7 More tips for Winter, Deep Snow Camping

1. .Bring a Set of Clothes for Shelter Building. If you build a snow shelter for the night, its a lot of work and you build up a sweat. You also have to be in a closed space, crawling around on the snow, and tossing snow toward the entrance of the shelter. After this fairly large and physical task, your clothes will be soaked with sweat. Its very nice to have a dry set of clothes ready to put on and not get chilled and not get your sleeping bag wet. Bring a full set of shelter construction clothes, including gloves and warm hat, rain pants and warm coat.

2. Food for Deep Cold Camping One delicious option for deep snow cold weather camping is frozen food. Especially if you haul your gear in with a gear sled, you can bring bulkier and heavier food than you usually do on summer trips. You can bring frozen steak, stew, clam chowder, vegetables, and a great one is Jimmy Dean Hash for breakfast. Eggs are a bit problematic because they tend to freeze. Frozen food can be safeguarded overnight by burying it in a pocket in the snow with about a foot of snow on top of it, nature’s deepfreeze. I’ve never had such a cache disturbed by animals. Jimmy Dean’s Skillet breakfast are great for breakfast, just bring some butter or cooking oil. Shown below, alcohol stove on snow stakes, at 7F.

3. Use Mukluks for cold winter camping. Shown below are mukluks made by Steger. These are a modern interpretation of First Peoples winter boots, used from the Arctic to Minnesota. These have moose hide lowers, rubber soles, and canvas uppers, with long leather straps to secure them. They have a felt liner, to which I have added the blue straps to help pull the liners up as you push your foot into the boot. They are not made to get wet, but for biting cold temperatures. Sold by Steger Mukluks, mukluks.com, Ely Minnesota (218) 365-6634

4. Gator Aid for nightime convenience (Pee bottle). A real pain in the neck when winter camping is having to get up and pee in the middle of the night. When you wake up and realize you need to go, you might as well get up and do it, rather than lay in your sleeping bag and think about it. The sooner you go, the sooner you can get back to sleep. The hard part is finding coat and gloves, headlamp, possibly getting boots on, getting out of your tent or shelter on hands and knees, walking out a ways, peeing and getting settled back in. Another way to handle it is to have a bottle with a bigger mouth than a Smart water bottle, preferably sit up in the tent or shelter (although I have done it laying down), pee in the bottle, and go back to bed. The Gator Aid bottle is a good vessel for this task.

5. Making a tent platform. If the snow is soft and deep, you have to make a solid base to set your tent on. To do this you select your fairly level spot and tramp it down while wearing your snow shoes or skis. You can wear your pack if you want. Go over it several times, with multiple people if possible, then let it sit undisturbed for an hour. This lets the snow set up after being “work hardened”. After an hour its likely you can walk on the platform. While the hour is ticking by, wear your snowshoes on the trails around your camp, tent to tent, to the main trail out, to the water source, etc. These trails will harden up and enable you to walk on them in your boots.

6. Trick for Water gathering in deep snow. You should never obtain water by eating snow or ice. That uses a lot of body energy to melt the snow and will chill you out. Snow can be melted on a stove, but that takes a lot of fuel. Its easier and faster to get water from streams, but the snow around streams can be so deep that the water can be hard to reach, as the running water behind Laurie, below, shows. To reach running water surrounded by deep snow you can attach a small carabiner to a hiking or skiing pole, or even a stick, and to that attach a cooking pot. Then reach down from a secure spot into the running water and dip out a supply for cooking.

7. Down booties for camp shoes and wearing in the sleeping bag. When it is very cold, you can use down booties as camp shoes. They won’t get wet by walking on cold snow, and when you go to bed you can dust them off and wear then inside your sleeping bag. This solves two other problems: getting up in the night to pee and having to put on boots, and getting up in the morning and having to put on boots.

Making a snow shelter in shallow snow https://www.backpackingtechnology.com/blog/2018/2/20/building-a-shallow-snow-covered-snow-trench

10 Tips for Winter Camping

https://www.backpackingtechnology.com/blog/2021/1/28/10-tips-for-winter-camping

Building a Snow Trench for WinterCamping https://www.backpackingtechnology.com/blog/2015/12/9/building-a-snow-trench-for-winter-camping

Winter Camping Comfort - Preventing Heat Loss

https://www.backpackingtechnology.com/blog/2020/12/8/winter-camping-comfort-preventing-heat-loss