Winter Campout

My assistants and I took the scouts camping in our district’s Klondike derby. This was my first, intentional, lets go camping in the snow trip (I’ve camped in below-freezing and snowy weather before, but only because the forecast wasn’t up to par).

The ten of us rolled out of home base at 4:00 pm – a half hour past schedule; some scouts are still coming to grips with the motto “Be Prepared”. Most of the district was already in place when we arrived at camp, requiring us to haul our venture further into woods. An advantage of that distance was to be isolated from the other camps.

We set up camp and had an uneventful evening, other than our camp stove didn’t work. We resorted to cooking our stew on an above ground fire pit. The boys stayed up till 11:00 pm and even in their tents continued to talk into the night. Everyone was dry and comfortable. I settled down for a pleasant rest in my one man backpacking tent with my trusty holo-fill sleeping bag and foam pad. My tent was on about two to three feet of snow resulting in a perfect surface - no rocks to worry about.

It started to snow just after midnight. It was heavy and sounded like rain lightly tapping the tent. About 5:00 am the wind picked up. It poised little problem for my tent, but the boys were sleeping in two huge spring bar tents. The combination of wind and snow on the roof caused both tents to collapse about 5:30 am. We determined it wasn’t worth putting them back up (the wind and snow were really getting difficult).

We started the day in a snow storm. It was difficult to cook (the assistants had fixed the stove after dinner last night). Snow was blowing side ways. One of the assistant’s tent blew down and rolled several yards away. The snow was wet and we became wet. The pleasant trip was now becoming miserable. Still we plugged on with breakfast, using only one burner to concentrate heat on the reaming portion of the griddle. We got the sausages and bacon cooked but only managed to get about one pancake for each boy.

We weren’t the only troop having difficulty working in the weather. The Klondike Derby events were cancelled and most of us pulled up camp shortly afterwards. We hit the road at 10:00.

The camp was a good experience. It will give the boys bragging rights. I would like to try to go lighter next time; take a few more two men tents instead and less troop equipment. We spent a lot of time hauling equipment in and then hauling it out again. A camp like this underscores what I like about about backpacking. Of course, this was my first winter camp, and we brought a lot of extra items to compensate for inexperience. I look forward to future winter camps.