It is never a good omen when you pull into the trail head parking to see someone coming out of the woods covered in frost ice from their own breath who tells you it was too much for him to bear...
cncd11 and I pulled in late, LATE (3am late) on Thursday after a long day at work and while we were loading up our pulks we saw a light bobbing up the trail towards us. This hang was a cross forum hang where half of our group were bushcraft forum guys and it was one of their early arrivals giving up from the intense cold coming out of the woods, covered in icicles from his own breath and telling us he tried to stay but was going to his mother in laws to finish out the night.
How cold is it to inspire you to go to your mother in law's at 3 am you might ask?
Negative 26 degrees!
cnc and I wished him well and pulled our sleds down the trail. While we were pulking I remember thinking how strange it was that my upper and lower eyelashes would stick together from freezing whenever I would blink. It was a bit over 2 miles to where we were camping and we were already sleep deprived. We set up our hammocks and I crashed hard.
I woke up around 10am when I heard some of our new arrivals showing up Friday morning. Before the end of the day we had a few bushcraft fellows and our hammock forum peeps all enjoying MASS QUANTITIES of food!
Food food foooooood and more food!
Pulking allowed this here gram weenie to pull 2 plastic totes of gear on my sled +drybag full of down gear and Hudson Bay wool blanket. I could never think about backpacking all the stuff I had on that pulk.
This weekend we saw Chicken Fajitas, Sausage and Krout, Pheasant and Wild Rice Soup, Biscuits and Sausage Gravy, Mexican Posole, Chili and Tater Tots, Apple Cobbler, Oreo Balls, Venison Bacon, Bacon Bacon, and so many other things that I know more than one of us were spending more than our fair share of time finding unfortunate trees to do horrible things around.
Friday night was a heat wave for cncd11 and I... it was only negative 11 degrees.
I slept both nights without any tarp because it was crystal clear and almost no wind. The stars were beautiful and on Friday night I saw a hint of the Northern Lights!
I really enjoyed meeting everyone and would like to say thank you to MichiganDave for getting this going. I met some new friends, ate like a king, and got to experience the interesting sensation of my eyeball getting cold inside my skull when I shifted in my hammock and it came out from under my hood.
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