Camping

Friday:
Alex, Horto, Irv, Tyler and I left Cambridge just before 9 am. What was supposed to be a 4-4.5 hour drive only took us about 3.5 (not including the stops) We pulled into the parking lot, unloaded the car and got ready to head down the trail. The hike in sucked. I'm not sure if it was the fact that we all over-packed, or that none of us stretched, or even the fact that none of us have ever really hiked before and had no idea what to expect, but soon backs, shoulders, legs and feet were incredibly sore. It took us about 2 hours to walk 4.4 kms, but to be fair it was a lot of going up and down hills. Other than the physical toll, there were only really 2 issues. Horto's foot slipped off of a rock while crossing a stream, getting his boot and sock a little wet, and I slipped in some mud after laughing at Alex because I had passed him. Oh yeah, Alex was hiking like he was possessed. He was setting a pretty tough pace, especially since he seemed to have the least comfortable pack and I'm pretty sure it's been longer since he's seen the gym than any of the rest of us.

The whole hike it was snowing. I know, snowing. It was cold enough for snow to fall, but warm enough that it melted fairly soon after landing on the ground. It gave the whole thing a weird whimsical feeling. There were a lot of beautiful nature sights, including a kick-ass beaver dam. (If Horto ever posts the pictures on facebook, you'll get to see it)

We got to the campsite at about 5 pm, and we broke off into groups, 1 to collect firewood and 1 set up tents. We got the dinner fire going after 3 tries and finally got to eat some hot food (steak and corn) at about 9 pm. By the time we finished none of us really had any energy left so after hanging the food from a tree, which included a very funny incident of Horto being attacked by bananas, we crawled into our sleeping bags. It was cold as crap. I'm glad I was in the middle that night.

p.s. Tyler told us that urine keeps bears away, so every time one of us had to go #1 we worked on a circle around the tents. Not sure if it's true, but there were no bears.

p.p.s. Alex was worried about sharing a tent with me and Horto because we both snore and he was worried it would ruin his sleeping. Ironically he fell asleep first....and proceeded to snore.

Saturday:
We woke up to about half an inch of snow everywhere. Nobody wanted to get out of their sleeping bags, it was cold outside, but quite warm inside of them. We eventually crawled out of our tents and into the cold light of morning, but luckily the fire was started much easier than the night before. We were soon eating some bacon, eggs(not me), oatmeal and cereal...filling up our bellies for a long day ahead. As the sun got higher in the sky and warmed up the ground, the snow quickly melted away, leading to a fairly nice afternoon. After breakfast was done, we all headed into the bush together to find some serious firewood. There was a bog nearby with a bunch of dead trees. After some hits with Tyler's hatchet and Alex's smooth work with his saw, we had a pretty good pile of wood. We returned to the site to cut the wood into manageable sizes and sort it into piles based on size. This made starting fires from then on much easier.

For lunch we cooked up a couple of boxes of KD. I say lunch, but since we ate at around 4 pm, I'm not really sure if it qualifies. We were expecting rain that evening and the next day, so the decision was made to set up a second living area a bit more into the trees so we would be able to set up some tarps that we could stay dry under. While we barely got any rain, the covered shelter was a nice touch, despite some issues with smoke. This shelter was the only real work of the afternoon. I worked on carving some character into my walking stick (I named it Kaylle after the mechanic from Firefly), Tyler's was pretty badass to begin with so he only added some handle grips. Horto's broke earlier in the morning when he was pretending to be a warrior...it was hilarious, because it broke when he swung it. Didn't even hit anything, it just snapped into 3 pieces. We also added a tarp to the tent shared by Alex, Horto and I, since we could feel the wind blowing through the night before.

We had some delicious Sausages and baked potatoes for dinner. Irv and I cracked open the bottle of Captain Morgan's while Alex, Horto and Tyler had themselves a bit of wine. We sang late into the night. If there was anybody at the sites next to ours, they probably would have gotten fed up and moved farther away....or killed us in our sleep.

Horto was in the middle Saturday night, so I was up against the side of the tent. It wasn't too bad except that I couldn't stretch out or else my head or feet would touch.

