-26° Solo Camping 7 Days | Snowstorms and a Smitty Sled

[Music] so [Applause] [Music] things are going incredibly well so far with the park trail there's a good crust on the snow on the lake here and i'm not sinking into it hardly at all the smitty sled which is new to me is performing beautifully time to go find home [Music] [Music] it's the first option that has kind of called out to me part of the challenge here is finding something that's actually reasonably open it can just be so thick around here but there's a big blizzard coming in tomorrow coming in from the east and then from the north i'd be well sheltered from that here but if i set up right here i'd be completely exposed to the prevailing west wind and south winds which isn't ideal this is going to be home here beautiful spot right here this big rock back there lots of dead firewood standing in the back so this is perfect first step is to get the tent pad level relatively tense up beautiful lighting in here when sun comes through this cotton canvas a light colored cotton canvas it's just beautiful so [Applause] me a couple of dead trees here looking for firewood for the night and any more i can do for future nights is always good there's a lot of firewood just on the shoreline that's dead standing mostly cedar which won't burn long but it'll burn but it's considered bad etiquette to take trees along the shoreline it just ruins the aesthetics so try to come back a little into the woods at least this one is full of woodpecker holes so it's probably been bug infested and not the best quality they're both pretty thick diameter trees for handling with hand tools so i've spotted another one over there that one looks more up my alley yeah this one looks a lot nicer [Applause] i'm blazing some more dead trees so that they're identifiable with this snow storm coming tomorrow once they're all laden with snow up top it can be hard to tell if they're dead it's a lot easier when the wind is blowing all the snow off them like this sun dog there to the right of the sun the left will have one too but it's behind the clouds hopefully good omen for the trip running out of daylight but i'm in pretty good shape ice is pretty deep at this time of year late winter hopefully my auger reaches there my first real test with the smitty sled and it did beautifully pulling probably 200 pounds of gear and supplies in it feels really nice i don't feel like doing dishes so this would be an easy cleanup just gonna have got three sausages and a hot dog i'm gonna have the sausage and the hot dog just because i'm still not that hungry save the two bigger sausages why the hot dog that's what i had to use up at home red onion relish ketchup mustard much needed now then am i tasting it my body's saying yeah i needed that got my dry sleeping clothes on and i'm totally spent so happy to be lying down but the day went perfectly really well positioned for the rest of this trip and there's only one thing that wasn't really perfect today and that was uh crashing my drone batteries were too cold and it it lost power i think it'll be fine though anyway good night [Applause] still got hot water in here for coffee getting more going for the day just gonna i wasn't really planning on starting the fire this morning i was just gonna get going but it felt pretty cold so the snow has already begun i need to do more firewood prep today hopefully today i can really give myself a head start for firewood on the rest of the trip as you can see i think i got a little too much sun yesterday i did put sunscreen on in the morning but instead of reapplied feels good first sunburn of 2022. for coffee i've got powdered milk and sugar and i'm gonna do dehydrated rehydrated veggie chili with garlic bread for breakfast chili is rehydrated just keep them warm on the side table and flip the garlic toast just picked up the stove thermometer it should help me optimize the burn ideally i want it in that yellow range there any colder is uh creosote generating and any hotter can warp the stove potentially this fire's dying down so it might just get into the yellow wow look at that right in the middle of optimal nailed it [Music] if you're wondering where i am i'm in northern ontario canada halfway between terrace bay and geraldton [Music] [Music] so can't see the shoreline over there and that's one reason why today is a good firewood day i didn't want to go traveling most of the lakes i want to go to are about five kilometers away three to five kilometers and they would be pretty hard to navigate especially once my tracks get snowed over all the other days i should worst case be able to follow my own tracks back but the wind hasn't even picked up today yet once it does it'll blow all the tracks over so quickly so chipping away here and it's going to pay dividends the rest of the trip got my firewood i got to process it still but that's a big step right there time for a snack so that's it final cut that just became a mission like i couldn't stop because it was addictive to have the security of a huge wood pile but also because it's too cold well i'm soaked from sweat and melted snow mostly melted snow actually and when i stop i get cold really fast so now that i'm done and make a few splits leave the majority of this splitting for another day that's the easy part hard part's done and get a fire going well-deserved meal so good enough how'd the day's work [Applause] so