- Joined
- Jul 31, 2007
- Messages
- 1,421
I'm back:
Man! It was cold! This was my first winter trip in which it got below freezing. The first night it got down to -5F, and that's not with the wind chill! It was awesome though. It was a great time of enjoying crystal clear water, 400' bluffs, family, cold, fire, and learning. I had to pack minimally as I flew in from Oregon. So basically my PSK, clothes, and a knife.
The rest of the gear was rented from an amazing local company, Discovery Ministries. We've been using them for shuttling, renting, and guiding for a really long time. My brother also did an internship there. Anywho. It was cold! Here is a link to the full album, with LOTS of pictures from two cameras: http://picasaweb.google.com/lltmcfadden/WinterCanoeFloat#
Here is a picture of a frost flower, which apparently comes out of a plant stem!
I forgot a small notebook and pen, so I couldn't take notes, so here is the best recollection I can give. Between my brother and me, we took about 500 photos, so I'll post a few, and let you browse through the rest of them. The pictures are still uploading, so I'll put most of them at the end, and then a few throughout.
So, the weather was cold. The highest it ever reached was 33F. The sun was out a good portion of the first two days, which was nice. It got down to -5F the first night, and about 15F the next. During the second night we had freezing rain, which coated EVERYTHING!
We were dressed for the weather, but subzero is just tough.
I was wearing:
Exoffico boxers
Thin polypro base layer tops and bottoms
Polartec mid layer tops and bottoms
Northface HyVent waterproof tops and bottoms
Light weight polypro balaclava
Polartec 200 balaclava
Polypro wicking socks + Darn Tough thick merino wool socks + Thorlo synthetics
Polypro wicking glove liners + fingerless wool gloves (thin) + Polartec 200 gloves or Mountain Hardware waterproof shells
I had some Montail gortex boots, but they were too tight with all my socks, so I used some casual Keen slipons with a wool lining
Items on my person at all times:
Nitecore D10
Glasses
Chapstick
County Comm keychain light
Emergency whistle
Breeden McBlackwood w/ 3/8" ferro rod and 10' paracord belt.
Snot rag
SAK Farmer
3 mil contractor bag
So, some random notes, sorry that they aren't organized by day and time... I missed my notebook!
Surgery effecting ability.
I'm still not two months out from having some moderate surgery, with some pretty major complications. I still have a lifting restrictions, but no one ever gave me any paddling restrictions! My dad's a doctor, and me and brother are WFR's, so I figured I'd be ok. But, as with my survival kit test, my reduced energy and stamina really effected me. I went to bed at about 8pm, and got up at 7am both nights. I had to canoe carefully in that I was effectively using my energy, which helped my canoeing out quite a bit, but was more work than just pure enjoyment. I do enjoying honing my skills though, so that was enjoyable. We got on the river around 11am each day because it was so nasty cold, and we took off at around 4pm. I was completely exhausted to where setting my tent up took me a good 20 minutes. Once it was setup I had to lay down and rest for a good 30 minutes to rest. I didn't experience much fatigue in the canoe, just when I went from one activity to another did I really feel the drain. This gave me a small perspective into the world of the injured and malnourished.
Frozen water.
One of our biggest problems was frozen water. We each carried around 70oz at a time, w/ 5 extra gallons, and my dad had about 3 extra gallons as well. But, in -5F weather, water freeeeezes! We spent almost as much time thawing water as we did canoeing. The worst of it was the 5 gallon container, once it was partially empty, its ability to thaw next to the fire greatly diminished. What worked best was to get a "billy can" near boiling with river water, and to set our water containers in them once they were out of the fire. This worked well. We could then dump it out and warm it up if needed. When checking out out gear though, they didn't have a stove! So we just had two billy cans and a cast iron skillet. I'll touch on this more later, but I drank a lot of ash
. We used much more water than we anticipated on hot drinks, so we pretty much ran out of water on the last day. We could have boiled river water, but there are some local concerns about farm ooze leaking. I took a plastic nalgene, and a 70oz hydration pack inside of an insulator. The hydration pack worked great for a while, but my straw froze overnight, and it was awkward to melt. I kept it inside my tent, but it still froze. I filled my nalgene with hot water and kept it in my sleeping bag, which was amazing.
Cooking, billy cans and cast iron vs. an actual stove.
I mentioned that we couldn't get a stove, which was ok since we didn't plan on cooking all that much. But man did I miss it! Cooking over the coals takes a long time, and it's "messy". We didn't have lids for the cans, so ash was everywhere. Cast iron works ok, but I didn't have that much practice with it, and cleaning it out was more than I wanted to mess with. I also couldn't multitask well with the coals. A double burner coleman stove with 2 pots, 2 pans, and a kettle would have been awesome. I did enjoy working with the coals and learning to cook this way, just not in sub-freezing temps in freezing rain. If by myself I take a small single burner backpacking stove or an alcohol stove, depending on where and how long I'll be out.
