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Winter camping by Ken Koscik
Have you ever wondered what your favorite summer campsitesand lakes look like in the winter under a blanket of sparkling snow? How much more clearly could you see the stars and northern lights then? Could the fishing be better? To expand your horizon, not to mention extend your camping and fishing season, try camping this winter. All you need is the right equipment, the right attitude and the right friends. Joel Toso was my winter camping mentor. I met him at a ColdRegions Civil Engineering Conference in Duluth, Minnesota. I was presenting apaper on the thermal expansion of ice on Madison, Wisconsin, area lakes. After we exchanged stories about our camping experiences in theBoundary Waters and Quetico Provincial Park, Toso invited me to go on his next winter camping trip. Toso had snowshoed into Jap Lake off the Gunflint Trail eachof the previous four years and had caught his limit of lake trout on almost every trip. That set the hook in me. We made plans to set out on a date in January. There were six in our group, two from Madison and four from the Twin Cities. We met in Grand Marais, Minnesota, for a hearty 5:30 a.m.breakfast before heading up the Gunflint Trail. We stopped where the KekekabicTrail crosses the road and unloaded our gear. The plan was to snowshoe west on the Kekekabic about three miles and then cut cross county to Honker Lake. From Honker, we would go north to an unnamed lake and then proceed west until wereached Jap Lake. Bushwacking on snowshoes through the Boundary Waters, I pulled a big Otter ice fishing sled filled with camping, cooking and fishing gear, as well as an ax, saw and grain shovel. It was a bright and brisk sunny day for this 5-mile hike. Even though it was cold, most of us stripped down to a single layer. We took turns breaking trail through a foot of snow. We probably averaged less that a mile per hour. I was about 15 years older than the other guys, but managed to keep up. It took three guys pulling one common rope to get our gear up some of those hills. Another problem was the buildup of ice on the bottom of our snowshoes. If the lead man ran into slush, he had to quickly find an alternate route and scrape his 'shoe bottoms. We quickly learned to avoid wet areas. We reached Jap Lake about midafternoon and started to build our quinzies. Quinzies are snow shelters built out of a pile of snow about 6 feet high and 12 feet in diameter. We built them right out on the lake ice in a small sheltered bay. Each quinzie could harbor three of us. Quinzies built The 10 commandments of winter camping Here are some helpful tips I picked up at the most recent Traditional Winter Camping Symposium: 1) Your first solo winter camping trip should be in your backyard. 2) Beginners should set up a base camp and set out from there for other points of interest. 3) The days are longer in March. 4) Be alert for any sign of dehydration. 5) All equipment left outside a tent must be hung up or
stored vertically. If you lay it on the ground and it snows, you will not find it again. 6) Your group should have common goals and expectations. Be prepared to change your trip plans if the weather changes or if anything unexpected happens. 7)
Your campsite should be sheltered, not out in the open. 8) The work involved in setting up camp falls into four categories:finding firewood, water, shelter and a site. 9) The quality of the firewood is more important than the quantity.
