Winter camping

First I must apologise for the lack of bloggage over the last few months, ordinary life seems to take over at times.

Well I finally got to spend some time camping this winter along with a friend of mine and fellow bushcraft instructor Nick Gallup -(www.skillsforwildlives.com/).

When Nick flew out from the U.K. I think he left more snow behind than he found here, it's been a very strange start to the winter, we had snow early on and then it completely disappeared until the last weeks of January when it snowed heavily and stayed due to a good cold snap.

The original aim of the trip was to shake down the gear close to home and then get up in the Cape Breton highlands, with the lack of snow the first week and a half was spent in my work shop making toboggans, a moose sled and mukluks, another blog will go into more detail on the process of making the basics of winter travel.

What changed the plan?

Pulling toboggans on frozen rivers is a whole different ball game to pulling over hills and through wooded land. I need to give up the smokes and get fitter.

Weather- a storm blew in over Cape Breton with 100km + winds, so discretion was the order of the day and we camped on the bottom land after the storm moved through.

The shake down highlighted my lack of experience in winter camping and gave us lots of food for thought not least is the planning that is required, it's not like camping in the U.K. where you are pretty much within walking distance of help and succour, get into trouble in the highlands and you are many many miles from help.

So at the end of the day the right decisions were made and trouble was avoided, lets face it we do this for fun, not to endanger ourselves and others.

The really interesting part of the 3 weeks for me personally was the making of our kit, learning how to get that graceful curve on the front of the toboggan, marvelling at the warmth and comfort of mukluks, using the snowshoes that I made and talking things through with a like minded friend.