Snow Camping Alone in the Mountains - Things Got BAD.

The road is definitely very slick. I'm just trying to focus on getting up this hill. It's beautiful out here and it's just so quiet. There's one more challenge on this trip and that's just going to be getting out of here because there were some sections that were pretty slippery. Holy s**t. Oh Jesus. Things are getting pretty bad. Quite dangerous. Well I'm up in the mountains and hoping to do a little bit of snow camping tonight and I'm excited. But if I'm being totally honest, I'm a little bit nervous too for a couple of reasons. One, I've never actually snow camped before. I also am not a seasoned snow wheeler and on top of that I'm also up here by myself. So is this the smartest thing in the world to be doing? Maybe not. But at the same time I'm trying to stack the deck in my favor and I've done that in a couple of ways. I used OnX OffRoad to kind of pre-scout this route up this road that I'm going to be heading up. And this road by the way is a road that I've been up many many times which is another way that I've tried to set myself up for success. Hopefully. This road just stays at a gradual incline so I use the topo maps on OnX OffRoad just to kind of look at the gradual incline. And that's important to me because I want to go uphill. I don't want to go downhill because that way at least I know that if I have to turn around gravity will be on my side. I won't have to climb up a steep hill to get out. So that's number one. Number two also using OnX is something I really like is being able to look to see who else has been up this road. And this road has been traveled. There's a couple of trail reports from within the last couple of weeks that seem to indicate that it's passable. But I think the last report was about a week ago and we all know conditions in the mountains can change a lot in a week. So we'll see how it goes but I guess there's only one way to find out. I'm making some pretty good progress here. The road is definitely very slick. It's very slippery I think because it hasn't snowed in about a week and people have been driving up here so these tracks have kind of gotten a little iced over. But so far it's been pretty okay. I haven't been doing a lot of filming because I'm just trying to focus on getting up this hill and I'm worried if I stop to set up a camera, well, I probably won't get going again. So I'm just going to keep going. But so far so good and it's definitely got into the snow where we've got maybe maybe about eight inches of foot of snow up here now. So yeah, hopefully we come across a spot to camp up here that'll work for the night. But we'll see. It's just absolutely beautiful out here. I just slid down a hill though so it's definitely slippery as I mentioned already probably. But that's what's going on right now. But I'm pretty close to where I think there might not in the snow, but in some very cold temperatures and there was one video in particular. I was in eastern Washington and I was really struggling to stay warm. I had every layer I could possibly wear on and it was it was not very pleasant and a lot of people in the comments said, man, you need to get a better jacket than this. You need to get a proper winter parka and they were absolutely right. And so I did that in anticipation for winter camping season this year. Got this parka, got some insulated boots. So overall I think I'm gonna be in much better out to be excellent and I'm glad I found it when I did because anything further up the road would have been a little bit tough. But I'm set up over here and like I said anything further up this way I think would have been a little bit of a challenge. I almost got stuck just trying to turn around to get situated in camp. But the other thing that I'm really happy about with this campsite is that there's no real trees right above me. No widow makers anyway. There are some trees but there's not any really sketchy looking trees. So I think that's a consideration you always got to make in the winter. But I feel pretty good about that. And I'm also going to show you the lake because I got to show that to you. It's just right down here from camp and the snow is actually quite deceiving. It doesn't seem very deep but there's been a couple spots where I've kind of broken through and it's been almost up to my knee. So I need to be a little careful with where I step here. But this little path here just goes straight down to this little lake and it is quite beautiful. It's about as far as I can go before I start falling through. I don't the decision to come out here today. I was, like I said, a little bit nervous to come up here and camp in the snow by myself but I think it's worked quite nicely. I do think that tomorrow going back down the mountain is going to be a little bit tricky because I was sliding a little bit so it's gonna have to take it slow. But I guess that's a problem for tomorrow. But for now I think the next thing to do is to dig out this fire pit and start prepping a fire because, well, the sun's going to be going down in a couple hours here. It gets dark fast this time of year so better get to work. It seems kind of strange to start a fire at like 3 30 but the reality of this time of year is that it's going to be dark in like an hour, hour and a half here in Washington. So I definitely want to get this started now so that I'm not doing it in the dark and then I can get dinner going and then, well, eat dinner around the campfire. I've never made a fire in the snow before so I'm just winging it and I guess as long as it starts then then it's a win. A little longer than a few minutes later... Well I have decided to retire to the camper for the night. It's probably only like 6 30 but the fire was starting to die out and really I just wanted to get out of the wind because the wind was picking up and it was making things really cold. So it is really pleasant in here. I've just been in here for like the last 30 minutes at the moment just warming my feet by the fire which I turned on about 45 minutes ago and this time I brought an indoor outdoor thermometer so I can actually see what the difference is. So right now it looks like it's 23 degrees is what it's reading outside and it's 37 degrees in the camper. When I climbed in here it was 25 degrees in the camper so we're making progress. So I'll be really curious to see how warm it actually gets inside the camper versus the ambient temperature outside. But this is not the end of the night for me. Far from it actually because for the past year I have been scheming on a way to pass the long dark cold Washington winters and something to do basically inside the camper to kill some time. And I think that I have now made it a reality. I've brought some equipment with me that I'm going to hook up here inside the camper in just a little bit and I can't wait to show you. I can't wait to get it all set up. Let me just say I don't think I'm going to bed early tonight. I think I'm going to have a pretty late night. I'm that excited. So I'll show you that here in just a minute. A few minutes later. Well the setup is complete. You ready? I've got a Super Nintendo Classic that I've had at the house for the last couple of years and then as a Black Friday deal I bought this wireless monitor I guess. It seems to do a pretty good