it's all from today this powder but not to get it away from the tent it will insulate the tent but if i start a fire it just melts it all and turns it to ice so it's no good and i need that fire plus it pushes in on the walls and just makes it tight in there feeling really good about my firewood supply now looking at what i have just stacked up here still have at least half of it outside i installed a candle tower here just a nice place to put it out of the way shouldn't get knocked over a couple of punky logs here are now a drying rack mostly for my boots at the end of the night time to get the stove rocking cold oh this feels good but uh got water dinner on soon as soon as some water is boiling and got some of my wet clothes off i'll change the bottom soon last night i couldn't even have any scotch so tonight i feel up to a swig of scotch so making progress this is islam mist it's a blend which means it's a lot cheaper than single malts which i love but for the money this is my choice seems like a good night to dive into the hot chocolate rations a little watery a little stingy on the rations yeah a couple of things on water first i try to never pour boiling water onto an open hand got the elf glove on which would help a bit and mostly just doing it this way for the sake of the shot normally i try and set it down last thing you would want out here is a really bad burn from pouring boiling water on your hand the slip can happen so easily second i've adopted this system where i bring two thermoses out it's close to two liters in here and i can do i can now do the hot water bottle trick three times throughout the night so i can fill this up with boiling hot water slip in my sleeping bag it's like having a hot water bottle at home and then i can just dump this into the snow beside the stove i've got a little poor spot just go straight down because there's two or three feet of snow beneath me and refill without one of the hot thermoses and that'll get me through most of the night which is especially valuable when i'm cold camping like this and third why don't i use snow there's a lot of fresh snow out there i'm going to the lake to get water why snow is full of debris it falls off of trees mostly and there are snowshoe hair tracks all around here and they poop in the snow and then a little snow covers it and you could unwittingly scoop some up and boil it right up which is not my preference i guess there's fish poo and pea in the in the lake but quite diluted but the main reason is if i were to use snow i would pack this full of snow and it would give me maybe a fifth of the volume of the container of actual water and then i need to go get more snow to pack in here like there's there's absolutely no question what's preferable when you have an auger there's a meter of ice on the lake so if you don't have an auger you're not going to be getting water from there so you might be forced to get snow in that case but i have the auger for fishing i might as well take advantage of it for drinking water getting started today thankfully it's only -10 out so it wasn't too bad to be out here right now before the fire but the fire will be very welcome main reason i'm making it is actually to keep drying my clothes they're still like frozen and i can put them on but that's gonna make for a long day and i don't want to wear my only dry clothes out today on the ice so just gotta play it safe so to stop my watering hole from freezing over i just bury it in the snow beautiful morning but uh we didn't get that second blast we were supposed to get really wee i this lake this area was supposed to get a real blast overnight but that just never came it was perfectly calm actually but with the snow it came all day that was at least half a foot probably eight inches or so i'm glad we didn't get more because this is going to make travel difficult to get to other lakes so worked out well beautiful coating of snow too everything looks amazing i use pieces of wood to handle the bacon just because it cuts down on greasy dishes and the wood's clean nothing wrong with it burn those into the bacon grease the hash browns [Music] oh that's a lot of hash browns mmm finally time for fashion slide is still gliding really well i sprayed silicone on the skis on the bottom i didn't have any wax and it seems to be working pretty well whoa steady girl i finally have a smitty sled and it's working beautifully huge thanks to chris for sending me this kit he makes them gonna start a business hobby business called easy sled in norland ontario and it's just perfect i've always wanted a smitty sled and people always say you need one so much easier to haul on these skis than hauling the actual folks themselves just glides way better but i always found this mini sled design seemed over complicated hard to disassemble heavy and this finally made it simple it's just feet that go into this into the skis so these will pop out they're just resting in there with weight and the same for the bottoms and then two cross bars with pieces that go into the feet so it's brilliantly simple and i also drilled so i drilled holes into the crossbars like chris recommended to attach the sled there's another set of holes here so i can shift it over and balance the weight because right now when it's on this side without anything on this bench i installed it's uh sinking this ski in more so i'm going to center it and it'll float