Because Tucker House is such a sought after spot, we book our weekend for the next year when we are finished using it for the weekend this year. Got that? So, we had booked the last weekend in January of 1999 in 1998. The unfortunate thing about this is that you just don't know what the weather will be like.
Guider Jane and Guider Stephanie had just completed the Ottawa Area Girl Guides Winter Camping training two weekends before. So the girls had decided that they would like to do some of the things that Guiders Stephanie and Jane had done. (Guider Jane felt that there wasn't enough time to prepare to have the girls spend the night outside.) So, the decision was made - Guider Susan would spend the day inside, in case someone had to go in, and to be ready in case we needed first aid or hot chocolate!, and the rest of us would spend from 10 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon outside.
Before we went to the camp we talked about our program for Saturday afternoon, how we would cook and what we would cook, how we would dress!!! and what we would wear on our feet (there was quite the discussion about this one!) And what we would have needed if we were going to spend the night outside. (This discussion included a ‘show and tell' of the things that Guider Jane had slept in the weekend before - did you know Guider Jane has the most colourful sleeping bag on earth?? Hot pink and neon green zigzagging crooked stripes on the top, black on the bottom and MAUVE on the inside - WHOA!) Socks, long underwear, pyjama bottoms, long underwear top, short sleeved shirt, topped with a hooded sweatshirt. A scarf (fleece) for around her kidneys, and a scarf (fleece) for around her head. Then, the sleeping bag liner (a piece of fleece two meters long, sewn across the bottom and up the middle of the front till about half a meter from the top), her summer weight sleeping bag (the ‘bright' one!), and outside all of that, her winterweight sleeping bag - the one that says it goes down to -25C but only does with all this other stuff in it - which is fine as long as you know. Then under this, one blue foam pad, one thermarest, one solar blanket, and a tarp. (The temperature on Friday night during the course went down to -18, but it was -12 in the vestibule of the tent on Saturday morning, and Guider Jane was toasty all night long!)
There was a lot of snow at Tucker House when we got there on Friday night - and the back steps were quite slippery; Guider Jane broke a basket and tried to break her knees getting in the back door - but only got bruises so she still had to spend Saturday outside. LOL
Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny. Everyone (there were 16 Pathfinders, Guider Susan, Guider Jane, Guider Stephanie from the Pathfinders and Guider Kathy from the Guide Company who always helps us at camp!) was dressed properly - lots of layers, snow pants and good winter boots, not leather ones with laces, mittens and spares, hats (toques) many of the fleece, and scarves.
The first thing that we did was drag everything that we had brought with us for outside over to the field that we were going to use for ‘our winter camp'. The plan was that we would eat lunch and two snacks outside and act as if we were going to spend the night outside. We would build some form of snow coffin or snow trench to sleep in. Each patrol would dig one, and place their tarp over it.
First however we needed to set up a campfire. We had fire wood and starters with us and shovels and matches of course. Since the snow was about 2 feet deep (this is Guider Jane, writing this, and you may notice that I shift back and forth between Metric and Imperial measure - I generally do Meter and Kilometers, Celsius, Liters, and feet and inches - sorry about that, will try to hold it to a minimum!), say 60 cm, there was no danger of the fire disappearing down a hole that we wouldn't be able to see the bottom of by 4 pm, so we did not build a crisscross layer of logs to support the fire from below. Using dowels that were purchased for the purpose, the girls lashed together two largish tripods. (The tall pieces were 2 meters long and the supports at the bottom were just longer than a meter each.) The girls did a good job of lashing the two sturdy tripods, and then we laid one 2 meter pole across the top of each of them and lashed them on. Now the fire pit needed to be built UNDER that long top pole. No problem and within a very few minutes the girls had a nice fire going.
A canning pot (a large enamalware pot with a lid) with chains was the last of our advance preparations. This pot had had three holes drilled into it, very carefully at home well before camp. Each hole had an eye bolt with a wingnut, tightly screwed into it. Two pieces of good sized chain (500 pound capacity - well that's the way they sold it - sorry) held this on. One piece of chain was shortish and the other was about 2 meters long. The short chain was attached (using Carabeeners, screw type loops with a capacity similar to the chain) from one eyebolt to another. The long chain was connected to the third bolt. The middle of the short chain was connected to the body of the long chain with a carabeener, so that when you lifted the pot using the end of the long chain the pot hung level! The long chain was flung over the pole connecting the two tripods and using yet another carabeener it was hooked so that the pot hung the correct height from the fire, and could be adjusted in height as required.
Safety rules were discussed at this point. Care must be taken around the two tripods and UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES was anyone to go UNDER the bar (which would also be between the fire and a tripod). There wasn't a lot of space there anyway, and everyone was happy to comply.
Now, to make lunch.