I took a homemade "cat's eye" stove. With is a tuna can with holes punched in a specific pattern as my lunch stove. Basically it just needed to heat a can of soup. I used a little more than 1 oz to do this with an aluminum foil wind screen. This worked pretty good, as was a lot less work than building a fire, getting coals, etc... I need to make a pot stand for it.
Emergency fire kit.
I mentioned that we were going to test this, but we left it at home! Yikes! Had someone dumped, we would have really been missing this. Usually it is a flare and a bottle of coleman fuel. I wanted to try adding a small firelog and some fatwood, but that didn't happen. I used small pieces of fatwood and a triox chunk to start the fires.
Re-using the coals.
My brother is a hoss when it comes fires and cooking on them. So I learned a lot about covering coals at night, and reusing them in the morning. I didn't get any first hand as we were all busy getting stuff done, but I'd like to work on this skill.
Testing winter gear!
Woof, I was disappointed with some of my gear, but better to learn that now, than when I'm stuck and really depending on it. I had redundancy in several areas, so things turned out alright, a few notes:
Gloves - Layers worked well! My glove combo just happened to work out ok. I had some ski type shell gloves that had zero dexterity, didn't keep me warm, but were 100% waterproof, whereas my polartec gloves where the opposite.
Sleeping bags - We used two sleeping bags at night, once inside the other, and this was my favorite trick! I've never slept warm at night in the winter. It was TOASTY! Two 15 degree bags with a thin liner and I was perfect. Our "shuttler" recommended sleeping in the nude or in our base layer, so that our body heat could warm up the bags insulation. This also worked well. I opted for the base layer, and my brother went for the nude. We were both warm.
Shoes - Eggads. I lucked out by having my Keens along. I took them as a last ditch in case my boots got wet. But the Keens allowed me to wear multiple socks and still have a little wiggle room. Some more winter style boots are on my list!
Sleeping pads.
We just had the inexpensive closed cell foam pads, which are good, but our gravel choices were quite rough. I barely slept at all the second night due to some large rocks that I tried to move from inside my bag and tent, but were frozen down. I should have taken the time to move them though, as I was horribly uncomfortable all night. Im a side sleeper mostly, so that is always a little rough in the bush. The first night I dug a hip hole, which worked ok, except I had to stay right there and not move. I also dug it a little too high. Id like a nice thick mat, as sleeping is one of the things Id love to master, I dont mind paying for the weight for that. If I were to sleep there again, Id try to make some leaf insulation using a trash bag perhaps.
Back-up food.
We packed lots of extra food... and we also left some important items at home! Luckily my dad had some extra bags of dehydrated soup and oatmeal, so we were ok. This made me glad that I normally pack a small bag of dehydrated soup as well. I had taken this out, but I'll likely be adding it back in to my medium sized kit. Extra food was essential. Also, packing food for different cooking methods is something Im taking away from this trip.
To stay or go?
This morning it was forecasted for 30s w/ a winter mix. At about 3am we had freezing rain, which made us wonder if we should get out and canoe for 5 hours in that type of weather. We waiting around until 9am, and it was still misting, but it wasnt freezing, so it popped up above 32F. We decided to try to get an early pickup, meaning a few miles up river of our original stopping point. Fortunately my brother brought his cell phone, and he actually had one bar of service. So, we packed up and headed out at about 10:30am. We still had 3 hours of paddling in the rain and wind. Most of that time it was about freezing, except the last hour or so. We all had good rain gear and outer layers, so it wasnt too bad. My dad did have some trouble with all of his gloves noting being as waterproof as he thought though.
Things I wanted:
I'd really like to find a nice small bag to carry just my PSK, that I could have on me at all times. While canoeing, I don't think this works too well. So I stuff my pockets. But I can't decide between a super small shoulder bag, or a Camelbak system. Donations accepted!
Better shoes!
I really need to get some winter shoes. My wife and I always have trouble. My dad was packing some shoes designed for nasty weather, whereas everyone else had regular boots, mostly w/ Goretex and some had built in insulation. If I would have got my feet wet, I would have had very cold feet. I had plenty of socks, and an extra pair of shoes. But they wouldnt have been very warm.
The importance of communication.
Cell phone made life much nicer. We could have easily made it to our original pickup spot, but it would have been near dark, and the roads were already terrible at 3:00pm. I left my phone because it is expensive, and it hasnt ever gotten signal before. Next time Ill through my sim card into an old phone and take it anyways.
Diving into the water.
Well, I didnt end up doing this, as it was just too cold! I thought I had brought more extra clothes that I really had. Turns out I cut had ¼ of my clothes in extras. And being so cold, I didnt want to risk it. I still want to do this, but this trip wasnt the time.
