Ed Huesers of Grand Shelter’s IceBox Igloo fame posted a description and pictures from a multi-day trip to the Wind River area in April on the GrandShelter’s forum. The trip report was nice, but the pictures were outstanding. Check it out.
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We are working on new articles, a few new posts, but mostly we have switched gears and are doing our summer canoe camping thing. See you next winter!
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I read a good book about dog sledding entitled Yukon Alone: The World’s Toughest Adventure Race by John Balzur. While it focused on his preparation and execution of the Yukon Quest Dog Sled race he had statements that I quote below that are quite applicable to winter camping.
“….winter is the time of greatest outdoor mobility here- the lakes and rivers and bogs have frozen over and the dog teams and snow machines have free range.”
“To journey out in winter requires a finesse and proficiency, but one is rewarded with the satisfaction of entering a universe that can only be described as pristine.”
Talking about extreme cold (-40). “In the cold you have no nose for smell, because everything is frozen and odorless. But your other senses become more acute. The air holds virtually no moisture at this temperature, so your vision is noticeably clearer; everything is rendered in ultra sharp contours.”
“…the snow muffles almost all noise and your ears grow acute.”
“Boredom is the precursor to despair, and I am not alone in believing that a chief source of boredom in our civilized, acquisitive, urban-crowded modern culture is the absence of unknown places and peoples to inflame our imaginations. In earlier times, the cartographer quaintly labeled unexplored spaces on the map with the words There Be Dragons. No such terrain is left for us now.”
“opportunity to journey into the dark and wild to enjoy….and explore a frozen landscape that almost everyone else in the world regards as inhospitable.”
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Wouldn’t it be nice to have a light pulk strapped onto your pack so you could instantly to switch back and forth between pack and pulk? This approach allows you to pull when there is a smooth and level trail and quickly switch to backpack mode in rough or wooded terrain.
Jörgen Johansson built a prototype and describes it over on BackpackingLight .
The pulk and harness consisted of aluminum sheeting, 1 mm, cut to the size of the pack, 40 x 16 inches, 7 plastic clips, 5 yards of 4 mm nylon cord and 2 lengths of plastic hose with an inner diameter fitting the cord.
Jörgen took it on a 70-mile trip in the four days/three nights trip and found that the aluminum sled became deformed, from sled to half pipe, and scooped some snow, but it was easily re-shaped by hand. The half pipe deformation and a relatively high center of gravity also caused the unit to become unstable.
Perhaps worth investigating would be a cut down plastic sled that could be strapped onto a pack. Anyone else with experience trying a pack/sled combination?
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Matt looking for a marked trail. When snow conceals the trail and trail markers one has to look for other signs. Matt is searching for a blaze cut into a tree, something that looks like a corridor among the trees or a path-shaped depression in the snow. Sometimes in deep snow the trail markers may be at waist level (or lower).
More on this trip here.
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Our friends over at Adirondack Almanack are celebrating their 4th year. Begun in the spring of 2005, the Almanack has grown to be a popular online journal of news and opinion, addressing local politics and culture, history, regional development, outdoor recreation, the environment and other issues for the Adirondack region. Adirondack Almanack is the longest running blog about life inside the Blue Line and has become a resource for Adirondackers and those outside the park who want to stay current on Adirondack news and events. The site attracts about 1,000 readers each day and has been growing steadily.
Adirondack Almanack’s content expanded with the February 2009 addition of two contributors who joined founder John Warren in writing daily posts. The Almanack aggregates daily the most interesting news from around the park as well as articles from outside the Blue Line that affect life here. It’s a good jumping-off place on the Web for all things Adirondack. Check out the new expanded Adirondack Almanack.
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We know how to beat a good topic to death. We have demonstrated our good (here and here) and botched group photos (here, here and here). But we aren’t done yet; no siree. The famous group shot is too important.
On our day trip to the Kane Mountain Fire Tower we climbed to new heights without first begging the question…”Is anyone scared of heights?” Click here for pictures from this trip.
Afterwards we posed for a group shot set up by Mark. Below Matt and Jim try to convince Skip to participate in their prank. Jim displays the intended holding technique.
Mark turns on the automatic timer, sprints to the group shot and gets flipped into a horizontal pose.
No one got dropped on their head. It was all in fun. So lets do one more, seriously.
Skip, Jim, Matt & Mark with their game faces on.
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Liz & Brad at Liz and Brad’s Big Adventures went camping at Mount Hood this past weekend and found the snow conditions good for building a snow cave and an igloo. Man! They must like to move snow. Check out their pictures and report.
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