an aerating pump.
Maybe one is just barely above freezing while the other is below freezing.
@pikabike said:
@PaddleDog52 said:
More sun on it? Fed water from?Plenty of sun on both, and both are reservoirs with stream inlets. Both get wind. AFAIK, neither has an aerating pump.
Maybe one is just barely above freezing while the other is below freezing.
Could be the liquid one is shallower than the frozen one. Lake Erie, which is the warmest and most shallow of the Great Lakes, is just about completely frozen per NOAA. Lots of problems down there with ice jams on the St. Clair river. Hope the homeowners have flood insurance. I’ve never understood the rationale of building a home in a flood plain.
You are right Sparky, that is gross. But also very informative if you ever wondered why they say to cover your mouth and face in this stuff. What it did to your output it’ll also do to skin cells.