a lot better just uses bolts and wing nuts to secure it now that it's shifted over i just need to put the wing nuts back on that's it this is a pike and walleye lake it's supposed to be anyway start off with this little lipless crankbait first drop finally day three i have the historical bathymetry survey for this lake and it bottoms out at 105 feet deep at the north end the cliffs here are seem like a decent spot to me but really i just wanted to check them out after looking at them for two days i've never fished this area never been to these lakes but there's a resource in ontario that lists what fish species are in what lake at least for a fraction of the quarter million lakes in ontario and yeah i said pike and walleye for this one send the underwater camera down i'm gonna fish somewhere else that's out of the wind it's just too cold here but totally worth it to see the cliffs look at the snow on these boulders on a new section here off this little point leading into a shallower bay and if i could find weeds that would be ideal big weed bed well i'm calling it try again tomorrow [Applause] so got camp pretty well sorted out now look at this firewood i feel rich doing non-calzones tonight spritz the non before toasting it just makes it nice and doughy travel was a lot tougher today with the snow those lakes that are three to five kilometers away and now seem a lot farther away than when i came in on a pretty good crest of snow but more importantly um trotting through snowshoes with snowshoes on through that snow all day it's aggravated whatever tendon or muscle runs up the top of the foot up the shin and i'm hoping i just wake up and it's better but as it stands right now i definitely can't get to those lakes and i wouldn't even want to go out tomorrow so it might be camp bound which would be fine like this lake is as good as any um i could fish here more but yeah anyway who knows what's gonna happen stay positive and hopefully wake up tomorrow feeling good finally stopped at a decent hour today so cheers to that i use this solio device to get weather out here and connect with aaron the outside world no cell signal here and it looks like minus 14 tonight minus 14 the following night minus 18 and then minus 24. minus 24 is kind of it crosses a bit of a threshold for me around 20 minus 20 don't really like to cold camp no matter what sleeping bag you have your face has to be exposed to breathe and it's just like it's cold on your eyes and nose and mouth all night so i might have to run the stove all night that night which uses a lot of firewood and is disturbing to sleep to wake up every 90 minutes two hours to stoke the stove i also asked aaron what the aurora forecast is going to be tonight it was four before i left and looks like it's still four which is nothing to be excited about there's a chance you could see northern lights here with the kp of four but probably probably not so now i know i don't have to wake up to check erin and i love tolkien including the hobbit and one of our favorite chapters is when gollum and bilbo riddle each other one of them there are a few i love one is it cannot be seen cannot be felt cannot be heard cannot be smelled it lies behind stars and under hills and empty holes it fills it comes out first and follows after ends life kills laughter and it guesses [Music] now my third attempt at filming this action cam battery died because of the cold the birch park died because of the cold this camera battery died because of the cold i have a fresh battery in there it should go i call the door to the stove the vault got up at 4 a.m to pee check the stars which were great it was minus 16 at that point and i was feeling a bit chilly not too bad but again the face being exposed i wasn't feeling anything from the bottom i've got a ccf pad plus cell foam a sheet of reflectix and this unlock fuel winter light with an r value of five absolutely no heat loss from the bottom i'm sure like you know i was just very comfortable from the bottom but my sleeping bag is minus 20 rated i use a liner in it and wear this big sweater and i thought still there are some soft spots i think where i've maybe lost some down on the sleeping bag but overall pretty good but that minus 24 night yeah if that pans out i'll be running the stove for sure veggie curry for breakfast coffee time gorgeous bluebird day getting packed up to leave and start fishing and i noticed some snowshoe hair tracks right past camp so today i'll be exploring the north end of this lake there's a big northeast arm of this lake which maxes out around 10 to 20 feet and i'm thinking that's the best spawning territory it's too early for spawning but they might be starting to kind of pick out their territory so i think that's a worthwhile spot plus i want to try and break a trail that way that leads to one of the lakes i want to explore if i have a broken trail that would help a lot might get snowed over by the time i get to use it but it's worth a shot might be able to kill two birds with one stone i've arrived at where i want to start fishing came about two kilometers up the lake this is the northwest bay that's long and deep northeast bay short and shallow and then here's an island kind of at the junction of all the bays or arms of the lake seems like a pretty good place to start the wind is ripping it's north wind oh can't drill too many holes in today at this depth it's good solid