Sunday:

Horto woke up before me, and since I was curled up all night, I used the free space to stretch out. It was pretty nice. Even though there was no snow, it was still pretty cold when we got out of our tents. Luckily, since there was no snow, the wood was much drier and getting the breakfast fire going was way easier. Same breakfast as the day before, except this time we had 2 pounds of bacon to split amongst us all. There was moose poo on the path right near our new living area that wasn't there the night before. Even though we hadn't seen any wild life, it was clear that there was some around. Since we had done the huge firewood collection the day before, we didn't have anything that we really HAD to do during the day. At a few points we needed to add to a pile or two, but it was fairly easy now that we knew where to look. I did some more work on my walking stick, it was looking pretty good. Tyler didn't think it was going to be strong enough after the visual improvements I made, but we'd have to wait until the walk back to find out. Tyler and I had a sword fight, but it wasn't until afterward that we realized we had done so right in the middle of the moose droppings. Alex spent most of his day working on a bow and arrow as well as a bat and ball. The bow and arrow worked a lot better than expected, but wasn't really strong enough to do any damage. The bat and ball were really fun, but it was tough only having one fielder, since Irv and Tyler had disappeared.

For dinner, we had some chili that I had made at home and brought with us, as well as some garlic bread. It was amazing. Tyler wasn't really feeling too good, sore throat/runny nose, so he went and laid down after he was done eating. Irv too went for a nap so Alex, Horto and I played some cards and poured a few glasses of wine. They both woke back up after we heard some splashing in the lake. Alex was getting quite scared that a bear or a moose were headed our way. I took every chance I could to play off of this, whether making noises in the bushes or sneaking up on him in the dark. We went down to the water to check it out, but were instead greeted by the Northern Lights. Irv let us know that he had seen better when visiting his brother up in the Yukon, but even still it looked pretty awesome. Now that they were awake, we all went back to the fire to finish off as much of the wine and rum as possible so we didn't have to carry it back the next day.

After a lot of singing and drinking, we headed to the tents for the final sleep of the weekend.

Monday:

It was actually decently warm Monday morning. We finished off the rest of our food (apart from some snacks) and milk and started to pack everything up. The walk back was incredibly easier. First of all, our packs were lighter. We had brought 4 litres of milk, 2 containers of chili, 5 pounds of bacon, 36 eggs, 2 bags of cereal, 5 bags of trailmix, 2 cans of corn, 10 sausages, 12 steaks, a bunch of oatmeal and 6 boxes of KD, all of which had been eaten, so we didn't have to carry it back. (These numbers might be wrong, I'm just going by memory) Secondly Alex led us all in a stretch before leaving. While it wasn't the most thorough stretch I've ever done, it really helped. And finally, we all prepared ourselves mentally for what was ahead of us. We had done it once and knew what we were up against. What we didn't expect was the heat. Since we were right on the lake, it was a little bit cooler at our campsite than the rest of the trail. About 5 minutes and one hill down, we had to stop and change clothes. I switched from long pants and a sweater into shorts and a long sleeve t. Tyler didn't bring shorts, but he did lose his long underwear and sweater. Irv also went done to shorts and a t shirt. We headed out on a the trail and based on the landmarks we were making pretty good time. Irv's sleeping roll kept falling out which caused some problems, especially when we were starting up again after taking a water break. I noticed Irv's sleeping pack was missing, and since we were at the top of a hill it had probably rolled down. He went back along the trail to find it and said to go on ahead without him. It's a good thing I didn't. After about 5 minutes of waiting, I took off my pack and went to the bottom of the hill where the path curved out of sight. He was nowhere to be seen. I yelled his name but there was no answer. I went back up the hill to tell the others what was going on. They, like me, assumed that he was just being Irv and hiding on us. When Tyler went to the bottom of the hill, yelled his name and there was no answer, we started to hope that it was in fact a joke and that nothing serious had happened. It turns out his sleeping pad had fallen out a fair way back along the trail. He went back, got it, turned around and headed back. He never heard us yelling, which is really scary, because he actually wasn't that far away. We all put are packs back on, made sure Irv's pad was strapped in nice and tight and headed back towards the car. It actually wasn't that far away. The walk in felt like it took 3 hours, but the walk out felt like it was about 45 minutes.

As soon as we got to the car, we all dropped our packs and changed into the clothes we had ready for the ride home. Stopped at Webers for some dinner and made good time on the drive back to Cambridge



What did I learn from camping? Let's see. First of all, if you have a group of guys together for an extended period of time, there are going to be a lot of gay jokes going around, especially when there's a lot of wood around. Secondly, if you're going to be hiking, be smart when you're packing. We had way too much stuff that wasn't used at all, other than to weigh us down. Thirdly, I love camping.