WINTER CAMPING IN CANADA; A COLD, WINDY REMOTE CAMPOUT.

Well, surprisingly enough, this morning, the stove still has quite a bit of heat to it. That's about how long I can leave my hand there. There's not really too many embers in there. We already tamped down the ashes. But there are some glowing pieces back there, and I think I can blow it into flames with Mike's fancy pocket bellows. So I'm going to put a lot of very dry, very mossy, lichen-filled twigs in there. get them all the way to the back because that's where most of the coals are the flames so again I used to make fun of these pocket bellows why would you need them but I understand it in this case for sure so you gotta get some breakfast on it's now 10 o'clock in the morning we are just slacking like crazy but we're also enjoying it so it's nice just getting up and knowing you don't have anything to do we can just relax all day we can go on a hike and gotta get firewood and cook but other than that pretty golden you got my everything onion bagel we decided to leave we're gonna do pancakes and bacon but it's now 10 a.m. so we're gonna do that tomorrow morning I think assuming we don't sleep in this one I don't think it's possible no which is like a wedge of orange yeah what no scurvy scurvy free trip we got butter to put on the bagels and toast some right on top of the you know that would be a good addition to a wood stove kit just a little toaster put on top a little wire toaster I think he's a coat hanger but I'm fresh out of coat hangers on this trip yeah even if you had like a grill that had like one inch legs you could just sit right on there oh that's our problem that's our problem with the wind we've invented a new toaster called the InstaToast it has to burn like a tornado coming off of it done Magneto. Mike, you want to wait for the tornado to smoke out? Oh, the tornado's finished for it? Oh, no, she done. She done. Is it windy back in the trees there? It's windy everywhere. Go make deposits? Yes. Okay, she's hot. It's not boiling, but there's no need to. I'm going to fill up my water bottle. Mike, you want me to fill up your water bottle? All righty. We're going to get a day pack packed up. Sorry. And we're going to hike out to the next lake and see what that looks like. like so we need to get so we need to get some water and some snacks and maybe a sit pad and my camera of course did these clips hold the bail open with the amount of water in here like what I can I pour I'm gonna throw a little bit of snow in there and cool it down so these clips are pretty pretty ingenious I've got them for mine too did you get them from Firebox Stove oh really oh well okay maybe they have a thing with them but normally if you don't have the clips you can pour it like this but then it kind of gets all over the handle goes wasn't in a weird way but in a weird way this is handy handily even I won't give you all the debris in the bottom Mike three quarters full off that it's pretty good maybe we should uh leave this on there while we're gone fill it up with snow don't get any yellow snow okay okay okay we got a gear tree here remnants of our wood I ended up taking off that spark arrestor there's just too much wind right now, so all the flow we can get. The flow, Joe, you know. Your snow cone's ready. You want lemon flavor, right? A little slushy on the slushy side, that's alright. Moving on up to a deluxe wall tent on the lake. Oh man, my snowshoes are stuck. So, I'm looking forward to this hike. I feel rejuvenated now. Put some water into me. Ready to go out and explore. Got our maps with us we're gonna bring a day pack maybe have a little soup up you know in a nice location it'd be nice to just hike though a not have to pull the sleds so it's kind of a kind of a bonus for us what snow shoes are you gonna wear the smaller ones the smaller ones Mike's got a couple pairs I'll show you his other pair later on the other pair are bear paw oh no the tails on on the bear paw or the short stubby ones, eh? Yeah. Ah, she's a little steep, eh? Little steep, eh? Here, hold this. You got it? It's filming. Get Snow and Joe's camera. Skiing a little bit, whoa. Kind of piled up here, eh? Almost through this portage, but check this out. See all these little nipped off spruce tips? That's from red squirrels nipping off ends of spruce branches. In order to get to the spruce cones and then eat the seeds inside the cones. nature with Joe. Anyways, we're out onto this second lake now. That portage was decent, decently long, and I believe the wind is gonna kick up pretty good over here, so maybe we'll find a sheltered spot to sit down for a bit, make up some soup or a tea. I'd say maybe up there in the sun. Well, we have been walking for a little bit now. The wind was too brutal on the other side, so we had to cross this lake too to get away from it, which is fine. We'll post up on top of this hill over here