dry ice here at least yesterday i was getting into a lot of slush which makes it so much harder to drill hoping to see weeds like some rocks don't see any weeds ah okay a little bit take it [Music] this little guy just swam up the hole and guide him back down but uh yeah there's life down there it's hard to imagine but there is a whole world going on down there through frozen winter here's the hobbit trivia for the day alive without breath as cold as death never thirsty ever drinking all in mail never clinking oh moment when you've had absolutely no action and your line catches on the ice for a second then your heart leaps oh [Music] there are tons of snowshoe hair tracks here they're very obvious easiest track to identify in the winter probably two big tracks up front and then two in line behind and it's amazing how big their paws are too like almost the size of my hand and that's what keeps them afloat and there are times in the year when i pity this nice shoe hair because everything wants to eat it lengths practically live off of them but at this time of year i pity every other every other animal especially moose wolves as well just sinking down into this snow with a feeling of helplessness obviously they have evolved to survive these winters but it's got to be so tough [Music] still no bites i haven't been able to find a weed bed which is what i really want but i'm having a great day there's been a lot of sunshine and blue sky very uplifting my leg is holding in there traveling pretty fine on it but still a warning sign that kind of makes me nervous about going far but it really is the snow that dumping of snow has probably tripled or quadrupled the difficulty of travel when i came in on day one on that crust it was so easy now even with a light load everything is is earned every kilometer so i'm thinking i'm going to double down on this lake and just really try to dissect it if i go to any other lake that i hope to i'll spend most of the day just getting there and back so there's if the point is to fish then there's there's not much point to that plus just looking at this map on this lake on the topo map it seems like it would be the most beautiful to me it's got cliffs bays islands a range of depths it's it's got it all my home base is here so why why leave looking at it all on a map at home it's like oh i want to go there and there it never seems that hard looking at it on a map at home when you get out here you come to realize the truth you can see some tracks from my final hole here that were obviously not snowshoe hair and it's two two two with a bit of tail drag so i would guess weasel or martin i'd say that's pretty likely and fresh obviously the wind has been covering all tracks today the hole starting to glaze over and those little bugs kept swimming up it's almost like they swam up to enjoy the sunlight there they are you can still see some of them sorry guys two more months poor guy this is a big one it's almost like it's trying to claw through the ice definitely wouldn't survive up here buddy [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] let's move up to p and it's -21 fair bit colder than forecasted i might start up the stove yeah at five am i [Applause] might as well think it up now tried to sleep for a few more hours still minus 15. beautiful day wow [Applause] yesterday was such a great day and night sometimes i feel like i'm blah blah blah but uh when there's ambience like that i would way rather let nature do the talking i really don't talk that much normally but when i'm alone you know sometimes it just comes out but i was happy to let nature do the talking last night that was stunning stars were amazing as well again back-to-back nights yeah just the lighting felt so good to have all that sunshine it's almost noon and i finally got myself set up the first hole the wind is howling over the lake today so staying out of it is just going to be the key today i'll fish where i can i'm going to start out with the sabile vibrato i've gone with some other lures so far lipless crankbaits a big paddle tail hoping for a big pike and a couple of jig flies but i'm going to keep experimenting really the lure doesn't matter that much much more so about the location and finding fish it gives me a little hope though [Music] at hole number two i'm gonna warm up with some kung pao chicken with rice drop boiling water seal this up and put it in my jacket we'll keep each other warm make sure it's sealed that's nice like a hot water bottle and i brought some hot chocolate powder this will go a long way it's just nasty out oh that's so good just what the doctor ordered hot so [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] finish splitting the rest of the wood this is the whole pile and i feel stinking rich it's almost embarrassing i like fishing a lot but to go out there in that wind the spin drift blowing up into my clothes just doesn't make sense when i can sit in here by the fire finally have a little scotch and read my book sounds fantastic right now day five and still no fish it's kind of hard to believe i probably have my my line actually wet for two hours the first the third and fourth day probably about two hours again today yeah so really it's not that crazy when you add it up but still you think on a remote lake like this i always always get my hopes up but it's okay we're watching yellowstone recently and john dutton said