Here is the short original post:
Man! It was cold! This was my first winter trip in which it got below freezing. The first night it got down to -5F, and that's not with the wind chill! It was awesome though. It was a great time of enjoying crystal clear water, 400' bluffs, family, cold, fire, and learning. I had to pack minimally as I flew in from Oregon. So basically my PSK, clothes, and a knife.
The rest of the gear was rented from an amazing local company, Discovery Ministries. We've been using them for shuttling, renting, and guiding for a really long time. My brother also did an internship there. Anywho. It was cold! Here is a link to the full album, with LOTS of pictures from two cameras: http://picasaweb.google.com/lltmcfadden/WinterCanoeFloat#
Here is a picture of a frost flower, which apparently comes out of a plant stem!
I forgot a small notebook and pen, so I couldn't take notes, so here is the best recollection I can give. Between my brother and me, we took about 500 photos, so I'll post a few, and let you browse through the rest of them. The pictures are still uploading, so I'll put most of them at the end, and then a few throughout.
So, the weather was cold. The highest it ever reached was 33F. The sun was out a good portion of the first two days, which was nice. It got down to -5F the first night, and about 15F the next. During the second night we had freezing rain, which coated EVERYTHING!
We were dressed for the weather, but subzero is just tough.
I was wearing:
Exoffico boxers
Thin polypro base layer tops and bottoms
Polartec mid layer tops and bottoms
Northface HyVent waterproof tops and bottoms
Light weight polypro balaclava
Polartec 200 balaclava
Polypro wicking socks + Darn Tough thick merino wool socks + Thorlo synthetics
Polypro wicking glove liners + fingerless wool gloves (thin) + Polartec 200 gloves or Mountain Hardware waterproof shells
I had some Montail gortex boots, but they were too tight with all my socks, so I used some casual Keen slipons with a wool lining
Items on my person at all times:
Nitecore D10
Glasses
Chapstick
County Comm keychain light
Emergency whistle
Breeden McBlackwood w/ 3/8" ferro rod and 10' paracord belt.
Snot rag
SAK Farmer
3 mil contractor bag
So, some random notes, sorry that they aren't organized by day and time... I missed my notebook!
Surgery effecting ability.
I'm still not two months out from having some moderate surgery, with some pretty major complications. I still have a lifting restrictions, but no one ever gave me any paddling restrictions! My dad's a doctor, and me and brother are WFR's, so I figured I'd be ok. But, as with my survival kit test, my reduced energy and stamina really effected me. I went to bed at about 8pm, and got up at 7am both nights. I had to canoe carefully in that I was effectively using my energy, which helped my canoeing out quite a bit, but was more work than just pure enjoyment. I do enjoying honing my skills though, so that was enjoyable. We got on the river around 11am each day because it was so nasty cold, and we took off at around 4pm. I was completely exhausted to where setting my tent up took me a good 20 minutes. Once it was setup I had to lay down and rest for a good 30 minutes to rest. I didn't experience much fatigue in the canoe, just when I went from one activity to another did I really feel the drain. This gave me a small perspective into the world of the injured and malnourished.
Frozen water.
One of our biggest problems was frozen water. We each carried around 70oz at a time, w/ 5 extra gallons, and my dad had about 3 extra gallons as well. But, in -5F weather, water freeeeezes! We spent almost as much time thawing water as we did canoeing. The worst of it was the 5 gallon container, once it was partially empty, its ability to thaw next to the fire greatly diminished. What worked best was to get a "billy can" near boiling with river water, and to set our water containers in them once they were out of the fire. This worked well. We could then dump it out and warm it up if needed. When checking out out gear though, they didn't have a stove! So we just had two billy cans and a cast iron skillet. I'll touch on this more later, but I drank a lot of ash
. We used much more water than we anticipated on hot drinks, so we pretty much ran out of water on the last day. We could have boiled river water, but there are some local concerns about farm ooze leaking. I took a plastic nalgene, and a 70oz hydration pack inside of an insulator. The hydration pack worked great for a while, but my straw froze overnight, and it was awkward to melt. I kept it inside my tent, but it still froze. I filled my nalgene with hot water and kept it in my sleeping bag, which was amazing.
Cooking, billy cans and cast iron vs. an actual stove.
I mentioned that we couldn't get a stove, which was ok since we didn't plan on cooking all that much. But man did I miss it! Cooking over the coals takes a long time, and it's "messy". We didn't have lids for the cans, so ash was everywhere. Cast iron works ok, but I didn't have that much practice with it, and cleaning it out was more than I wanted to mess with. I also couldn't multitask well with the coals. A double burner coleman stove with 2 pots, 2 pans, and a kettle would have been awesome. I did enjoy working with the coals and learning to cook this way, just not in sub-freezing temps in freezing rain. If by myself I take a small single burner backpacking stove or an alcohol stove, depending on where and how long I'll be out.