i got some meat stick mr noodles in it it sounds actually really good together right now on this water back too it's a nice spot no snow on the under this uh white pine check out what kind of tree that was no snow under this white pine so this is a good spot for lunch i think i'm pretty hungry after that hike it's nice to get the snowshoes inside the the tent we're hiking on the on the ice and the wind right here the snow is the sun is so strong in this one spot very high the sky right here right down directly on this spot you can feel it we're out of the wind we can feel the sun very very nice lunch spot so we're gonna hang out here a few hours away from the tent and start hiking back by the time we get back it's gonna be time to collect a bunch more firewood and start on supper so we had steak and potatoes last night like you saw and tonight we're going to have a sausage stir fry with onions and garlic and red peppers and celery and carrots and water chestnuts sounds so good yeah it'll be really good it might be too much for the pot the pan we may have to double up but that'll be all right tomorrow supposed to be not so windy we're gonna hike up on top of that mini mountain we keep talking about Mount Mini Logan what a pretty lake eh all those Tom Thompson that was that beauty sunset one of the best i've ever had we had a what site was it that was nice on that one on the east side of of McIntosh Yeah, we did go through top off. I don't think we ever did. It's not in a good location. Tim, McIntosh, Happy Isle. Getting back to the camp now. Let's see, we left Snow all before we left Ohan She's all water and a little bit warm, too. As you can tell, I'm not too cold in here without a fire. What about you, Mike? I'm good. It's probably right around zero, right? So we're just going to get this fire ready for tonight because if we try to light it while the wind's blowing like crazy, we're just going to get smoked out again. Got this stump. There's a little bit of resin in it. it's nice and dry get all this stuff going and uh be ready to cook supper won't be too far off how heavy it is i know that's why i keep thinking but it's not it's just the densest wood going good thing we feel pretty accomplished that is a hefty size uh firewood and they're pretty dense the btus are strong and it looks to be all maple to me um fire going you gotta get supper on pretty Pretty soon it's going to be pushing five, yeah five right on the dot actually. So we're going to do a stir fry, I'm going to start cutting up my, all the fixings on my clean plate. Get some oil up in there, we're going to use the three potato, four potatoes from last night for part of our stir fry. Come on oil, we're going to get some oil, just olive oil, it's olive oil that's frozen yeah. Yeah that shows you how cold it is. Get from here, oh there we go, nice, another little turd, little oil turds. Could put that in our frickin' snow cones earlier. Frozen. Indy woo! Rubbery. Sounds like it's cookin'. You like onions? Yeah, they'll almost caramelize, eh? A little bit. Awesome, we cut up that big piece. We have such good coals and good firewood. We don't have to go get any more tonight. We will tomorrow, but this is a good, good start. Okay, check out this plate. There is this, oh, look at the colors. Celery, green onions. Carrots, mushrooms, red pepper, sausages. Also, another little bonus here in a second. Oh man, look at this. Mound of foods. I'm glad there's someone else here to eat. Look at that. And then, pièce de résistance. Water chestnuts, my absolute favorite. The crunch is amazing. It's still a little full. All right, she's done. Time to serve this up and dig on in. The plate. I'm gonna do scoop by scoop so we each get even amounts of goodness and dank. Did we? Wasn't that late? It was late. It was dark for sure. What do you think? So good. Yeah? Pardon my French. No, man. You like it? Yeah, it's really good. Sausages are really good. Yeah. Mmm. Water chestnuts crunch. Yeah? Yeah. Well, then everything is good in life. If that happens, it could all have been soggy. But if the water chestnuts crunch. No, they got crunch. There we go. Mmm. Oh, look. What I found. An original. An OG potato. I think I got one here, too. That was it. Urgh, you can tell by the extra chewing you needed. I think the red peppers add a good dash of color and taste to it. What spices did you put on here? There's something called Everglades seasoning, and also... Everglades? Mm-hmm. Do you know what's in that? Gators? Gators, I think. Floridians. And, uh, some of the greenest people. And also, uh, Lawry's Allspice, all seasoning. Lawry's seasoning. Mike Lawry's seasoning. Like a Lawry seasoning. Kyle Lowry. The sausages are the perfect taste and consistency. No, they are perfect for this. You're right. It might be better than the steak. Am I allowed to say that? I think so. I'll pick it. Oh, man. I'm really