he was fly fishing with some guy and said something to the effect of it took me ages to find out i wasn't here for the fish it's just about being out here and something to do while you enjoy it cheers [Applause] and relax having a great evening here by the stove very relaxing much needed rest every day so far until this one has been busy make dinner and go to bed so it's nice to have this time all all enjoyable but it's nice to have a little downtown tonight's riddle voiceless it cries wingless flutters toothless bites mouthless mudders what is it it's day six last day to turn the ice fishing around it was supposed to be minus 17 last night i didn't check the thermometer but yeah i ran the stove all night well a little sleepy just a disturbed sleep got some powdered milk here with water dehydrated fruit blueberry banana apple start rehydrating some of that in the milk and granola [Applause] first hole first drop starting out with a kamuki smart fish just changing what variables i can i'm really shallow now too this is my shallowest hole it's only probably three or four feet of water beneath the ice and there's a saying even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then even even a bad angler not saying i'm a great angler but i've done it a lot well even a bad angler should look into a fish now and then so i'm hoping if i put in this item today it's gonna happen it was pretty nasty when i came out it was hard to will myself to go out but let's calm down a bit so nice to be out of the winds here in the woods just behind camp got my cali kettle hobo stove just gonna boil up some water for lunch and coffee pointing the air intake on the bottom into the wind and same as a wood stove big stuff on the bottom build a little fire on top of it and then only feed bigger stuff from that point on otherwise it clogs up with ash from the little stuff the bigger pieces burn coals small coals with this small stuff get out my fire steel oops it's a lighter and i finally succumbed to the peer pressure i got a knife i've always said i don't need a knife out here and i never have in hundreds of days of backcountry tripping i used to bring a knife when i started out maybe two actually and i just found i never use them i only use a fillet knife but i recently forgot my fillet knife or misplaced my fillet knife on a trip and i had nothing to fillet a fish with and i had to use my auger blades so i could no longer say that i've i've never needed one before plus i was reading a book recently arctic crossing and the author was told by someone that they fought off a polar bear by stabbing it with a knife and otherwise they would have died personally i think that's probably a tall tale but it got me thinking what if it was my last line of defense kind of like bear spray better to have it than not so here i am eating my own words with my lunch this is the mora companion it is a pretty cheap knife twenty dollars at canadian outdoor equipment but supposed to be one of the better value knives out there it's car i got went with carbon steel so it's more susceptible to rust but main reason i want it is actually for batoning firewood like this for the stick stove this will allow me to be more dependent on the stick stove in the summer when fuel is wet normally i've just burned these whole but i'll get more heat off of them if they're split and if they're wet then then it'll be really valuable so that's mostly what i'll be using it for probably nothing else ever top on this is also my favorite use for the billy bellows that aaron's dad makes amazing for a stick stove got my instant coffee in the cup this is much needed it is just another cold one with the wind air temperature is fine but the wind just cuts with the rest of the water just going to boil up some noodles and this should warm me up hopefully enough to get back out there this is fine snow just whipping around and that's uh that's a big part of it i would love if it calmed down the sun broke through i'd be jumping for joy but let's take what i get these blue gloves they may look kind of funky but i've really come to love them yeah i really like them because they're waterproof and snow just falls off of them i look like a space man oh man so the stove has a reflector sheet underneath it and a stick going through the legs to help it float but after five nights it is something more than i'd like it's hoping to just ride it out but needs a reset much better it's 3 30. it's starting to brighten up hopefully that's a good sign of what's to come before dark we've gotten camp in order it's been an excellent camp i haven't seen anywhere going all around this lake that i would have rather had and that's that's pretty rare usually you end up finding something you wish you had taken it's looking pretty good in here got the rest of my firewood all organized and within the stuff i really want to use within reaching distance this stuff is mediocre firewood processing tools a big uh reserve of birch park which i carry everywhere it's always nice to have if there happened to be no birch around odds and ends got all my pots here because i'm gonna have to get water before i settle in my sleep system i kind of set up right just to make room on the snow off my bucket that's where i like to sit and think a bit of a drying rack here i also use the lines on the inside of the tent and a clamp on the pole which i forgot to pack uh but uh yeah