10) Preparation and prevention do not cost much. Emergencies, however, cost lots of time and energy. – Ken Koscik When you build a quinzie, you have to wait about two or three hours for the snow to set. Then you can slowly carve out the inside and hope that the walls do not cave in. One trick is to place small twigs about an eighth of inch in diameter into the sides of the Quinzie. They are then pushed from the outside into the snow pile about 8 inches. When the carver inside theQuinzie encounters one of these twigs, he knows that the wall is 8 inches thickand he stops carving. It was quite dark by the time we finally crawled into our shelters for the next two nights. Inside it was comfortable and the temperature rose to about 30 degrees. Outside, the temperature dropped below zero. I was really tired and slept like the proverbial log. One of the guys elected to sleep out in the open with just a piece of plastic over his sleeping bag. We all had brought Thermarests and good sleeping bags. One of the quinzies had collapsed and had to be rebuilt late into the night, which wasn't much fun and deprived its inhabitants of some sleep. We cooked all of our meals on an open fire. That meant gathering lots of firewood. The quiet northern air was interrupted by the rhythmic blows of the ax hitting and splitting the firewood. The next day, most of the guys snowshoed a portage trail toSeagull Lake. I elected to stay put, relax, enjoy the scenery and prepare more wood for the fire. I also had to repair my snowshoe for the hike out. A spruce branch provided a nice splice and the tie wire I had brought came in handy for lashing. And the fishing was good That afternoon, with the limited help of a dull ice auger,we cut several fishing holes. We ended up using an ax to finally cut through the ice. In about 30 feet of water, we used salted minnows as bait After just a bit of jigging, we started to catch trout. Our prey didn't hit the bait so much as suck it. You would feel the line get a little heavier and have to set the hook yourself. We ended up catching our limit of three trout each. That afternoon, two more friends of Toso's snowshoed into our campsite. They were pulling a long and very narrow toboggan. While we had on heavy Sorrel boots, the newcomers wore light mukluks. In no time at all,they raised a large white canvas-walled tent. Next, a small steel stove wasplaced inside with a stovepipe coming out the side. It was warm as toast in that tent and there was room to cook and dry wet clothing. Our quinzies, other than being prone to collapsing, were OK. But that tent was the Taj Mahal of theBoundary Waters. Obviously, these guys had gone winter camping before. After that trip, I wanted more experience, too. I dreamed of canoeing to a good campsite in October and stashing a large supple of firewood so that I could spend more time fishing and exploring. I wanted to learn more, much more, about how to do it right. My opportunity to learn more came at a Midwest Winter Camping Symposium. Midwest Winter Camping Symposium I have attended the last two symposiums, met some really great people and gathered a lot of good practical information. And nearly everything I've learned there has applications to summer canoe camping, too. This year was the eighth annual Traditional Winter CampingSymposium and was held at the Beaver Creek Reserve just north of Fall Creek and east of Eau Claire. It is always held the last weekend in October. I arrived at the event this past fall to find 20 of those now familiar tents complete with wood burning stove and smoke stacks. Others inattendance chose to sleep in the bunk houses or use the family cabins for the weekend. Wonderful home-cooked meals were prepared by a team of cooks and servers from the Twelve Apostles Greek Orthodox Church from Duluth, Minnesota. Greek pastries were abundant for desert and evening snacks. Duane Lottig from Snow Trekkers Tents and Jon Farchmin are the brains and muscle that make the symposium happen. They have attracted world-class explorers and teachers to put on classes and workshops. Rob Kesselring led the Winter Camping 101 class. There were other classes dealing with cooking on a wood stove, making your own ski pulk,and methods of winter travel. Dave Freeman and Amy Voytilla showed pictures taken during their recent 1,200-mile kayak trip around Lake Superior. Participants are encouraged to share their slides from past trips, too. Many people brought their excess camping gear, clothing, maps andtools to sell at the silent auction. This year the workshops dealt with knife making, toboggan building, whittling toys and games and even making your own wool shirts. Winter camping does have its advantages. The scenery is usually exceptional, it doesn't rain, there are no bugs and you usually have it all to yourself. People I've talked to who haven't camped in the wintertime tend to worry about wind chill. I don't like the wind either, but if you dress properly the wind is not a big deal. There is an old Norwegian saying: Det erikke derlig vaer, bare darlig klaer. "There is no such thing as bad weather;there is only bad and improper clothing." Mark your calendars for the next Winter Camping Symposium,October 24-26, 2008. Call 715/378-4216 for details or visit www.empirecanvasworks.com. The website has links to vendors, such as The Paddling Shop in Madison, who rent the aforementioned tents and stoves. And the most informative book I've found on the subject is A Snow Walker's Companion by Garret and Alexandria Conover. I, for one, am looking forward to doing some ice fishing,cross-country skiing and camping this winter. How about you? Ken Koscik is a retired civil engineer in Monona,Wisconsin. His passions include canoeing, fishing, camping, cross-country skiingand building woodstrip canoes and kayaks. Koscik teaches canoe building at theNorth House Folk School in Grand Marais, Minnesota. He has made over 55trips to the Quetico over the past years.
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