Welcome to The Self Sufficient Citizen where I talk about homemaking, homesteading, minimalism and self reliance! I’m excited to announce that I am doing the 12 days of Christmas this year aka #Blogmas. That means that today and until Christmas day I will be putting up a post a day for all of my readers! For the most part I will be keeping to the general theme of my blog for blogmas but some of the posts like this one will be more casual.
Today I feel like it would be a great opportunity to reach out to my audience and ask for you to subscribe to my newsletter if you haven’t already. It is completely free and I share the best of my blogs every month to you. If right now you would like to pass on that, maybe share the blog to family and friends so they can enjoy and learn along with you.
Now onto my first post of Blogmas – A story about the first time I went winter camping… The worst idea ever.
It was late in the season 2019. I’m talking about late October/Early November when the idea surfaced in my mind to try out winter camping. My boyfriend Matt and I hadn’t been able to go camping that year or have much of a vacation at all. So with all of my wisdom and absolutely no experience around the subject I booked a spot at a campground where they had late season camping open. I packed our camping supplies and food like I would normally do for a campout during the warmer season. Of course I thought I knew what I was doing. I had after all packed a few extra blankets and warm clothes. That’s all you need for winter camping right? Hahaha If I had only known.
Matt at that time got off work later in the day around 4-430pm. And of course in winter the sun starts to set quicker here than summer. I am pretty sure he got out a bit on the later side because as we raced across the town we lived in we looked at one another questioning if it would be too dark to find the campsite. As we hit the darkened forest roads we soon realized our fears were right. After searching for almost two hours we waved our white flag in defeat. Of course being stubborn I told Matt we would resume our search the next morning after a good night’s sleep. After all, I didn’t want to waste the firewood I had bought.
After a good night’s sleep in our warm home, we were ready to face the day. We just needed to figure out where that campground was. We packed into the car and set out in a good mood. It turns out the night before we had taken a completely wrong turn after we missed our original turn. It was a very good thing we had turned around. The campsite was almost empty as we pulled into the tree filled area next to a low river. We picked a spot in the far corner opposite of the one lonely RV placing us close to the river.
Let me just reiterate that I did not look up how to camp in the winter. Mistake one. Our tent was oversized and tall resembling a small shed. It had very little support and fabric because it was only rated for summer camping. Mistake number two. Mistake number three would be a very unpleasant one.
Back to the story Matt and I had our flimsy, unpractical tent set up after trying to open it for the first time. We ended up and ripping one corner after a long struggle. Matt and I then walked around the hiking path on the far side of the camp ground. He and I explored the frozen ground that didn’t quite yet have snow on it. There was no frost at all actually and the sun was bright in the sky. The forest was breathtaking and the gurgle of the river could be heard from some parts of the trail. After a few hours I figured we should get back and make a fire and eat. Matt was more than happy to help with both. We ate lunch and sat around the fire enjoying the time outdoors.
Later we had a neighbor we knew join us for a short time out there sharing conversation and company. Before we knew it was dinner time and the temperature was dropping with the sunlight. With haste we made and ate dinner packing into our tent as quickly as possible not wanting to be the only people out in the dark campground. Settling we slept.
Well until in the early morning when nature’s call woke me from my sleep. First thing I remember is thinking of how cold my face was and that I really didn’t want to walk over into the woods to pee. When I opened my eyes I thought the dark was playing tricks on me. We had a tall tent so why was the roof a good foot and a half closer to my face than it was last night? Startling, I popped up realizing the tent was in the early stages of collapse. Heart racing, it started to sink in. All of the joking Matt and I had been doing about it snowing should have been more serious in nature. Because outside the big quarter fluffy sized flakes of snow had been falling for a few hours and were still falling. Falling more rapidly might I add.
It was around 3:45 am as I shook Matt awake. He thought my fear was caused by a wild animal trying to get into the tent. I told him it had snowed and the tent was collapsing. Then he had the same reaction as me thinking about having to squat in the snow to pee. I don’t wanna. The blankets were warm and everything else was cold but I could really not wait until morning. With a sigh I struggled into my coat and boots. We definitely should have slept with to keep them warm. Matt followed suit to make sure bigfoot didn’t snatch me and to check on how bad the tent was. After got back to the tent through the near foot of snow Matt told me we needed to pack up and leave. My initial assessment of the tent was right…any more snow and it would collapse.
I fumbled around for my keys and went to my car trying the ignition. After two attempts of getting it to start the car finally roared to life. I think it was just as cold as I was. We then shoved all of our gear and the soaked tent into the car and started on our way back home. It was still dark and snowing might I add so when we were driving down the one lane road next to a cliff out of the camp ground it was not a good experience. Obviously we got home alive. Just colder than we have ever been in our lives.
I think now is the time to talk about what I did wrong. First things first I think we should address the elephant in the room…mistake number three. I did not even think to look at the weather forecast for that weekend. True it was unseasonably early snow but if I had bothered to watch the news I would have known about it. Next I did absolutely no research on winter camping thinking I knew enough about camping to have a good experience. If I had done any research I would have known that we needed a dome tent that was rated for 4 seasons. I also would have known to sleep with my clothes to prevent them from being cold and wet in the morning as well as having a four season sleeping bag.
At the time of writing this we have at least a foot of snow on the ground, and I have absolutely zero plans of winter camping again without a RV. But if you do go winter camping, I hope that you learned from my mistakes and take your time researching the sport and looking into the weather!
I hope you guys enjoyed the first post of blogmas and I’ll see you hopefully tomorrow! Until then.
-Hannah
