Winter Camping Specialization

I choose to specialize in winter camping this semester which meant for days in a quinzhee and lots of exploring around the area. Over night isnt tooo hard because you know that the next day you get to go back and dry out your clothes and everything so no big deal. But 4 days is another story.
The snowing tradition continued for the whole four days. We built this quinzhee the night before and woke up to about a foot of new snow everywhere ( dont leave anything flat on the ground or youll never find it). To our surprise we did not only have a ton of snow but also hurricane..well okay more like intense blizzard force winds non stop. I was sitting up and putting on my shoes in the morning and snow was blowing into quinzhee from outside! Trying to cook breakfast in this weather was ridiculously hard it it became apparent that our ridiculous idea of building a ginaormous quinzhee big enough to walk into and fit an indoor kitchen was well worth a try.
And we did it! A full day of shoveling later and it was complete. Pictures will never do it justice but you can get an idea. This shows about half of it with a circular center counter. A walkway that two people could pass through, and bench seats that linned the walls and could comfortably fit 15 people even though we didnt have that many. You could almost stand straight up when walking in the door and I could stand all the way up on top of the counter and not hit my head on the roof it was so high up.
This is entire group on top of it. It was so big we had to huck snow up as high as we could and then there was someone on top that picked up that snow and brought it to the top of the hill. It was totally worth it though. It provided an amazing place to hang out, cook, and talk. Over the four days we talked alot about investing into other peoples lifes and asking questions. Overall just purposefully making it a practice to talk about eternal things that matter. How often does that happen even hangin out with all your Christian friends?
It was an awesome four days. Being out there we soon realized that it was also hard to do something else in that terrible weather. So we built an indoor toilet. We built a miniature quinzhee and used the toilet seat that we had strapped to out backpack and put it in there. Then we used a ski pole a sppon and our hands to dig out a deep and narrow hole. It worked beautifully. We also got to do some backcountry snowboarding, a night hike with snowshoes under the stars and lots of other fun in the snow stuff.

Telemark Skiing Class

Telemark skiing is dang hard! It is the best form of back country travel because you can hike up hills and ski down them. On the bottom of the ski are scales that grip the snow in one direction allowing you to go up hills easier without slipping down. Of course we push ourselves and go the craziest routes and try and summit the hardest peaks around so it makes things a little more tricky. Basically your toes are clipped in with you heel free to go up and down and when you do a telemark turn you lunge down and then pop up the other direction. Its a killer leg work out and a tough skill to master. I learned to really like it and enjoy the trip up the mountain instead of viewing it as a lot longer and harder version of a chair lift. If you go for a hike in the winter you can do it with tele skis on and then when you get to the top instead of hiking down you get the added benefit of skiing down.
All of a sudden all of our avalnche class training became very real to us when we all heard a loud echoing explosion sound that bounces off all the mountains around us. We were quickly told that that was the famous "wump" sound and to be on the lookout. Someone then spotted on the face across from us a slide where an avalanche had just occurred. It was actually really cool because of someone just saying "ya wear a helmet when you ride a back...safety safety blah blah blah" the danger was all of a sudden very real to us. We were constantly digging pits to do tests and picking our routes very carefully based on snow pack, degree of the slope, and other things like tree cover.

By this time in winter skills they came to a realization that we were spendint o much time going up and down the mountain are speding lots of money on diesel gas, a broken thumb from the sterring wheel, and lots of time shoveling and hiking. So the decided we would just go up once more and stay up for the rest of the four days. This was a surpsie to everyone and an added challenge to be sure. The warm showers after ward feel so amazing. This last pic was the sun shining on us in the morning after waking up before heading to the summit. That was a good gift.

Winter Camping Class

I really liked winter camping even though it was a challenge for me. The way it was described to me was that its not about how to survive in the winter time its about how to thrive in the winter time camping. We have had record breaking snow fall this year and even the big 6x6 military truck with chains on the tires was not able to make it up the hill like normal. So we spent the alot of the day hiking with snowshoes and shoveling out the road for the truck to get up. All through Winter skills i dont think it ever stopped snowing but very breifly a couple of days. Mostly it was snow all day and night long. The hikes were especially beautuful when the sun did decide to peak out.

When we got to the spot we were going to camp at we had no time to rest because we had to start building our quinzhee. This is kind of like a iglo but instead of block s of ice that you cut out it is made form a big pile of snow that you shovel. You first stomp out the ground to pack it down and then start piling a huge pile of snow in that area. After you have a good dome shape you let it harden for a couple of hours then you get to "mole" it out which is a blast but you get snow all over you.


With about 8 feet off snow everywhere all you need is a shovel an imagination and some muscles ( got that covered) and you can build anything you want. Me and my buddy scott built a couch with a foot rest and drink holders after our quinzhee was done to relax on and then we started on the kitchen. It was nice not having to worry about how much water we had because if we needed more you just fire up the store and melt some snow. Warning: you can burn it and that is some nasty tasting water. We eat pretty good out there. This is us testing out the noodles (ramen) for our spaghetti dinner that night. We used sticks that we found laying around and they worked quite well.

We were all pretty exhausted and couldnt wait for dinner to be ready so we could just go to bed in our new shelter. It actually sleeps very good in side all that snow. It blocks out virtually all sound from outside and everything around you is white snow. Just beware the dreaded "wump" while the snow is settling which could be ugly if it collapses on you.

The next day we got up and decided to make some sled runs for our air sleds that we hiked up with us. At the bottom of the run the was a small drop off that we made into a ramp which launched us into the air. Luckily there was plently of powder for all the ugly landings. It was a great time as long as you can keep clothes dry and have fun to keep your self warm which can be tricky at times.