Cold AF.

Seriously.

Finally, my husband and I got a chance to go on a winter camping date before the stay-at-home order was issued. We know of some crown land in Muskoka that we frequent often so decided to venture into one of our favourite spots.

We had to haul our toboggans over a frozen beaver pond and experienced major slush. This made for a very difficult journey into the wilderness. Slush coated to the bottom of your toboggan feels like you’re pulling hundreds of pounds of weight. There were times when I literally couldn’t make my toboggan budge.

Not. One. Bit.

Exhausting AF.

Half a kilometre in and wondering how far we can actually make it!

Because we had to keep tipping our sleds over to scrape the bottom, we didn’t make it as far in as we wanted, but I can tell you that it felt like we trekked in 5 miles, when it was only 1.3 kilometres.

We weren’t at our intended camping spot for more than 15 minutes when my husband startled me by saying “don’t be nervous.”

What would your reaction be if someone said that to you?

The saw slipped and cut his hand while he was getting wood. I was out taking pictures and he was leaving a trail of blood around camp.

While I was out doing this… (making photographs) my husband was in the tent doing this… (first aiding his hand below).

We’re all out of bandages. He cut through a vein and there was a lot of blood. Our first date weekend (in MONTHS) is off to a great start…

It got cold, fast. It was by far the coldest night of winter so far. -23C, even more with the windchill. It made photography and long exposures excruciating on the hands.

Some of my coolest work to date happened this night. It was SOOOO cold, but I knew there was magic happening all around me.

A small amount of ambient light in the background making its way through the thick trees around our site.

Probably one of my most amazing landscapes. Ever.

Freezing hands was definitely an indication of a cold night. We didn’t keep the stove lit, but I did double up my -9C rated sleeping bag into a -20C sleeping bag.

Thankful to have a partner that gets up in the coldest hour of the morning to light a fire inside.

After a hardy breakfast of sourdough french toast, we tinkered around camp for a bit… mostly waiting for it to warm up outside. It was only supposed to rise to -14C during the day. It’s also hard on our dog, Banjo’s, paws.

My homemade sourdough, french toast-style.

We desperately wanted to put some miles on with our Altai Hok skis, but the slush was still there on the small lakes.

Following our snowshoe trail from the previous day to get some sunlight on our faces.

With skis on, we just wanted to follow the sunlight.

Weekend adventuring during a pandemic. Nothing has changed for us. We love exploring our backyard.

With short days, by afternoon we had to get more wood cut for our evening of -20C temps.

“I don’t mind chopping wood” (The Band lyrics).

The pressure was off for the last night to take photos because it clouded over.

We just had a wonderful time. I learned so much this time around hot tenting in the backcountry as opposed to a provincial park.