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| My Solo Bonfire stove on the left and our old firepit on the right. Alex looks like he has flames coming out his ears but I think its just a lantern and the smoke. Heber is on the left corner. Kason R is in the smoke by Alex and Blake is in the right corner. |
The winter campout was in preparation for Klondike Derby which would be in March. Those who came were Alex, Quinn, Kason R, Kason K, Blake and Heber. Leaders were Andrew and Ryan and I was the only dad to tag along. We arrived and started digging snow caves almost immediately. The banks on the Southwest side were very nice for this as it was packed up from the snow plows. The boys had a lot of fun digging but the leaders had to do most of it. When they were finished they had just barely enough room for all of them to fit snugly. They started out building three caves but then two of them ran together so they blocked off one of the entrances and made just one big one. Kason K ended up going home sick and so Kason R, Heber and Blake took the big cave and Alex and Quinn took the smaller cave.
Dinner was tinfoil dinners, and while they cooked the boys played on the snow piles and made a small ramp to jump a sled off. It looked painful. At the end of the pictures are some videos of them doing that.
I brought my Solo Bonfire stove and it can get so hot that you don't want to cook anything in it. Its such a nice thing to stand around as it doesn't produce much smoke while radiating heat nicely. I have a thermometer and it maxes out over 900 degrees and it was maxed out. Last year we melted a pop can in it pretty quickly. Because of the heat, I took a shovel and shoveled a lot of the coals out into a metal bin that used to be our campfire holder. It held the coals and made a nice bed for cooking the meals.
The one funny event that happened is not only once, not twice but three times a cop showed up to check on us. Turns out as people were driving by they saw the flashlights, shovels and holes and assumed that an avalanche had buried some folks. The onlookers could have saved a lot of people a headache if they had just drove up and found out for sure. Where we were digging was only 50 yards from the road, so not hard to find out for sure.
The leaders slept in one of the insulated tarps and I had my bivy sack, which I just threw out on the snow. Its a very comfortable bed and the fluffy snow makes a pretty custom shape for your back. The few times a year I sleep on the snow like this are the most comfortable I usually sleep. I can't remember what the temperature that night was, probably in the teens, but I don't think it got to single digits.
The boys slept good except Quinn decided to throw up again. It was a little tight for him to get out in time so Alex got a little of it on him, but fortunately it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
Breakfast was mountain man eggs, hashbrowns and sausage.
