Chinook
by George Hosier II  - January 31, 2008

Winter Camping


Finally, we got some cold around here! I didn’t think we were going to get any decent camping weather at all this winter. At the risk of having my official Sourdough status revoked, I am going to reveal a closely guarded Sourdough secret: The best time to experience Alaskan camping is in the winter. There, it’s out! If the Sourdough police come for me, they’ll just have to do what they have to do. I just don’t think it’s fair for all of us old-timers to get to enjoy all the great winter camping, while Cheechakos have to suffer the rigors of trying to camp in the summer.

I’ve camped in the summer, both out of necessity and for…ahem…“recreation”. Let me tell you, summer camping is no fun! No wonder the tourons bring RVs with them when they tour our great state. I’ve noticed that most tourons are elderly retired folk, which means they’ve lived a long time, which means they’ve probably accumulated a lot of wisdom over the years. Obviously, one of the pieces of wisdom they have accumulated is “Don’t camp outside in Alaska in the summer.” I urge my readers to follow their sage advice. There are hazards introduced by summer camping which don’t even enter into the equation on a crisp January Alaskan night. By way of illustration, let me list but a handful:

For one thing, no summer camper can escape the stark terror of mosquitoes! I use the term “mosquitoes” loosely. It is a generic term that covers a broad genre of diabolical creatures ranging from no-see-ums to white sox. If you have never tried to share your sleeping bag with 78 billion insects, each one with the unrelenting wing beat of a dentist drill and an insatiable appetite for your blood, your finite mind cannot grasp the interminable torment to which those flying demons can subject you. I have seen stalwart, bristle-bearded outdoorsmen steeped in wood lore and bulging with muscles reduced to slobbering idiots from spending as little as three minutes alone with the Alaska State Bird. In fact, a very good friend of mine is now permanently residing in a psychiatric hospital down in Minnesota somewhere in the aftermath of his ghastly encounter with a single mosquito in his tent.

This leads me to the second hazard, which is inextricably linked with the first—bears. If the mosquitoes don’t eat you, the bears will. The dilemma that traps the summer camper is that one can either prepare for bears or prepare for mosquitoes, but one cannot adequately prepare for both. You see, to protect your sleeping self from mosquitoes, one must use a tent. The tent must be in good repair. Duct tape must cover all the little melted holes from a myriad campfire sparks of yore, all the zippers must be in good repair, and all window and door netting must be fine enough to prevent no-see-ums from squeezing through. Furthermore, all doors must be securely closed with aforementioned zippers.

This creates a situation where one is now packaged like an egg roll in a Chinese take-out box for any bear that happens to come prowling by. On three sides you are effectively blind. If you are awakened by the sound of heavy footsteps accompanied by a moist snuffling sound just on the other side of a thin sheet of ripstop nylon, you have no way of determining if that sound is indeed a bear or if it is merely a moose or perhaps your camping partner relieving his bladder.

To make matters worse, if you decide that you do have a bear visitor, your tent only has one door. All you can do is hope and pray that it is not positioned on the side facing the spot where the bear is snuffling. I have seen more than one tent return from a camping trip with a shotgun hole blasted in one wall and a 6-foot hunting knife slash in the opposite wall. The saddest part of all is that usually once the skivvies-clad, shotgun wielding, hunting knife waving camper has safely arrived in the top of the nearest tree, he discovers that the snuffling sound was being made by porcupine or a Canadian Jay. Now with his tent rendered useless, he suddenly realizes that the mosquitoes have begun to appreciate his skivvies-clad state and are proclaiming a feast in his honor.

Personally, I would rather be able to see a bear coming, and I like to have multiple escape routes. This is why I rarely use a tent. During the summer I sleep in a lean-to. This of course makes me vulnerable to mosquitoes. However, this is a risk I have chosen to take. After carefully weighing the alternatives, I have decided that the blood loss being approximately equal, I would prefer an epidermis covered with trillion itchy bumps over being scalped, having my leg shattered and being covered with puncture wounds and gashes in which are imbedded spruce needles, tent shreds and grizzly saliva.

Back when I was a kid, before such things were illegal, I would try to mitigate the mosquito attacks by erecting my lean-to downwind of my campfire. The resultant smoke screen would discourage the mosquitoes and lend my hair, clothes and sleeping bag the quaint and rustic aroma of the inside of a chimney. Now, of course, campfires are taboo, and it seems that the smoke from an alcohol-burning cook stove doesn’t provide nearly the same benefit as good old-fashioned wood smoke.

Another drawback to summer camping is all the cottonpickin’ sunlight! It makes you never want to go to sleep. For one thing, it’s hard to stop gawking at all the magnificent vistas spread around you, and for another, it sabotages your biological clock. Worse than that, it sabotages your camping partner’s biological clock. He inevitably insists on telling jokes until at least 4:00 am while eating cold chili out of a can. Then, when he finally does drift off into slumber, his body begins to process the cold chili. I have spent more than a few wretched summer nights fending off suffocating clouds of methane, while snarling imprecations, and hurling sticks and spruce cones at my camping partner’s obliviously snoring form. If it weren’t for the fact that methane seems to be toxic to the mosquitoes, I would roll him into the creek, sleeping bag and all.