happy you like it. We got water stuck under my chair. Son of a gun. Probably the only reason I'm not sinking in. We got supper. We got water. Liquid dessert. So nice compared to up here. We got our booties on. Our indoor shoes. It's chilling. Supper was super good. got some drinks going on touching up the old knife the old John Deere, Sammy Pucco, check out Deere knives on Instagram check out Mike's wool pants in this video well this is a pretty fun relaxing camp man we're talking about how it's nice to be able to just do what you want at your own pace yeah no rush to get to the next site i had no desire to tear this thing down no like it's up yeah yeah it's up it's a great spot we have been battling the wind a little bit with the fire and the smoke and coming out the chimney but or sorry coming through the wood stove but 90% of time is fine we all know it's more important to look cool that's right yeah we needed this spot to be to be honest there's not really anywhere else flat around so we probably just struggled to find somewhere else anyway this is flat as the dickens I can't believe how flat this is stomping it down was a great idea that was all Mike's idea with the bows so that was that was great we'll all do from now on I think yeah Stomping works super great. I was just post-holing in here the whole time and it gets wet and slushy Yeah, it's slopey towards the fire. Well, nothing exciting going on right now. We are Just relaxing. Get back with you guys in a little bit. This is what's happening now Just gonna sprinkle a little drip of water in there to see if it's ready to go. Boutrement, if that's the right word. Ba-bam! What'd you put on it? Butter and Seasoning salt haha. I just got un-melted butter. Mm-hmm little job. Surprising how well it cooks it that little Nalgene? It's perfect for the pop kernels and this just pot Oh, yeah, I'm melted butter Morning Mike morning, it's again 9:30 we slept in I did a bit earlier and better than yesterday earlier It's uh, there you go. That's what it is Picking time. We got a whole pound here which is probably more than we're gonna eat but we're having pasta tonight so if there's any leftovers it'll just go right into that. That being said we demoed all that food last night so no guarantees. Woke up and got the fire going maybe around 730 or so so it's really warm in here already super comfy the wind has died down some it's not as windy as it was yesterday but it blew that stovepipe around eh it was not in the same position so that's kind of sketchy if we knew it was gonna be as windy as it was if there was another location maybe we would have picked a bit different location but this is such a scenic spot and it's alright it's working so yeah we're gonna eat these eat these bacons eat these pancakes and go hike up Mini Mountain not many bacon just bacon for a change you're gonna watch Joe cook bacon hey man pancake and bacon with no utensils bam so very warm in here as you can see great combo though with the maple syrup the bacon pancakes or chocolate chips it's like nine your favorite food groups cover right there so oh yeah butter on the side it's a tight fit for Mike yeah well it's exactly six feet in here then so we're uh we got our snow stuffs on cleaned out all our stuff from cooking all our pots and pans gonna leave this on when we go full of snow and make some water for us for when we get back going to hike up Mount Minnie I'm gonna bring my GoPro should be fun I'm back to the camp now right there we were literally we were literally right up on top of that ridge there's a better shot of the peninsula that far Stay on this peninsula, so there's not a lot we got most of what we could of the good hardwood So we thought about going down the shorelines and grabbing some stuff But most of the shoreline is usually coniferous pines and whatever so we decided to head back to the portage trail And get up in elevation a little bit and we can grab some more maple or oak which we did find Got four or five big sticks the last big one. I'm just going to grab now. So we left it for the last one We're just dragging it across the lake. We got lots for tonight. We'll leave some here for whoever's next here's that piece of oak you can't see anyways red oak we think perfectly dry it was laying on the side of the trail and you can see how tight the rings are there's maybe a 20 or 30 year old tree that had probably been cut for trail maintenance anyways it's big it's heavy that's probably 50 or 60 pounds this chunk so that'll probably more than do us if not we'll leave it for the next people I think we are wood rich like hood rich but with wood you know but I come back to retrieve the axe yeah that's true yes absolute I've done that and it's come back and pull apart black fingernail what is so awesome thank you Yeah, I love his stuff dude Aaron is his name. Yeah, he's out in BC One Tree Leather He's done a