Winter Family day camping

Jenn and I set out at 10:00 to the forests in the south end of the city (the same spot Andon and I tested out the four season tent) We hiked about a kilometer to the site, our sleds packing the trail real good. The weather was amazing, 6 degrees celsius and sunny in February when it is usually in the minus twentys. Jenn packed the spot for the tent down with her snowshoes while I downed a dead black spruce. Jenn took over the cutting for me and I set off and put up the Arctic bell tent. For the last 5 years I've had the tent I've been setting it up the hard way. After seeing online the correct way to set the tent it took a lot less time and effort. I then assembled the woodstove and cut a bipod for the stove pipe. Jenn and I then went about bringing the wood, spruce boughs and gear into the tent and at 16:00 I started the fire and cooked lazy man's cabbage rolls. I got to do some testing of the BK-7 by batoning some decent sized wood into kindling and shaving down some feathersticks. I de-limbed a spruce for some boughs for underneath my bedroll. I was highly impressed with the BK-7's performance. Around dusk some black capped chickadees started to visit the camp so we set some trailmix out for them and before long they were hopping around on guy lines and coming up to the entrance. We settled down for the night and around 01:00 a digging sound from the side of the tent woke us up and Jenn made a noise and scared off the mysterious creature,  about 10 mins later it revealed itself a Fox starting barking a short distance away as though scolding us.
I slept through the rest of the night waking a couple times to stoke the fire. We woke around 07:00 to the fire at a slow smolder and trying to stoke it was falling each time, I noticed smoke coming out from the damper holes and knew the problem as it has happened a couple times before. I crawled outside and pulled the spark arrester out and it was completely crusted over with creosote,  as soon as I pulled the arrester free a whoosh sounded and the fire flared up immediately. I cooked some sausages and bacon for breakfast and we relaxed and bit and then broke camp and headed home.

High peak outdoors Klondike 2 man 4 season tent review

I've had this tent in my inventory for a little while now and have wanted to test it out in some pretty decently cold weather . I took it out in September on an overnight that saw -1 degree C and it did great but I really wanted to see if  I could trust this tent on a winter camp out. My nephew Andon and I settled on a location close to home and we hiked about 1 kilometer and begin to set up. We first found an area out of the wind and not in a cold sump and checked the ground for stumps and heaves, once satisfied with the ground we laid down a ground sheet (A US army shelter half) the choice of groundsheet turned into a lesson learned but more on that later. We then raised the inner tent and secured the outer fly all easy tasks. While I staked the fly and tied the guy lines Andon covered over the bottom edges of the fly with snow. The tent has two very useful vestibules and we faced them in a north south facing, we used the north facing vestibule as our gear storage for our packs and the south one as the entrance and place for our boots.

 

I went inside the tent and unrolled our sleeping bags and placed the lantern and thermometer.
We collected firewood and Andon started up the fire which we set on top of a salvaged metal sheet found nearby, After a supper of chilli and soup we set aside our fuel and kindling for the next
morning and settled in for the night.

We changed into our sleeping clothes and it didn't take long to notice that the tent was retaining a considerable amount of heat at 11 C with an outside temp of - 13 C. We fell asleep around 2100 and I awoke at 0100  and checked the temperature 7 C outside temp still - 13 C. When I woke up at 0300 it was 0 C with an outside temp of -18 C. When we got out of bed at 0630 the temp was still 0 C and the outside temp -20 C. It didn't take long and we got the fire roaring. When we took the tent down the ground sheet I had put down had absorbed a great deal of moisture and was a sheet of ice that I had to pound with the back of my axe to fold up. The tent had a lot of ice on the inside from condensation and I think it was due to me  closing the vent flaps in the early part of the night and opening it around 0300. 

 2100

 0100

  0100 outside temp

0300

0300 outside temp

I give this tent 4 stars

PROs:                               CONs:

-Easy setup                        -Could be a little more breatheable for condensation control

-Low cost ($200)                - Size, I would make the tent a little longer and not as tall

-Excellent heat retention

-Light weight (2.7 kgs)

Carlyle Lake Ghost Mountain camp out 11/18/16

My nephew Andon and I got moving around 9 am after having breakfast and arriving at the Lake Abitibi access road around 10 am. We cut some dead standing black poplar and birch to make life a little easier in the evening and made our way to Carlyle Lake road. The road was a little more narrow than I had remembered and my paint on the truck was none-too-impressed but we otherwise made it without any issues. We parked in the little campsite cut out and proceeded to set up the arctic 5 man bell tent and set up the woodstove and cots.