Each girl and Guider had brought their own lunch with them. Already frozen - and they remained frozen, outside in the cooler all night. (The few things that ended up in the house were kept in the freezer, that kept Guider Susan hopping for a few minutes while she tried to find those last few treasures.) The lunches were precooked, and ready to eat, once they were warmed up. Each girl had a plastic spoon tied to a string and hung around their neck. Did you know that if you drop a warm metal spoon into the snow it will sink to China? The lunches were frozen in a heavy duty plastic milk bag, and then put into a second heavy duty milk bag. These bags were folded very carefully, so as to be waterproof and tied with string or a twist tie, so that they could be hung from a chain (each girl had 4 feet of light weight chain and three hooks of some kind with them) that would be attached to the chain from which the pot was hanging. The meals were packed in lots of bags - so that part of it could be warmed up quickly and eaten while another part was warming up. So each girl had 2 bags of lunch and 1 bag of dessert. We also had lots of hot drink powders and some things that you might not think of as a hot drink. Jello, for instance makes a terrific hot drink. About 2 heaping teaspoons per mug of hot water. Oh, and your mug - it needs a LID and the lid ought to be attached to the mug - because if the lid falls in the snow, it will attempt to follow your metal spoon. And many of the girls had a plastic milk jug the kind that takes those plastic milk bags, cut in half. The handle is holdable by a hand covered with a mitten - and this keeps a hot lunch, which will also be wet, off of the mitten, preventing burns and soaking!
So we had two pots on the fire. One sort of on two logs with drinking water in it (make sure this one has a lid too, or you'll drink a fair number of ashes), and the hanging pot in which you would warm up your "boil in a bag" lunch. The chain that each girl had was made so that it could hold two metal clips at the bottom - the large kind for holding a good sized document together works best, and these were held onto the bottom of the chain with a snap link or something similar. All our water was also frozen. Each girl had brought as many cardboard milk or juice cartons as they could. These were, generally the 2 liter cartons, well washed out and dried. Filled about 7/8's with water and then put in the freezer. These transport easily, the cardboard tears away from the block of ice inside and then can be burned or used as fire starter as they are waxed. And before they are used the frozen cartons can be used to make a dandy wind break!
Into both pots went ice, and the ice was replenished as it either was drunk or evaporated away.
The girls had various things for lunch. A hot dog in a bun, pizza made on a pita cut in half and put in two bags, french toast, spaghetti - already mixed with sauce and cheese, alphgettios, soup with crackers (the crackers were separate and added to the soup after the soup was warm). And for dessert? Pudding, s'mores (slightly messy, but mmmmm!), warmed squares and brownies. Delicious.
Over the course of the afternoon, we watched as the girls undid the zippers of their jackets, or took them off and hung them somewhere where they wouldn't get snowy (and wet if it melted), hats came off and went on as the sun came out, or the wind died down, scarves were raised or lowered as necessary, wet mitts were traded in for spare dry ones. The important thing when winter camping, besides not getting COLD, is also not to get too HOT. Once you are hot, you tend to sweat (some people more than others!), and then when you are sweaty if it gets a little colder you will get really cold very quickly. The girls practised what they had learned two weeks before. I was really proud of them.
After lunch (which took too long, we will need two pots next year) the girls broke up into teams and made their sleeping shelters. They had the general idea, but... One group realized that they had made their shelter so that their feet would have been aimed UPHILL - not terribly comfortable unless you are a bat. (And probably not so great even then!) And one group lost a mitten up a tree (?), and spent a bit of time getting it down. No one had a second tarp to make a floor, and so they couldn't really finish them - and two shovels were bent beyond recognition - Ooopsy! Then they made a snow fort, with many rooms. It was terrific. The sun shone down upon us and the temperature went up to about -6C. Guider Susan dressed up and came out to look at the tripods, the shelters and the water. She made her lunch ‘boil in a bag' but had heated it up inside, just in case she was needed there and then ate it outside with us.
After snack and hot drinks in the afternoon, we dismantled the tripods, put out the fire and took down the shelters. Then we put on an assortment of snowshoes (borrowed from the District) and cross country skis (brought from home) and walked, or skied over to a little hill behind the house and made a big circle where we played a game. By the time we were done it was 4pm and we had two people who were just starting to have cold toes (not bad, everyone is growing SO fast at this age, that the boots that were new in September were getting a tad tight in January), so we scooted back to the ‘camping site' moved everything back to the back porch area, checked to make sure that the fire was out (it was!), and we all went in. Guider Susan had supper almost ready (salad, lasagna and garlic bread, mmmmmm!)
We had invited the third year Guides from the District to come and have a sleep over with us for Saturday night. (Traditionally we have asked the Guides to come for the weekend, but there wasn't enough time to have meetings to prepare them for the day outside, so we decided to have them come on Saturday for a sleep over.) There are two Guide Companies in our District and one of them was camping residentially the following weekend, so we did have anyone come from that unit, but 4 girls came from the other unit.
Saturday night we had a Talent Show. Singing, dancing, skits, comedy, music - it was fabulous! And then to bed after a LONG, BUSY day.
Sunday morning we had a Guide Guider come out to see how her girls were enjoying camp - and we all made crafts. At the winter camp Guider Stephanie and Guider Jane had gotten a pattern to make a little doll out of a square of fleece - it was so cute! And Guider Susan had a terrific pattern for a toque, made with yarn. The girls had a great time! Lunch was a breeze, prepared for the girls by the Guiders and by 2 pm everyone was packed up, the Lost and Found was gathered, all the girls were gone and the Guiders were ready to drop off the key.
For their first experience (in almost all the girls' cases) at Winter Camping they were EXCELLENT! They were all warm, dressed properly, patient at lunch time even though it took too long and they did a terrific job - we were all proud of them!
