Cold weather camping

[Irving]

Yeah what Bert said, or even any debris at all from crawling around through stuff. I think the only reason my daughter ever agrees to go hunting with me is because she knows I'll let her drive. This year she drove 13 miles of dirt road pulling my little trailer.

[Frac]

Yeah what Bert said, or even any debris at all from crawling around through stuff. I think the only reason my daughter ever agrees to go hunting with me is because she knows I'll let her drive. This year she drove 13 miles of dirt road pulling my little trailer.

Nice! I need to take mine out with the old Xterra to learn some off-road driving. I didn?t want to drive my new truck through this kind of stuff, let alone ask her to try it.


Mine goes because she?s my hunting buddy! Here she is making a phone call home from a spot we call the overlook.



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[Irving]

Haha, yeah reading again, that's awkward .

[Frac]

I forgot the electrical tape also, but I always carry a well-stocked first aid kit. Especially so, since the daughter was with me. I improvised and used gauze tape from the kit.

It is amazing how even a little bit of snow down the muzzle will melt and refreeze. I?ve seen mud down a barrel when pheasant hunting a couple years ago. That one was a bear because the mud wasn?t frozen in the ground but it instantly froze in the barrel and cold air. Wow, what a pain to clean out! We pushed most of it out with a stick and then pulled a milo stalk through the barrel like a brush.


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[Irving]

Chains became necessary once it snowed a few times. There were some scary slide marks going off the edge, then right back onto the road. The only thing I can think of was it might have been a trailer. I remember last year it seemed like it took me 30-40 minutes to put on the chains, so I was very reluctant to take them off or put them on. This year I tried a different way and as long as I wasn't in a hole, I could get a chain on a tire in under 60 seconds a tire. Total game changer.

[Frac]

Nice! What chains did you get? The Xterra goes through stuff like that no problem so I haven?t chained it up yet.

For the truck I bought Security Chain Co Super Z chains. Very quick to chain up.


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[Irving]

I have Super Z Chains also. I think I got them off of here years ago. It was more the packed ice on the switch backs that was the problem.

[Frac]

Oh yea, snowpack and ice is no fun. We ran into that thanksgiving week last year hunting Wyoming. I didn?t use the chains but probably should have.


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[JohnnyEgo]

Seems like nearly everyone decided to sleep in the great outdoors this weekend. Glad to hear you stayed warm, Irving!

We had a Cub Scout camping event at the Delatour Scout Ranch over in Red Feather this weekend. Couple hundred Cub Scouts from all over the North Front Range. Saturday day hit nearly 70?. Wide shot of the Cub Scout side of the camp:


About 5:00 PM when the sun started going down, the temp dropped quick and the winds picked up. Saw a couple dome tents go flying, and several folks had snapped fiberglass poles. I didn't want to pitch my tent into the wind, because I didn't want what little heat it might hold to be blown through the whole evening. So instead, I pitched broadside to the wind, but I staked the hell out of the windward side. It worked pretty good; tent was still there and standing fine as other large tents around us were collapsing. The guys in the smaller tents were mostly fine, and probably a lot warmer.



By 7:00 PM, weather panic appeared to have set in, and tents came down and families left in droves. I told my son I didn't haul a truckload of camping gear out there for kicks. So we stayed, with four other Dads and their kids from our pack. Curiously enough, all the women left, carpooling with one another where necessary, no doubt because the extra X chromosome confers better survival wisdom. My tent is definitely a three season tent, and that giant screen door did little to keep the heat in. However, the folks at REI sold me on two Exped Mega Mats when I came in to rent a 0? sleeping bag. Best air mattress I've ever slept on, and the insulation was fantastic. Didn't even need the closed cell foam pads. Also picked up a pair of $60 'Teton' branded cheap Chinese import bags at Sportsmans. I figured like Irving, we'd nest our mummy bags inside of them to boost up the rating. But they worked way, way better than I had anticipated, and I ended up not using my mummy bag at all. It dropped down to 17? overnight, but we both slept very warmly.


On our last trip to Wyoming last month, I found my Coleman stove wasn't cutting it. It was in the low 20s and windy, and the stove couldn't run both burners at the same time and boil a stock-pot full of water. So I traded in some reward points at Cabelas and walked out with the entry level Camp Chef Explorer. This thing is absolutely magnificent. When we woke up, the burner heads had clogged with snow and ice. I had to warm up a few jets with a match to thaw enough for the gas to flow. But once a couple nozzles lit, the burners cleared themselves super quick. I had no problem at all running both burners to boil that stock-pot of water for hot chocolate, and the coffee percolator. High temp boiled the whole stock-pot super quick, faster than the coffee took to start perking on medium on the other burner. And when we were done, I turned the air-fuel valve way down and both burners produced a large yellow flame that several kids and adults huddled around to warm hands. For car camping, this thing is a beast, and I wish my father had one when I was a scout.



The snow picked up in earnest over the course of the morning, and by the time we broke camp at 11:00, there was about five inches of accumulation. Coming up the the dirt road incline towards 287 had some nasty spots that had me reaching for 4-Low, until I remembered I drive a long-bed 2wd Florida truck, so I just grit my teeth, backed off a few gears, and took it steady and slow. I have snow tires, but it did make me ponder whether I should own chains if I am going to continue to make questionable life choices. Will have to give the Super Zs a look.

Edit: See the board turned all my alt-code degree symbols to question marks.

[Irving]

Chains are to off road conditions what traction control and snow tires are to on road conditions. It feels like cheating.