Camping on crown land, part 2

My tarp-hammock camping setup.

So, yesterday, after lunch at the Mandarin with some friends, I started my way up to Big Orillia Lake.  The trip took me 3 hours, including a stop at Bass Pro Shop to buy an Ascent -30C mummy sleeping bag.  I arrived at Big Orillia Lake late, partially because of heavy traffic in Toronto and partially because the road I saw in Google Map is in fact a private road!  I was pissed but as the sun threatened to set within an hour, I had to hurry to find a way into the crown land I had researched earlier.  I got lucky and found a spot off the public road quickly to park my car.

Before lugging my large backpack in, I decided to do a quick survey of the area to find a place to build my campsite.  The first part of the land is populated by the maple trees, succeeded by pine trees bordering the lake.  While the evergreens maintain their luster green still, the maples were disrobed of their foliage.  Bare, naked, most of them.  The area was littered with maple leaves.  The ground yellow, orange, and red.  It was soft but wet.

Ascent -20F (-30C) Mummy Sleeping Bag

My first order of business after locating a place to set up my campsite was to lay down a tarp to keep everything else dry on top of it.  I then took about a minute or so to set up my hammock and another five minutes to put up a second tarp over the hammock.  I laid down a foam mat inside the hammock, followed by my new -30C sleeping bag.  Once the tarp and hammock were set, I was satisfied.  Darkness set in while I was setting up the tarp but now I had a shelter, and with it, some insulation from the elements but not food.

After repeated failures to start a fire in my hobo stove (everything was damp and I did not have any birch bark), I decided to dump half of an InstaFire bag into the stove to help with the fire.  From then on, the fire was more or less self-sustaining, enough at least for me to boil water to make some instant noodle soup.  I could not eat it quite yet as it was still too hot.  As I waited I looked up into the sky.  It reminded me of a night at a cottage.  While the darkness enveloped me, the sky was littered with star lights.  It was an awesome sight in the middle of the forest.  Again, while waiting for the noodles to cool down, I took out my camera and snapped some pictures of the sky but they really do not do justice.  The field of stars was just unbelievably clear up there.

It must have been past 8pm when I decided to call it a night—I wanted to take more pictures but I could get lost in the darkness if I had ventured out.  The sleeping system was good.  I felt really warm.  My feet were warm.  My hands were warm.  Everything felt great.  Until 3am.  I knew, even at 8pm, that the cold air was settling in.  I was breathing it in and out.  By 3am though, my body stopped producing enough heat to keep me warm.  My back started to feel a bit chilly, not cold, but chilly enough to feel uncomfortable.  By 4am, my feet started to feel chilly too.  I knew my body was not generating enough heat.  Every now and then, when I had to adjust my position in the hammock, I’d feel warm again as I had to use my muscles to push myself up one end of the hammock—oh yeah, I made one end higher than the other so I kept on slipping slowly down the hammock.  Anyways, the temperature must have dropped to -5C or even lower.  (When I finally got up at 6am to take pictures of the lake and the field of stars, it took merely 20 seconds or less for my exposed fingers to freeze so it must have been pretty cold.)  I should have added to my sleeping system my summer sleeping bag as an under quilt.  That should have kept me a lot warmer.

So, I think that was my *winter* camping in the bush! :)

Oh, I heard three howls.  I believe they were of wolves.  I also heard a couple of hoots.  Maybe there were winter owls around there?