Résumé en français
J’ai fait un lit surélevé. J’étais content. Je suis tombé dans la nuit. J’étais moins content…
Snow, snow, snow, it never ends! I went for a two-days trip under quite heavy snow storm (or was it hailstorm?). Plus there was still a decent amount of snow on the ground except for some rare places so I decided to make a raised bed to put a layer of air between me and the frozen ground. What follows will truly amazed you, especially the fourth point (bon à part si tu t’es divulgâché en français…).
Earn or learn
- earn: the place I found was and ancient camp with a lot of felt structures, good for recycling wood and stop chopping trees down which is time/energy consuming!
- learn: previous bushcrafters were using cordage AND nails AND staples(?!), which is quite annoying when you plan to put an inflated mattress on top of your structure. My wood blanket helped a lot.
- earn: I was quite happy with the structure I ended up with, it looked like a bed in the middle of the forest! (see picture below)
- learn: I used to sleep on the side, at 2am I moved a bit too close to the border of the structure and it suddenly flipped around: half asleep, I felt from more that a foot high on the ice AND received a bunch of wood logs atop of me, double punishment. Definitely NOT cool…
- earn: instead of making a fire, I brought a small fire stove powered by wood, it saved me a lot of time especially to melt the snow and get some water out of it.
- learn: the stability of that kind of bed depends on how wide you put your base transversal logs, trying to fit to an existing small one was stupid (my knee agrees).
- earn: seen a dozen of deers while hiking, including one visiting me at the camp, these animals are so curious I don’t get the fun of hunting them.
- learn: sometimes I think that my memory/fear creates wolves howling by night, this time with the fresh snow from the morning I clearly identified wolves/coyotes footprints, a lot, everywhere!
- earn: jumping across torrents made by snow melting under heavy load without falling through was stressing.
- learn: at that time of the year, bring crampons. North faces were literally iced waterfalls by the morning.
My plan was initially to go for two days build something and then come back for more the week after but given the conditions I need to reconsider my strategy. Light hiking is an option, bike packing is another, oh and I start to give an eye to raft packing, stay tuned!
