hikingfish
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Hi!
It's not a very well known fact, but a little mountain in Quebec (close to Sherbrooke, called Mont Ham) allows hikers to sleep on the summit in winter (there's a plateau sheltered from the winds). Admission is only 10$ (trail access for 2 days and camping fees) per person.
Isabelle and I set off on Saturday from Montreal with the intention of going on top of Mt Ham and sleeping there under a full moon. Temperatures for Saturday were quite hot and humid, +10C with rain: We kissed the full moon goodbye right away. This being my first winter camping experience, I wanted to be sure to sleep in dry clothes, so I put all my clothes into a drybag and we headed out. Probably the smartest decision I made that day! The trail was in pretty bad conditions (postholing!), slush and loads of water, but we managed to get to the top in about 3 hrs (30-45min after sundown) with our headlamps.
It was our first time setting a camp in winter, but it was a whole lot of fun! Stomping the area in snowshoes and levelling it kept us warm at the beginning. Putting up the tent was rather hard, make sure you practice at home if you get a rental!! It's very difficult to learn how to put up a tent in windy/rainy conditions
Once we had the tent up, Isabelle went inside to get everything sorted out and ready while I staked the tent into place using deadman anchors. In the wet snow, these held up great and as the snow froze overnight, these babies weren't going anywhere! In fact, it took 45 minutes of ice breaking in the morning to break them free of the ice haha. I also dug up a good foot one snow from the vestibule to make it easier to get/out of the tent. It made getting in/out of the tent so much easier!
I set up my kitchen area and started boiling water for our meal: cup-O-soup, garlic shrimp pasta, dark chocolate, brownies and a glass of wine Standing around made me cool down fairly fast though...so once the water had boiled, I got all the kitchen stuff into the vestibule and jumped into the tent and changed into some dry clothes. Dehydrated food never tasted soooo good ;-)
During the night, my nose got pretty cold at some point, but it survived. That MEC sleeping bag lived up to it's rating (-20C) hehehe. After checking on meteomedia.com (past 24h), the weather was at -20C around 8am a couple of towns over, and we were at 713m, so I'm pretty sure it was at least -20C.
We got up a bit after the time we originally wanted to get up (aka: LATE!) and had to quickly eat a little something and get going to hope to return the tent in time. Remember those deadman anchors? It took forever to get them out of the ice. Undoing the fly with full mitts on was also quite the challenge, but we finally managed to get everything packed and we headed out. As soon as we came out of our protected nest, we were hit by good winds which made things very cold. We managed to get our butts back done without any incidents and with all our bits and pieces intact. It was the most fun I had this winter so far!
Pics
Hope you all have a chance to go to this little mountain. I was told that it might become a SEPAQ Parc or something similar very soon and we won't be able to camp at the summit anymore. So...it's now or never!
Fish
It's not a very well known fact, but a little mountain in Quebec (close to Sherbrooke, called Mont Ham) allows hikers to sleep on the summit in winter (there's a plateau sheltered from the winds). Admission is only 10$ (trail access for 2 days and camping fees) per person.
Isabelle and I set off on Saturday from Montreal with the intention of going on top of Mt Ham and sleeping there under a full moon. Temperatures for Saturday were quite hot and humid, +10C with rain: We kissed the full moon goodbye right away. This being my first winter camping experience, I wanted to be sure to sleep in dry clothes, so I put all my clothes into a drybag and we headed out. Probably the smartest decision I made that day! The trail was in pretty bad conditions (postholing!), slush and loads of water, but we managed to get to the top in about 3 hrs (30-45min after sundown) with our headlamps.
It was our first time setting a camp in winter, but it was a whole lot of fun! Stomping the area in snowshoes and levelling it kept us warm at the beginning. Putting up the tent was rather hard, make sure you practice at home if you get a rental!! It's very difficult to learn how to put up a tent in windy/rainy conditions
Once we had the tent up, Isabelle went inside to get everything sorted out and ready while I staked the tent into place using deadman anchors. In the wet snow, these held up great and as the snow froze overnight, these babies weren't going anywhere! In fact, it took 45 minutes of ice breaking in the morning to break them free of the ice haha. I also dug up a good foot one snow from the vestibule to make it easier to get/out of the tent. It made getting in/out of the tent so much easier!I set up my kitchen area and started boiling water for our meal: cup-O-soup, garlic shrimp pasta, dark chocolate, brownies and a glass of wine
Standing around made me cool down fairly fast though...so once the water had boiled, I got all the kitchen stuff into the vestibule and jumped into the tent and changed into some dry clothes. Dehydrated food never tasted soooo good ;-)During the night, my nose got pretty cold at some point, but it survived. That MEC sleeping bag lived up to it's rating (-20C) hehehe. After checking on meteomedia.com (past 24h), the weather was at -20C around 8am a couple of towns over, and we were at 713m, so I'm pretty sure it was at least -20C.
We got up a bit after the time we originally wanted to get up (aka: LATE!) and had to quickly eat a little something and get going to hope to return the tent in time. Remember those deadman anchors? It took forever to get them out of the ice. Undoing the fly with full mitts on was also quite the challenge, but we finally managed to get everything packed and we headed out. As soon as we came out of our protected nest, we were hit by good winds which made things very cold. We managed to get our butts back done without any incidents and with all our bits and pieces intact. It was the most fun I had this winter so far!
Pics
Hope you all have a chance to go to this little mountain. I was told that it might become a SEPAQ Parc or something similar very soon and we won't be able to camp at the summit anymore. So...it's now or never!
Fish