Once we were set up we walked down the road to Carlyle to do what we came to do : fish. The road was a lot muddier than when I came down in the May but we managed to keep fairly dry. Carlyle lake is a beautiful sight nestled in the middle of Ghost range and is surrounded by bluffs and mature growth forest, countless giant cedars and spruce dot the cliffs around the lake,the water is crystal clear and the bottom is mixed sand and boulder. The MNRF stock the lake fairly religiously with brook trout

   

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We fished for about a few hours and we caught several small trout that weren't keeper sized but I managed to catch one that was good for the pan.

The keeper after cleaning

 Andon hard at work

 One of the little guys

Bobbers and worms and spinners.
A large snow storm was expected in the region so our two day trip was already cut down to one, but we were monitoring the weather channel on my VX-7R in case the outlook got better or worse.
We left the lake around 3pm and cooked an early dinner of brook trout and backpacker spaghetti. By the time dinner was done it was well on the way to getting dark.

We went back to the tent unrolled our bedrolls and started up the wood stove, we spent the evening cracking jokes and listening to the radio stations in the area.I was awoken around 1:30 am by the tent shuddering and massive winds and loud booms getting closer, a November thunderstorm. For a tent that has little waterproofing and made in the 50s it held it's own very well with the only major issues being hot water running down the stove pipe and under the doorway. The rain continued through the night and the rest of the next day.

 The tent can get very balmy with the woodstove rolling so it takes a little while to get used to using the flue and damper.

The next morning we went out fishing but only managed a little guy. So we went back to camp and dried off and started packing up. By noon all was packed up except the water logged tent which I rolled up in one heck of a sodden mess inside of a tarp. The return drive was fairly uneventful and the snow only started to really come down when we arrived in Timmins. 

Now for the long process of drying and cleaning my gear and get ready for winter camping and ice fishing. 

Getting ready for 2 day trip

I'm packaging up some meals for my 2 day trip to Carlyle Lake and Ghost Mountain, lot's of carbs and fiber are in order: Backpacker Spaghetti and meat sauce and Dehydrated Lazy man's cabbage rolls. I'm hoping brook trout, snowshoe hare and grouse are also on the menu.

Sept 10 - 12 2009 Ghost River, Lake Abitibi Trip

September 10 2009

My friends Luke and Pat and myself left South Porcupine for our canoe trip down Ghost River to Lake Abitibi.We arrived at the boat launch at around 2 pm and left immediately, right away we met with some difficulties with shallow water and submerged logs which slowed us slightly. About a half an hour down the river we came across our first log jam . After a bit of scurrying we bypassed it and came across several others (which I wasted lots of time trying to cut through) of small to medium size which was discouraging due to the canoe report said nothing about the jams (Don't trust reports) so we continued and then came the big one it was about 30 trees laying over the river.It took us quite some time to bypass this one because there was 3 meters of near vertical clay banks on the sides and a deep runoff of soft black muck to crawl through.But we made it, after climbing down a conveniently placed tree (equipped with handholds and all) we set of again and encountered no more real problems until nightfall (which due to my lolly gagging with the small jams and my saw came soon after the marsh)We had a heck of a time spotting the boat launch we were going to be camping at, after awhile we spotted a parked trailer's reflectors and we were at our spot.That was around 9:45pm, so we set up camp Luke in his hammock and me and Pat in the tent.Pat got the fire started while Luke and I set camp and we ate a supper of jalapeno sausage meat chili drank tea and slept.

(Ghost Mountain from Ghost marsh)

(A really bad photo I took of our fire I had the camera set to slow exposure)

Sept 11 2009

We woke up around 8 am and set out for Lake Abitibi and within 10 minutes we were there, we were quiet for a bit taking in the size of Abitibi ( 931 km2 {359 sq mi} ) it was quite the sight

(A couple photos from the mouth of Ghost River)

We were trolling and casting in the canoe until Luke noticed his paddle was hitting bottom so we hopped out of the canoe and walked it to the shore and gathered our fishing gear.To our amazement the bottom of the entire bay was beach sand with occasional rocks and was only waist deep.So we spent the entire day walking island to island and casting.We didn't even get a bite but we were too shallow for much anyway.

(Pat an Luke wading to the island I'm on)

(Ghost River Bay)
(My Canoe from the bay)
We returned to camp around 6pm ate smoked sausages for supper and went to bed, before falling asleep I decided to check the weather on Weather Radio Station Ramore on my Yaesu VX-7R and learned that thunderstorms were rolling in for the next couple days starting on the 12th in the afternoon, not good news.



Sept 12 2009
I woke everyone up around 6am so we could beat the storms and we set off around 715am we went through all the obstacles and this time I got photos of the big log jam.
On our way back up the river it almost seemed like the water was even lower, we had to jump more logs going up than coming down but, we made it. Even though I didn't catch any fish I had fun in the fact that I spent time in the woods and got to see Lake Abitibi finally, I'm definitely planing a couple trips there in 2010.