some things are too heavy or the dry lines are are full so i use this little rack here and yeah it's just some stuff there that uh i like to keep handy beside my head when i sleep and this has been excellent the little thermometer really helps to understand the stove great camp this is my final stand last chance to get one i'm gonna fish my drinking water hole it would just be perfect irony to go all over this big lake only to catch a fish right near my camp the first hole i drilled this hole stayed open the entire time thanks to the insulating power of snow nice not to have to drill it every time so not only has it stayed open all six days so far but it has actually gotten a lot wider it's now pretty much the width of this shovel and my auger is six inches this shovel's got to be a good 10 inches wide and that's the warm upwelling of water from the lake it's actually eating away at the ice around the hole and making tons of slush in this part of the lake still very blustery out there so i came in to fire up the stove and take the chill off i'll go back out but uh needed to warm up and i was just reflecting that this is day six and that's my longest winter trip ever which is nothing nothing amazing at all but i always saved my vacation time for summer for canoe tripping so now with my circumstances changing in life being able to take this time now in the winter it's it's been awesome to to finally get this longer winter experience tomorrow will be a week because on a longer trip you start to see things a bit differently not to sound wishy washy but it's true a weekend trip versus a week-long trip puts you in a completely different mindset so it's it's really interesting to get that in winter and you start just watching the clouds go by listening to the wind watch a woodpecker for 20 minutes gray jay yesterday little things like that and you just take the time that normally you feel like you don't have the time to do so that's been precious and i'm looking at the burn indicator on the stove pipe here thinking how this trip hasn't gone according to plan exactly but you can always find fault with trips with camping and it can be too cold you're making creosote too hot and it's an over fire give me too many bugs or too much wind too few wildlife sightings or fish but ultimately if you got time to just relax and slow down your busy life and soak up nature appreciate the little things that you wouldn't normally notice and then you can call it optimal cheers to an optimal trip final night final riddle this one's kind of phrased awkwardly but i still really like it this thing all things devours birds beasts trees flowers gnaws iron bites steel grinds hard stones to meal slays king ruins town and beats high mountain down back to it it's getting dark and in this moment i've never wanted to fish more on this whole trip i feel like i really want it now but at this point i think it's more about pride than pleasure so i don't i don't catch fish for pride used to now that's not what it's about so i'm gonna head back into my beautiful warm tent enjoy the evening except for tonight rotini dehydrated vegetables mushroom tomato spinach and dehydrated pasta sauce probably could have used a little more pasta sauce but i think i'll be in flavor country real soon good evening officer i believe you'll find all my documentation to be in order triple cheddar all checks out sir welcome to flavor country hope you enjoy your stay we always do huh [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] and i could just feel it in the air last night that it was it was colder than expected when it's 26 nice crisp morning for hauling out [Applause] oh [Music] [Music] looking back on the week here i think about a switch turning off in my mind a few days in i had all of these high hopes for my first week week-long trip in winter the fish the nearby lakes abundant wildlife and shimmering northern lights it's the same fixation on the future that is both a blessing and a curse for me but on the fourth day the sun was dropping and i was beginning to let go of these hopes it was not a disappointment but a relief the much more significant hopes and fears about our turbulent world and my place within it were also completely out of mind i felt the warm sun and the cold blowing snow and little else my thoughts about the future either melted or froze and i found myself living in the presence again [Music] being eternally preoccupied with the future the state is a rare oasis for my psyche in my mind's temporal desert where time is always scarce and fleeting i found the psychological relief of nature's cool pond and shady palms even here in winter nature crawls through time with indifference to my hurried state the longer i stay in wilderness the more i align with its pace i know this well from the canoe trips of the soft water season but it is so easily forgotten in winter when longer trips feel out of reach but the feeling is no different in winter the lakes freeze the snow falls and the cold wind blows but the eternity of nature still crawls along and the same peace is present here in winter if only i allow myself to be present [Music] you

Channel: Lost Lakes

Views: 6,668,460

Keywords: lost lakes, camping, fishing, ontario, canada, bushcraft, backcountry angling ontario, winter, wilderness

Id: k5UiAf_GSPQ

Length: 75min 28sec (4528 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 16 2022