Time to get Winter Camping...

[Northern Dancer]

It's snowing again. And it's time to get out and camp out. I was thinking, as I'm watching the snow gently fall to the ground, how as a child I learned about snowflakes. Do you remember? A snowflake is a single ice crystal that has achieved sufficient size and may have amalgamated with others, then falls through the Earth's atmosphere as snow. Each flake nucleates around a dust particle in supersaturated air masses by attracting supercooled cloud water droplets, which freeze and accrete in crystal form. Complex shapes emerge as the flake moves through differing temperature and humidity zones in the atmosphere, such that individual snowflakes differ in detail from one another but maybe categorized in eight broad classifications and at least 80 individual variants.

As a child - there wasn't any of that sophistication - we just cut them out of white paper and hung them from the ceiling and marvelled how different they all were.

I'll be back at "Ballantyne Park" using my Columbia Ice Crest tent with a new FE Active folding cot and an iForest Sleeping pad.

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[ppine]

The hardest thing about winter camping is the lack of daylight.
I have never liked being stuck in a small backpacking tent in the dark for 14 hours.
Having a fire helps at night a lot. So does having a tent large enough to stand in with a fire or a stove.
I am planning a March trip near the Equinox. It will still be cold, so we are planning a truck camping trip with 2 sleeping bags apiece.
Remember to provide insulation for dogs in cold temperatures. I usually zip mine into a jacket.

 

[ppine]

We went South to the lower Colorado River for a low desert canoe trip in Feb. It was dark and cold and no one wants to do it again.

 

[Northern Dancer]

We went South to the lower Colorado River for a low desert canoe trip in Feb. It was dark and cold and no one wants to do it again.

=====> Cowards - laughing out loud here. "hey, whatcha gonna do?" You know...I just chalk this stuff up as experience - not necessarily a pleasant one but nonetheless experience just the same. Did I ever tell you the time when..........................?

 

[Northern Dancer]

I was out two evenings in my Columbia Ice Tent. I had a whole night of wet snow. Scratch the Columbia Ice Tent - if I'm going small size I'm staying with my Gonex four season. You have to use a perverted ti-chi to manipulate the space but it works. The Buddy heater keeps the tent hot. The folding cot and pad were sensational, coupled with my wolf fur rug [not real fur] on the floor and a soft blow up pillow for my head made for a good nights sleep. I certainly didn't need the - 23 F sleeping bag.

The only animal that came around to check me out were rabbits. They left their calling card in small piles all over the place. I think I can assume there are a healthy lot.

 

[Roybrew]

South sounds good in February to me. I've gone down to Florida in February, just south of Tampa and St Pete, to visit my migratory parents, they'd leave northern Michigan after Thanksgiving and stay in Florida till about Easter. It sure is nice down there this time of year.