job. It's a cheap Amazon thing. And then I've just got it all hooked up to my my little BlueEddy AC60P over here. So this well this is what I'm going to be doing for the rest of the night. And in case you can't tell yeah I'm pretty damn pleased with myself. This is going to be a fun night. Good morning. First time using the little portable espresso maker in the camper which is really why we bought it. I've been using it every day at home and I love this little thing. Makes a pretty good cup of espresso considering that it'll heat water on its own. So I didn't have to get outside the the camper to make my espresso this morning. That's pretty great and it's especially great because according to the thermometer it is 21 degrees outside and it's about 44 degrees inside the camper. Super comfortable night. In here last night stayed warm all night no problems at all with that. Got some good sleep so everything went well there and had a lot of fun playing some Super Nintendo. So glad that I brought that. In case you're wondering no I still have not beaten Super Mario World but I did make some good progress. So 2025 goal is going to be to beat Super Mario World while on a camping trip. I think that's a good goal. Anyway just need to wait for the sun to come up. Should be up here in a little bit then take a look around get things situated. But the challenge is not over. There's one more challenge on this trip and that's just going to be getting out of here and getting back to the highway. Because coming up yesterday I mentioned that it was all uphill and that's true and so that means this trip back to the highway is going to be all downhill. And there were some sections that were pretty slippery so I'm gonna have to take it super slow and hopefully get down without any drama. But I guess that's a challenge for a little bit from now and we'll just have to see I've had a few moments now where I've just about lost the truck sideways going down this hill and I think what's happened is the tire tracks are just all iced over as it's probably warmed up and and then people have driven over them and then it's frozen again. Even trying to crawl this at like you know two or three miles an hour is proving to be pretty difficult. So I think I need a new plan. I think that plan is going to be try and avoid the tire tracks altogether. You can see where some people have driven up over here in the softer snow which probably has a little more traction. So I think I'm going to try and put my driver's side tire there, passenger side tire in the middle there and try and avoid the iciest spots here on this hill. Is that a good idea? I don't know. Like I said, new to snow wheeling but seems better than driving in these tire tracks that are all iced over at the moment. So I guess we'll find out. Here I made the mistake of falling back into the ruts and almost immediately began to slide. At this point I am basically just a toboggan and as I slide I'm picking up speed which is making things worse. Thankfully I was lucky. I was able to regain traction and get back under control but this just shows how quickly things can get dangerous in conditions like this. Trying to offset these icy ruts definitely seems to be an improvement. That's for sure. Not great but an improvement. Closer to the cliff. It's kind of a delicate balance between being where the tire tracks are or being by the cliff or by a ditch. I just jumped out of the truck again just to kind of scout this sharp corner here because, yeah, sharp corner downhill. Cliff. So I'm kind of treating this like I'm, I don't know, scouting for an obstacle or something like that just to see where I want my tire placement. Now it actually looks like for the first time I've got dry ground which is going to have some grip. So that is fantastic. You're wondering what that noise is. I'm one of these power lines. Pretty ready to get out this mountain. For anyone who's wondering, I did not air down and I know airing down in snow is a kind of a debate on the internet and again not an experienced snow wheeler so maybe don't take my word for it but the research that I've done, there's really no specific answer for just snow in general. It depends on the specific type of snow and so if you're in deep snow, you know, cutting through fresh tracks, you're in deep powder, airing down your tires a lot a lot is maybe a good idea. Well it sounds like it is a good idea. So you can float over the snow. However, in hard packed snow and ice, it seems as though the general consensus is that rather than floating, you want to cut and so you actually want to keep your air pressure in your tires. You want skinny, basically skinny tires. At least that's what I've read and so I did not air down because I've not really encountered any deep powder but I have encountered a lot of ice and compact snow. So your mileage may vary but that's why I did not air down. That's not fun. That's not fun at all. Sliding sideways towards a cliff. All right. You may also be wondering am I in four low and am I crawling this and again caveat here is I am not an expert so you know maybe or maybe don't listen to me but I'm in four high and I am just using my brake pedal because my concern is if I was in four low and first that potentially the engine braking could cause my tires to lock up and if that happens there's not a whole lot that I can do in terms of you know letting off the brake and and trying to regain traction which I've had to do a couple of times now as I've gotten sideways and and so I left it in four high and I'm just creeping with light brake pressure and as I start to slide then I will release that brake pressure a little bit so again you know am I doing all this stuff right? I don't know but I did at least take the liberty of kind of trying to educate myself before coming up into the mountains by myself like an idiot. I never want to do that again. That was not fun at all. I'm not home free yet but at the very least I've now got to the point where there's exposed dirt on the road so that's good. I'm still going to creep down the last little bit here but those switchbacks that I just did were absolutely butt puckering. I could not take the tracks, pure ice. I almost slipped and fell just trying to stand on them so I had to get creative with my line but it seemed like it worked so I guess if nothing else I'm building experience so that's good but I don't know what I was thinking coming up into the mountains solo to be honest with you. That might be a one-time mistake but anyway last few corners. Made it back to where I started which means pavement. I've never been so glad to see pavement in my life but truthfully it was an excellent trip. I had a great time camping up in the snow. It was fun going up. Of course took me like 10 minutes to get to camp going up the hill and it took me about an hour and a half getting down. That's how slow it was and how many times I had to stop and kind of sort out my line and everything but we made it. Super thankful for the Tacoma which did great. Got me through safe. Kept me warm all night and with that, that's going to do it for this video and if you like this video we've got a whole bunch more videos exploring camping and off-roading around the Pacific Northwest right here. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you in the next one.