bunch of sheaths and axe masks for me. We got some nice colors in the sky a little pinky little bluey Shivering as I'm talking you can hear that in my voice. It is time to cook supper This is really really working out this drying rack real good real good you said it's minus seven out there yeah it's already up to zero I've been like less than what yeah one minute yeah that's already got zero plus one she's rising put at the top of friggin fly Oh frig boys I'm all friggin fried here bud for what's going on Mike okay so we're cooking dinner night three we got some fresh tortellini cheese cheese stuff we have chunky tomato and basil pasta sauce Let me get a little stank of that. Tomato and basil-y, right? And then we have a bunch of fresh grated parmesan. We were thinking about leaving the extra bacon from this morning, but man down. Dude, no, I'll make it. Anyways, this will be good. Easy. We're just waiting for the water to boil now, the snow to boil. And that's pretty much it. Yeah, we've filled up our respective bottles for the morning. Mike has a good seven or eight hour drive home. And we've been here for, this will be the third night. and it's going to get what temperature tonight minus 20 ish minus 20 and uh it's gonna be like that in the morning so we're gonna get up early and bail early in the morning so mike can get to his car in a decent time but that means uh no fire in the morning at all in the wood stove because that'll delay things and uh cold cold cold teardown of camp so hands too cold hands too cold but that's the plan but for tonight yeah we don't want to clean the pot tonight so we have all our watered now. That's where I was going with that. Thank you. We're just going to leave it dirty and haul it out dirty because who likes doing dishes? Okay, we're boiling. Time for the tortellini. We want to bake some or fry some. Two seconds on there. Toss her in. How am I going to strain it? How are you going to strain it? I'll just figure it out. You might have a little bit of snow on it. It's not focusing very well but it's 35 degrees. Well, it's 35, Mike, almost 100, so it's right there. We're actually pushing 40, we're pushing 40 degrees. I just at the last second saw a frickin' pine needle in there. Just getting massively covered by spaghetti sauce. Just a little bit extra spice. All good Italian meals have pine needles in them. Provenza! She's all done. I'll just have to heat up the sauce. Nice. Serve 'em up. We have a lot. Trough. Do you have a trough handy? Slop that. Sidle up to the trough. Put your bib on. Put your chaps on. Little chaps assless. Is that what makes them chaps? I don't know. I think. I don't know. Assless chaps. Someone weigh in. Oh, my headlamp is about to die. Plug it in. Look at that. Freshly grated Parmigiano. That's on point, Mike. We're eating like kings on this trip It's never a peasant life with Mike It's probably the fastest to cook too Inside these, is this ravioli? Tortellini? It's cheese inside it? Parmesan inside it So what's ravioli, meat inside? We're going to bed, right Mike? It's time for bed Well, time has come Tis the third night It's a good amount of time to be away We were talking, seems like we did We had something to do every day Didn't feel too bored, we got to sleep in which is amazing as dads and husbands and people who have to get up and do things it's nice to be away and be able to sleep in and shoot the breeze in the morning cook up some food anyways it's time to go to bed it's pretty warm in here so we're my flashlights telling me it's time to shut it off we're going to bed I'll get you with you guys in the morning I hope my head was in frame for this shot I'll spit the gum out I promise I won't go to bed with gum in my mouth Well folks, it's 5 in the morning, and Michael and I are getting up and getting out of here. It was our worst sleep of the trip, but that's not saying much because we had slept like kings the past two nights. Just packing up, and I'll get with you before we get out of here, but I do want to put my camera away so we can hike back across the lake without having to lug it around. These logs work good in there, right? Yeah, good to fit, so... What, out on the poop? Sorry, my hands are so shaky. That's the moon. The tent down, and as I told you, those snow stakes, snow anchors, do their job. That was easier than the first one. Sleds are packed up. This is so cold, my zoom won't even turn or focus. And that's our footprint. So, awesome little square of boughs with some firewood left over for the next fortunate peeps. And my camera is not really working. Okay, thanks for coming along, guys. Had fun on this trip. You have fun, Mike? Yeah, good times. Good times, perfect amount of time. So we will get back out together. Maybe in the summertime. Absolutely. All right season time. Yeah, guys. Thanks for watching We're going to hike for three hours to get out of here