I took a homemade "cat's eye" stove. With is a tuna can with holes punched in a specific pattern as my lunch stove. Basically it just needed to heat a can of soup. I used a little more than 1 oz to do this with an aluminum foil wind screen. This worked pretty good, as was a lot less work than building a fire, getting coals, etc... I need to make a pot stand for it.
Emergency fire kit.
I mentioned that we were going to test this, but we left it at home! Yikes! Had someone dumped, we would have really been missing this. Usually it is a flare and a bottle of coleman fuel. I wanted to try adding a small firelog and some fatwood, but that didn't happen.
I used small pieces of fatwood and a triox chunk to start the fires.
Re-using the coals.
My brother is a hoss when it comes fires and cooking on them. So I learned a lot about covering coals at night, and reusing them in the morning. I didn't get any first hand as we were all busy getting stuff done, but I'd like to work on this skill.
Testing winter gear!
Woof, I was disappointed with some of my gear, but better to learn that now, than when I'm stuck and really depending on it. I had redundancy in several areas, so things turned out alright, a few notes:
Gloves - Layers worked well! My glove combo just happened to work out ok. I had some ski type shell gloves that had zero dexterity, didn't keep me warm, but were 100% waterproof, whereas my polartec gloves where the opposite.
Sleeping bags - We used two sleeping bags at night, once inside the other, and this was my favorite trick! I've never slept warm at night in the winter. It was TOASTY! Two 15 degree bags with a thin liner and I was perfect. Our "shuttler" recommended sleeping in the nude or in our base layer, so that our body heat could warm up the bags insulation. This also worked well. I opted for the base layer, and my brother went for the nude. We were both warm.
Shoes - Eggads. I lucked out by having my Keens along. I took them as a last ditch in case my boots got wet. But the Keens allowed me to wear multiple socks and still have a little wiggle room. Some more winter style boots are on my list!
Sleeping pads.
We just had the inexpensive closed cell foam pads, which are good, but our gravel choices were quite rough. I barely slept at all the second night due to some large rocks that I tried to move from inside my bag and tent, but were frozen down. I should have taken the time to move them though, as I was horribly uncomfortable all night. Im a side sleeper mostly, so that is always a little rough in the bush. The first night I dug a hip hole, which worked ok, except I had to stay right there and not move. I also dug it a little too high. Id like a nice thick mat, as sleeping is one of the things Id love to master, I dont mind paying for the weight for that. If I were to sleep there again, Id try to make some leaf insulation using a trash bag perhaps.
Back-up food.
We packed lots of extra food... and we also left some important items at home! Luckily my dad had some extra bags of dehydrated soup and oatmeal, so we were ok. This made me glad that I normally pack a small bag of dehydrated soup as well. I had taken this out, but I'll likely be adding it back in to my medium sized kit. Extra food was essential. Also, packing food for different cooking methods is something Im taking away from this trip.
To stay or go?
This morning it was forecasted for 30s w/ a winter mix. At about 3am we had freezing rain, which made us wonder if we should get out and canoe for 5 hours in that type of weather. We waiting around until 9am, and it was still misting, but it wasnt freezing, so it popped up above 32F. We decided to try to get an early pickup, meaning a few miles up river of our original stopping point. Fortunately my brother brought his cell phone, and he actually had one bar of service. So, we packed up and headed out at about 10:30am. We still had 3 hours of paddling in the rain and wind. Most of that time it was about freezing, except the last hour or so. We all had good rain gear and outer layers, so it wasnt too bad. My dad did have some trouble with all of his gloves noting being as waterproof as he thought though.
Things I wanted:
I'd really like to find a nice small bag to carry just my PSK, that I could have on me at all times. While canoeing, I don't think this works too well. So I stuff my pockets. But I can't decide between a super small shoulder bag, or a Camelbak system. Donations accepted!
Better shoes!
I really need to get some winter shoes. My wife and I always have trouble. My dad was packing some shoes designed for nasty weather, whereas everyone else had regular boots, mostly w/ Goretex and some had built in insulation. If I would have got my feet wet, I would have had very cold feet. I had plenty of socks, and an extra pair of shoes. But they wouldnt have been very warm.
The importance of communication.
Cell phone made life much nicer. We could have easily made it to our original pickup spot, but it would have been near dark, and the roads were already terrible at 3:00pm. I left my phone because it is expensive, and it hasnt ever gotten signal before. Next time Ill through my sim card into an old phone and take it anyways.
Diving into the water.
Well, I didnt end up doing this, as it was just too cold! I thought I had brought more extra clothes that I really had. Turns out I cut had ¼ of my clothes in extras. And being so cold, I didnt want to risk it. I still want to do this, but this trip wasnt the time.
Here is the short original post:
Last edited:
