We made it to and fro the cabin in the woods, even though the thermometer dipped below minus 26 Fahrenheit. Tim was dressed as a lost sailor. He loves his foul weather gear and has always worn it in the cold weather: Henry Lloyd red jacket and black overall bottoms. This year he stepped it up a notch. The joy of winter camping (to me especially) is you don’t have to carry all your gear (warm clothes, good food and wine). One (Tim) can haul it in on a sled. I held up the rear on the downhills so it didn’t careen into Tim’s ankles. We used a little plastic sled and had all our gear in an old sail bag. Hence the wayward sailor.
To our dismay, we arrived to a frigid cabin, the temperature inside was below 0. As soon as we spilled a little water, it froze solid.
The gas was off, the pilot light was out and we had to get it going before we froze or it got too dark. And we did. Within a mere five hours, the temperature inside rose to a balmy 50 degrees and remained that temperature throughout the rest of our stay. We were cozy. More importantly, my hands warmed up enough to knit.
Oh yes, and the winter 46’ers hiked a mountain while I remained busy near the homestead.
We ate like royalty and had wine to accompany our meals. I went a little crazy with my seal a meal before we left and had beef stroganoff, sour cream, maple syrup, mayo, and even little salt and pepper packets. I’ll definitely do that again. I was able to reheat the meal in the bag and made clean up (with water from the ice covered river) a cinch.
It was even easy to clean up bacon grease. Here’s what happened to it in sub-zero temperature.
There is nothing as peaceful as the woods in winter. We saw huge ice crystals on the walk in (foreshadowing the cabin) and a polar iridescent cloud on the walk out.
I’m looking forward to doing this again next year and am confident we will be warm.
Island and North Country Life 