It is due to these factors as well as many others which time and space do not permit me to list here, that I heartily endorse winter camping. In the winter, bears are hibernating, mosquitoes are little larvasicles imbedded in a frozen puddle somewhere, campfires are legal and night actually falls. Conditions couldn’t be more ideal!

For any of my readers who have never yet ventured into the exiting world of Alaskan winter camping, I will now provide a few tips to make your first experience more memorable:

To start with, familiarize yourself with the comfort rating of your sleeping bag. That can be found somewhere in the slick promotional material provided by the sporting goods store where your bag was purchased. Using a sleeping bag with an inadequate comfort rating could negatively affect your camping experience. It is crucial to understand that “comfort rating” is industry jargon. If the term were taken literally, it would suggest that a sleeping bag rated to –30oF should keep you as snug as a bug in a rug at that temperature. Actually it means that under optimal conditions you may have a chance of not dying from hypothermia down to that threshold.

If you read the fine print on your sleeping bag tag, you will find something to this effect: “This comfort rating is in no way to be construed as a guarantee, either express or implied, against frostbitten extremities, pneumonia, insomnia, or actual discomfort. This guarantee will be rendered null and void if the purchaser uses this sleeping bag in a manner for which it is not designed by the manufacturer. Such uses include but are not limited to exposure to snow machine exhaust fumes; using within 5000 yards of spark or open flame; wearing of clothing while inside the bag; or contact with snow, rocks, sticks, or any other surface that does not meet North American Recreational Vehicle Association standards.”

My second tip is this: Don’t bother packing water. If you do, your canteen will become a solid block of ice by morning. The expansion of the freezing water will bulge your canteen, splitting its seams and rendering it good for nothing but a missile to hurl at pesky magpies. Instead, melted snow can quite adequately provide all of your hydration and cooking needs. In fact snow is preferable to water, because even the most pristine looking patch of snow conceals hidden culinary treats to enhance your dining pleasure. Some people make the mistake of filtering the melted snow water before ingesting it. Trust me, after being frozen to arctic temperatures and then brought to a lively boil, there is nothing remaining in the snow that cannot be safely consumed. On the rare occasion that you do encounter something too big to swallow and too hard to chew, simply spit it into the closest patch of pristine-looking snow for the next camper to find.

My third and probably most important tip is to bring your boots to bed with you. You don’t have to wear them, and you certainly don’t want them shedding their snow inside your sleeping bag, but please tuck them into a plastic bag and stow them at your feet. Please! It requires a feat of superhuman willpower to climb out of your sleeping bag on a cold winter morning in the Alaskan bush. If this tendency toward wimpiness is exacerbated by the knowledge that you have to put your feet into cold boots, you will never crawl out of bed until Spring. This is true with any type of boot, but if you have worn bunny boots to your campout it becomes a matter of great urgency.

Bunny boots have the unique characteristic of maintaining whatever temperature their interior happened to be prior to inserting your feet. If you store them by your wood stove at home, your feet will be sweating all day. On the other hand, if you leave them sitting outside at your winter campsite, when you put them on in the morning you will immediately beg your camping partner to waterboard you, just to provide relief from the torture occurring at the end of your legs! Furthermore, I would highly recommend adding a canister of liquid nitrogen to your winter camping gear checklist. That way, if you forget to bring your bunny boots inside your sleeping bag, you can always pour some of the liquid nitrogen into the bunny boots and slosh it around to warm them up.

My final winter camping tip is to lower your expectations. You are not here to actually sleep outside at 40 below. Oh, my, no! In fact, if you do actually lose consciousness you have most likely become a hypothermia victim and you will be reduced to a freeze-dried mummy by morning. Instead, you are engaged in a waiting game. This is an exercise in testosterone-drenched machismo. The trick is to remain in your sleeping bag, stifling your shivering and faking a snore whenever possible between the chattering of your teeth until your camping partner gives up and flees to the truck.

While he hunkers there with engine idling and heater at full blast, crushed by his failure, you may at last use your privacy to give vent to your self-recriminations. You may chew yourself out as colorfully as you wish. Call yourself an idiot. Ask yourself what you were thinking. Be as creative as necessary.

Don’t take yourself too seriously, however, for you have won. Anticipate the incredulous look on your spouse’s face when you hobble through your front door the next day with your moustache transformed into a forest of ice stalactites. That moment will make it all worthwhile, and that will just be the beginning. Each time you retell the story to friends and associates, you will be rewarded by that same expression of incredulity. You will have become a legend in your own mind. You will have instantly achieved cult status. In the minds of your peers your name will be filed in the mental category beside such cultural icons as bungee jumpers, alligator wrestlers, tornado chasers, truck surfers, bull riders and Evel Knievel. In a word, you are now officially nuts.
 

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