I just spent the last three days with an amazing group, in an amazing place! Four of us drove up to Five Islands three days ago, and set up camp. It was a car-camping campground, which was a little strange for us. Here is a sampling of some of our comments regarding the whole situation: -Whoa, we don't have to filter the water! -I could have brought a real pillow. -(In reference to the three pocketrockets roaring on the picnic table) ...guys? I think we're backpackers... -Welp, now I know what's worse than people with poor headlamp etiquette, people with poor (car) headlight etiquette. After cooking our tasty meal, (on the pocket rockets) which involved waiting a while (I accidentally brought long-grain rice instead of minute rice), we pretty much just went straight to bed, since it was getting late. The next morning, two more friends showed up, we distributed gear, and then the six of us headed off in search of the rumoured slot canyon! We had great fun wandering around the woods in search of the canyon, and practiced rappelling down a steep, but still walkable, portion of the trail down to the river. Once we got there, we ventured upstream. It involved a lot of rock hopping, and some scrambling (up a small waterfall!) but we eventually made it! We couldn't access the slot canyon from the river, so we hiked up and around. We purposefully overshot it, to see if we could get to it from upstream, but alas, that didn't work out either. So, we retraced our steps and eventually found a great place to rappel down into it from above! We fortunately have a rock climbing and rappelling expert among us, so she rigged up the system, and literally showed us the ropes. I have rappelled before, but only into crevasses, so this was a little different! Not having crampons and really good grip with my feet certainly took some getting used to. Eventually, we all figured it out. There were some tears, and some rather entertaining streams of expletives from some, but we all made it down without any major issues! We then explored the cave-like area for a bit, had some entertaining photo shoots, and then climbed back out. That was certainly more difficult! Fortunately, there were decent hand- and foot-holds, so we didn't have to resort to prussic-ing our way out of there!
That evening, back at the campground, we laughed and ate and laughed some more. We had a great group of people along for this one! The, yesterday, after packing up camp, we headed out in search of a waterfall. The terrain was steep but very mossy and green. It was such a beautiful spot, we all wanted to camp there, but you would definitely need hammocks, unless you want to end up hundreds of meters away from where you originally pitched your tent... We got down to the river, and then had to decide if we should head up- or down-stream in order to find the falls. It turns out, both work! There were smaller falls upstream of us, and a larger set downstream. I ended up not going all the way to the lower ones because my knee was not entirely pleased with the steep grade, but the pictures look lovely. I was able to thoroughly enjoy the first set, however! We drove back to town in high spirits and in good company. We just spent the first of our 100 nights in a tent! We headed out yesterday afternoon to the second location we scouted yesterday, set up our tent on a beautiful piece of granite, and then made some pasta. The mosquitoes forced us to eat rather quickly, but the meal was still enjoyable; everything tastes better outside! Afterwards, we ducked into the tent as quickly as we could, but still had to spend a couple minutes hunting down all the mosquitoes that had found their way into the tent. Once that was done, the conversation flowed well into the evening. This bodes well!
Yesterday, Alex asks me if I want to go scout out some potential locations for a short bike-camping trip I'm planning for this weekend. Shortly after, we're in his car, headed down the coast. Our first stop is Pine Island and the lakes that encircle it. I've biked by a couple times, but never investigated it! We find that the area is well traveled, hunted, and watered (it has rained a lot recently)... Not ideal for camping, but we could make it work! It is very beautiful, that's for sure. We walked around for a while and checked out both East and West Pine Island Lakes. I spotted a beaver in East Pine Island lake on our way out. We then moved on to the second location we had scoped out in google maps. The second location was down the road a little ways further. From the maps, it just appeared to be a road leading off into the woods. Could it be a good access site? It would appear so! We found a few spots where we could pitch a tent on South Mountain Batholith outcrops.
It was on our way back into town that we started talking about a blog post (link below) about the author's goal to go camping 30 nights over the summer. Now, it is half-way through June, so we may have to alter the time frame a bit, but we decided it would be fun to give it a go ourselves! However, we then started talking about how much we enjoy winter camping... We both love winter camping, a lot. It would be a shame to not stretch this into the winter as well! Of course, the logical solution is to extent the time frame, and accordingly extrapolate the number of nights. So, here we are, embarking on an adventure that will see us sleep outside 100 of the next 365 nights! |
AuthorCarmen has successfully camped for 100 nights out of 365. This blog is a record of those nights outside! Archives
July 2016
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