Winter Backpacking

 

So I took the two little ones backpacking in the snow to Ethan Pond.  It was about 6 miles round trip, and fairly steep and tough.  There was lot of post-holing which made us want to use snowshoes, but then a lot of stream crossings which made us want to use just boots with spikes.  Not ideal either way.  We carried extra pads and blankets, so I was pulling probably a 60 lbs pack!  This is us when we were still having fun!

It was a long day in with a lot of whining, but a lot of the kids learning to get past their boundaries.  It was especially hard to keep Ollie warm and keep him from sticking his hands in the snow!  Getting wet is fine when we are just playing around, but when we are far from home it can be a little dangerous.  We barely had enough daylight to get camp setup.  I brought snow screws for the tent, but they didn't hold well so I ended up tying off onto nearby trees or sticking hiking poles into the snow.  The fuel for the stove did not work very well because of the temperatures, so we didn't have a lot of hot water the first night.  I slept with the fuel in my sleeping bag, and things were much smoother the next morning.

I was worried the whole night about kids being cold, but they were so tired that once we got them in their mummy bags stuffed with clothes, they both slept soundly till morning.  I checked afterwards, and a nearby town reported the lows as 17°F.  I was ironically the one having to get up to go to the bathroom and shifting around and that sort of thing!

The next morning, we setup our chairs overlooking the pond and had oatmeal, noodles, and hot chocolate from melted snow.  The hike back out was long and the sun made the snow really slushy with a lot of post-holing, but we got in the car just as it started raining.  The big motivator for the return trip was a promised shake at McDonalds on the way home!