Winter Camping at Temagami Lake

This is me at Appleby College catching the bus to go up to Rabbit Nose Island for winter camping with 47 Appleby students and 3 professional trippers and other teaching staff. It was very exciting getting prepared for this trip. I bought a lot of warm clothing from TNT on Lakeshore Blvd. It was hard to decide what I would need on the trip to keep comfortable. I got a new thermal rest which was great when it came to sleeping on the snow and I borrowed the knapsack from Niall's family in order to carry everything together.









First we had to walk across the lake, 10 km, to the island from the mainland. It was a real trial for me physically. I walked most of the way but did get a ride for the very last part. My student, Niall, walked the whole way with the other sighted students. It was blowing and snowing the whole way across as you can see in the picture.







It wasn't as cold as I thought it would be. If you got cold all you had to do was either start walking around in the very deep snow or start shovelling and make a bench or quincey (snow hut) and before you knew it you would be sweating. We took a few breaks while walking across the lake and Mr. Stamper brought us some warm water to fill our water bottles with and granola bars.








Niall was an awesome sport. He never complained about the cold or the hard work. He collected wood and broke up kindling for our fire and shovelled snow for everyone's quincey with the other students.













The weather was sunny on the days we were camping in the quincey's. I did have time to collect wood, take pictures and sit and contemplate life. We were out for three days and two nights. It was a lot of shovelling to make the quinceys'. Two for the boys, one for the girls and one for the leaders. We also made two couches to sit on.













One evening we had a beautiful winter sunset. The trees smelled awesome and it was so quiet out there in the middle of nowhere. We had a lot of ravens around cawing at us.












This was our quincey. I hung my fur hat outside so I could find it quickly, for in the evening when it got colder. I wore about 5 layers of clothing. The quincey's were quite warm inside for sleeping. You just definitely didn't want to get up in the middle of the night to pee. That would be waaaaaay toooooo cooooold, so no drinking after 7 at night.





This is the inside of our quincey looking out the opening. It still amazes me how warm it is for sleeping inside a pile of snow. What an awesome experience.









This is a picture of the map of the area of Lake Temagami and Rabbit Nose Island. It is a very beautiful place to camp and spend time. The map of Temagami some how disappeared and every time I go to delete some of the print I lose a picture so, no more deleting anything. I want to get this blog done.
This is a picture of our fearless leader, Doug Stamper. He is the outdoor ed. teacher at Appleby's northern campus. He took very good care of us and was an unrealy cook. Thanks to you Doug for such a wonderful time camping.








This gives you an idea of how much snow we had up there. This is the window for the room where the kids sleep if they are sick so we can watch them closer. There was sooooo much snow.








It was definitely a wonderful place to sit and think, think about life, and all it has to offer. I loved the huge bolders and rock cuts formed by the Canadian Shield. It really speaks of a different time, a time when the natives were in the area without us, making their living off the land and animals. It was a trip to be remembered, forever.