Once the decision was made, we piled our gear haphazardly into the overnight backpacks hoping not to forget essential items. It's been a while that we backpacked and we left with the nagging feeling that we did leave something important behind. The kids, perhaps?
I kept my escape route wide open. My plan was to build the cave, have dinner and then assess the situation. My plan B was to hightail it back to the parking lot and drive home to a warm bed. Ean was determined to spent the night, no matter what.
We drove up to Mount Seymour and bundled up for the short hike to First Lake. Already the temperatures were much colder than we had expected. Instead of hovering around 0 degrees Celsius, as they had for the last few days, it was clearly below freezing and a deep layer of fresh, fluffy powder covered the hills. As we hiked the 20min in on the Dog Mountain trail, most other hikers were heading the other direction, back to the parking lot.
The spot we picked for our inaugural snow cave is a popular one for winter house builders. In previous years we had marvelled at some pretty amazing structures in the little glade just a few steps off the trail out of sight of the day trippers. This year, too, there was evidence of previous building activity. Ean started digging in the hope of finding the entrance to a prefab ice cave, but no luck.
Unlike Ean's dream of sleeping in a snow cave my igloo building ambitions started much earlier. As a little girl, every winter, I piled up all available snow in the effort to build a shelter. Unfortunately, with the exception of one memorable record snowfall in the 70s, we never had enough snow to succeed. The closest I came was building a little shelter, big enough for my dolls and a tea light ;-)
We drove up to Mount Seymour and bundled up for the short hike to First Lake. Already the temperatures were much colder than we had expected. Instead of hovering around 0 degrees Celsius, as they had for the last few days, it was clearly below freezing and a deep layer of fresh, fluffy powder covered the hills. As we hiked the 20min in on the Dog Mountain trail, most other hikers were heading the other direction, back to the parking lot.The spot we picked for our inaugural snow cave is a popular one for winter house builders. In previous years we had marvelled at some pretty amazing structures in the little glade just a few steps off the trail out of sight of the day trippers. This year, too, there was evidence of previous building activity. Ean started digging in the hope of finding the entrance to a prefab ice cave, but no luck.
Unlike Ean's dream of sleeping in a snow cave my igloo building ambitions started much earlier. As a little girl, every winter, I piled up all available snow in the effort to build a shelter. Unfortunately, with the exception of one memorable record snowfall in the 70s, we never had enough snow to succeed. The closest I came was building a little shelter, big enough for my dolls and a tea light ;-)
One long ago winter, just before starting a family, Ean expressed his wish to go winter camping. Now, I camped in all kind of adverse weather and can't say I enjoy fighting the elements when trying to sleep.
However, being pregnant with our first child, I figured, that if we do not get out to camp in the snow this winter, it won't happen for a long time. And right I was. The night in our little blue tent near the Red Heather shelter in Garibaldi Park and a frigid night in a tent with the kids on Dog Mountain a few years ago, were the last times we entertained notions of winter camping. Until now...
It took Ean about 3 hours of digging to build a cave big enough for the two of us and our gear. In the process, he did discover the remnants of an igloo built earlier in the winter. For those
unfamiliar with snow cave building, the idea is to sleep higher than your entrance tunnel, to
keep the warmer air in. Ean dug a creative version of this...first digging down, making a big enough area for him to stand and then dig up and in. My task was to move the snow piece he pushed to the entrance away and running around in circles to keep warm.
Around 6:00pm I decided it was time to cook dinner. Melting snow is a tedious effort and takes forever. Not having the stove sink into the melting snow is a whole different story altogether. By 8:00 we finally cozied up in
the cave with red wine, chicken noodle soup and mac'n cheese. I still was undecided if I should stay for the night or hightail it out. Needless to say that with a belly full of warm food and huddled in my sleeping bag, I opted to tough it out. We called our teens right from the cave, to let them know their parents were still alive and of course to check if they hadn't burnt the house down yet.
The night was not comfortable ;-) It was cold. The sleeping platform wasn't level and a tad too short for me. The thought of masses of snow above me unsettled my dreams. Ean snored. He
claims I snored. I had to pee... Definitely room
for improvement and with Ean planning to make this an annual adventure, we might just have a perfect night next year.
Emerging out of our hole around 8:30am the next morning we found a blizzard had blown in over night and dumped about 30cm of snow. Breaking camp only took a few minutes and after hiking through fresh, untouched powder back to the parking lot, we soon found ourselves in a cafe, enjoying a steaming mug of coffee and a cinnamon bun. Here's to next season's winter adventure.
Lessons learned:
- Make sure Jackson brings spare, dry clothes and gloves!
- Bring extra clothes for Jackson, just in case ;-)
- Bring light wooden board to cook on
- check the lighters, bring extra
- Wear jacket with hood
- Bring ear plugs
2 comments:
Awesome adventure! Really glad you and Jackson were able to cross this one off the "to do" list!
Post a Comment