Winter Camping

Scouts Winter Camping
Winter Camping – Scouter Wally and the Venture Company

This is one of my favourite photos of all time and does it ever have a story.

My father had been involved in Boy Scouts for most of his life. He was a youth member and a Cub Scout leader before I was even born.  When I was old enough to join, I became a Wolf Cub as well.

There are several different age groups to get involved in Scouts and I have been involved in all of them, except for Rovers.

Beavers – 5 to 7
Cubs – 8 to 10
Scouts – 11 to 14
Ventures – 14 to 17
Rovers – 18 to 26

The photo above shows a winter camping expedition we went on with our Venture Company.

I’m the third person on the left in the horseshoe formation. You can see my dad addressing us right beside me in the background. The girl on the bottom right of the photo passed away about a year later. So, rest in peace to both her and my father.

We had a lot of fun trying to survive an entire weekend in one of the coldest winters on record. We hiked in to our camp site and made shelters to sleep in. We were roughing it, that’s for sure.

We learned a few important things that weekend.

Number 1 – Don’t leave your water in the water cooler jug

We really should have poured the water into some pots because it froze solid in the water jug. As such, we had no water on our site and had to hike several kilometers to get new water in the morning.

Number 2 – Protect Your Insulin

One of the boys had his insulin freeze as well. I’m not sure what my dad did to remedy that problem.

Number 3 – Stay Warm

Once you catch a chill, it is nearly impossible to warm-up again when you can’t get to a heated building. My gloves weren’t the best and my hands got so cold that I couldn’t move them at one point.

I don’t think I’m selling you on the idea of winter camping, am I?

It was a challenge, but we came out of it okay. We did something that very few people can say they’ve done.  We slept outside in temperatures that felt like -20 degrees Celsius with the windchill.

It was a weekend I will never forget. I’m glad we had an amateur photographer in our group as well. I so love that photo!