After our trip to Arrowhead we decided that we were progressing and wanted to try out winter camping.  We asked my friends and they agreed to join us.  So the four of us planned our trip out to Algonquin.  At first they had thought that we had planned on renting a yurt for our first foray into winter camping, but my wife had decided that she wanted to go all out and we were going to use tents.  Yes, we are slightly crazy... So we began planning out what we would need for such a trip. First things first was shelter. We decided to purchase a 4 season tent, yes, extremely crazy considering we didn't even know if we'd enjoy ourselves.

We ended up getting the MEC Light field 2 tent (seen above), which was the lowest costing 4 season tent we could find. We decided that a 2 person tent would serve us better, even though there was less room for gear inside. The smaller space meant we had less area to warm up when we got into the tent. We setup the tent a few times at home. It was a pretty easy tent to setup and take down. The thing you notice first when you get in for the first time is that its a lot warmer than our 3 season tent. My only real complaint (and one that was voiced in the reviews for the tent) was that the fly is extremely tight and it is difficult to get it hooked to the poles.  It was even worse trying to get everything connected at the campsite.  Setting it up on the site was another story.  We had bought snow stakes to help with setting up the tent and they ended up being very useful.  One thing I hadn't taken into account was that the camp site would be plowed.  Having a plowed site meant that the snow was all packed down, almost ice and sticking stakes in just wasn't going to work.  I ended up using the stakes as dead man anchors, just placing them on the ground and piling and packing snow on top of them.  You can see the piles of snow around our tent in the picture above.  I ended up piling up about a 6 inch snowbank around the entire tent.nbsp; This actually worked pretty well. I used guy lines tied off on large boulders of snow to stretch out the fly and this worked well as well. The only difficulty was pulling up the stakes when we had to pack up. I had to dig through about 5 - 6 inches of ice to get them free. For sleeping we already had -7C rated sleeping bags which we enhanced with an overbag that added 5-10 extra degrees to this limit. It worked pretty well and was very warm. The main drawbacks that I found was that adding the overbag restricted movement in our sleeping bags (already very restricted as they are mummy bags) even more. Also, trying to get everything zipped up and aligned is a test I patience. I found it very difficult both nights to get the inner bag zipped up and then the outer bag zipped up and have everything all aligned so I'd be comfy. When I finally did I was able to settle down to a nice sleep.

The one thing I found was that we ended up with a lot of condensation inside of the tent. The 2nd night was the worst. It was the colder of the 2 nights and when I woke up it looked like it had snowed in our tent. Lessening the amount of condensation build up is something that I will definitely be looking into for our next trip (yes we are already wanting to go again...). To help with warmth, we also piled up our packs at one end of the tent to make a sort of barrier and covered ourselves with out jackets and fleece sweaters.  This helped more than I'd think.  One thing I found though is that eventually my feet started to freeze.  The first night wasn't too bad, so I kept my hiking socks on under my wool socks.  This helped, but my feet still eventually became very cold.  I think I will be doing what Zoe did, purchase a pair of fleece socks.  She said they kept her feet nice and toasty throughout the entire night.  My butt also got cold as the night wore on, but I put this down to me being a side sleeper and my butt facing the wall of the tent - and possibly touching it - throughout the night - the tent is quite small. One of our other very important purchases were hut booties. These proved invaluable.  Wish I had taken a picture of them - I really have to get better at taking pictures now that I'm blogging.  On a snow tubing trip a few weeks earlier, both of us found that our hiking boots, while nice and warm while hiking, weren't so good when you just stood around.  Both our feet and toes were very cold during tubing.  Since we knew this would be a car camping trip and that we'd be lounging around camp quite a bit we didn't want our feet to get too cold. So we decided to each get a pair of hut booties. I was slightly skeptical at first but I have to say they were very much worth it.  Once I started to feel my feet get a little cold, I switched to my hut booties and they warmed up nice and quick.  They were great for wandering around camp, sitting by the fire, even making late night trips to the bathroom.  You do have to be a bit more careful walking around in them as the soles aren't exactly made for hiking.  And I was a lot more conscious sitting by the fire of floating embers.  Mornings were great with them too.  It's so much easier to just slip them on than having to try to tie up your boots in the morning.  Yes, they are a bit cold when you first put them on, but warm up nice and fast. Male pattern baldness, the most common type of hair loss is thankfully rather simple by decreasing the viagra pill on line level of dihydrotestosterone in the body you can usually prevent loss of hair or reverse it even if it has already begun. The pill takes at least 40 minutes to mix up with the blood and viagra ordination then starts declining. Probably more men care about putting the generic cialis samples manhood back in the man than putting a man on the moon. This pain can either happen in a few raindogscine.com levitra 40 mg weeks or occur in decades after gallbladder removal operation. Water was also a slight issue that I don't think any of us really thought about.  Its really something you take for granted camping during other seasons.  You need water, walk down to he pump and fill up your container and plop it down somewhere and your usually good for the night. Need some extra drinking water, leave a bunch of bottled water in the car. I don't think any of us realized how fast things freeze outdoors.  Water bottles sitting in he car were pretty much all frozen or extremely cold by the end of the first night. This is great on those warm summer nights, but when its already below freezing and you have 5 layers on just to keep warm, drinking cold water is a big blow to the system.

The cold was something we were initially worried about and brought extra clothes just in case as we didn't really know what to expect.  We purchased new "warm' base layers meant for winter camping and layered them on.  And for me, once I started to do some work - like setting up the tent - I found I was able to be comfortable, even warm in just two warm base layers on.  Lounging around camp meant adding an extra layer of fleece on - both top and bottom - between my base layers and my winter jacket.  The cold really wasn't that big a deal. Even after all that it was a really fun trip.  We had a nice big warm fire, lots of food and lots of fun.  There's just some things you can't do in the summer that you can do during the winter when everything's frozen.  Things like sitting out in the middle of Mew Lake to have lunch, or snoeshowing across said lake and even making a snow angel in the middle of the lake.  As you can probably guess, we spent a lot of time on Mew Lake, probably because it was right next to our camp site. We  were able to just walk/slide down a little path right onto the lake.

Its a really cool feeling being the first ones to walk out on the snow of parts of the lake, knowing we were the first venture to that part of the lake, at least since the last major snowfall. Thinking back on it now, its a little freaky to think that we were basically playing in the snow in the middle of the lake. That was about it for our playing. After a couple of hours wandering around the lake and taking pictures, we went back to our campsite and snacked and prepped dinner. You really do notice the shorter days when your out camping during the winter. Its an odd feeling knowing you need to start dinner prep by around 4 so your not scrambling around in the dark a few hours later. Thinking back on the trip we actually didn't really do that much. It really was a relaxing trip.  Outside the few hours we spent snowshoeing out on the lake most of our time was spent at the campsite eating.  Or just sitting around and relaxing. I almost forgot to mention the night. The night sky was Amazing. We lucked out with the weather, which was great. We got nice sunny days and clear cloudless nights. The amount of stars you could see was incredible. We also got to hear a wolf howl, which was a furst for all of us. This was cool until you started to imagine where they might be. We went on the long weekend and we were surprised at how busy it was. Almost all of the 30+ camp sites were occupied. Even more interesting was the number of families with small children who were there. I hadn't expected that. It was almost like a summer trip only with snow everywhere.  It made us feel a little less crazy. OK this post is getting long again. Who knew I'd have so much to write about. Anyways, it was a great trip and I'm sure we'll be to going again this winter and unless something changes each winter for the foreseeable future.