Sat, Jan 22 2011, Sun, Jan 23 2011 - Winter Camping - Build a Quinzhee and Sleep in it! (View Original Event Details)
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Well the weather man predicted a cold weekend! Saturday morning (as I was leaving Whitby)was -20C. By the time we drove up it warmed up to about -15C. By lunch time when we started our building process it was a pleasant -10C. Which is perfect for playing in the snow. You don't get to wet or sweaty when you have these temperatures.
We had 16 people on the event. We divided up in teams of 3 and one team of 4 to build 5 Quinzhee's. The Four man Quinzhee I nick named the hotel.
I was teamed up with Peggy and Jun. It took us about 1.5 hours to shovel a 6.5 foot high packed dome shape pile of snow. We stuck 10" long sticks into it and went away for an hour or so to let the snow sinter (stick together).
In the mean time, we dug out two firepits and started to collect firewood. We where in a hardwood forest which made a nice fire that evening.
Back to the Quinzhee it was time to dig them out. It took us about 1 hour to dig our Quinzhee out and set it up with our tarp, insulated sleeping pads and sleeping bags. The weather man was predicting a low of -25C tonight. We decided not to add any vent holes so we could trap as much heat as possible from our bodies.
Night time comes quickly and we started into supper by 5 pm. The fires where great and we had a few laughs while we ate and dried stuff. Most of us went to our quinzhees around 9 pm.
We settled into our bags and the last man in closed the entrance tunnel with our back packs. It was about -18C.
The next morning we woke up around 7:30 am and the temperature was -10C inside the quinzhee. Peggy and Jun and I had a great sleep. The quinzhee is dark and very quiet, except for an occasional ice movement crack.
We pulled away the packs and exitted the quinzhee. The temperature was -25C outside. Up to the firepit to blow new life into it. Five minutes later with some dried evergreen branches we had fire again.
After breakfast we headed out for a 6 km day hike loop at around 11 am. Heading west to the McCrae Lake Narrorws. Some of the ice was slussy in spots and we ended up with ice blocks for snowshoes. The issue required beating our snowshoe cleats with our hiking poles occasionally to clear them.
About 2 hours later we arrived back at camp and had a quick lunch and packed up.
On our Quinzhee we cut off about a third of it to show the cross section to the others. In particular how our sleeping area is raised which helps trap the warm air we generated at night. Check out the photo album.
I have been telling everyone that the quinzhee is safety and stong and you can rest a sure that you can safely sleep in them. Well everyone sleeped in them but I am not to sure they really believed me. So to prove it I had them climb on one of them for the traditional group shoot. We managed to get 15 bodies on top of the Quinzhee. Now remember, this was power snow the day before. Check out the fun time and photos.
We headed back to the cars at around 2:30 pm. We had a quick lunch in Coldwater to square of the carpool funds.
We had a great group to brave the great Canadian outdoors.
See you all soon.
Gary
Have some photos from this event that you'd like to share in our photo album? Please forward them to Erik Sonstenes at photos@torontooutdoorclub.com. Please note that we prefer to receive the photos in approximately 640x480 or 750x500 pixels - do NOT send original high-res photos. If you have a LOT of photos, please submit up to twenty of your favorites (only) for a day event, or up to forty of your favourites for a multi-day event. Thank you.