Bear River Institute sponsors winter hike in Logan Canyon
“I think my pinkie toe is frozen.”
Jennifer and I sat back against the ThermaRest pads protecting our backs and behinds from the chill of a bench made of snow and laughed. The sun was setting – and it had been a long day, and we were sitting for the first time in hours. If it was frostbite, she’d find out after we were finished being lazy.
The giant twin peaks overlooking Tony Grove in Logan Canyon stood illuminated by the falling sun across the ravine. This was a world that would never thaw – the sun couldn’t even muster enough heat to turn pink as it sunk toward them. The air had cooled quickly; I became aware of it inside my layers of clothing and snuggled a little deeper – surprised for the zillionth time that weekend that my own pulse could keep me so warm.
The whole weekend had been surprising. Two months earlier, while we were waiting for the world to just thaw and get on with it, my cousin and I signed up for The Bear River Institute’s Winter Explorations class sort of on a whim. Neither of us had been winter camping, but we figured we could handle cold and dirt for three days if it meant we’d have a reason to be glad for the snow.
So I went into the Extension Office in the basement of the Eccles Center at Utah State University and signed some forms and left a check. And I realized as a frigid breeze hit me on my way out that I didn’t know how to ski, I didn’t own any camping gear, I didn’t have a good coat and I didn’t like being cold.
Jennifer stomped her feet beside me and I tried to figure out how to warm up my hands without taking my gloves off. Now that we were out here, everything we’d been so nervous about seemed really unimportant.
One by one, everyone crunched up the path from camp and we crowded together, only half joking about snuggling extra close for warmth.
The nine of us had been introduced the first day of class, but as we passed a community mug of hot orange Tang up and down the bench, it didn’t matter so much what our majors were, why we had taken the course, or how much experience we’d had in the outdoors.
Tonight, half of us would be sleeping in a quinzhee – a 12-foot snowball that took three hours to make and another three hours to dig out – and the other half in a cave carved out of firmly packed snow drift. All of us sat together now with sore muscles, and that made us friends.
“Hot chocolate?” Darek Staab, one of the course’s three instructors, sat next to a pot of boiling water on a propane camp stove holding up a mug for the latest arrival.
Most of us had joined the class with no previous experience snow camping. Staab, Seth Bowen and Jon Reichert somehow took a group of six strangers with varying skills and abilities and helped us become the creative bunch we were relaxing there, comfortable 4-and-a-half miles above the road to civilization, out in the immense open mountains.
The BRI expects people with little experience to take their classes – that’s why they’re there. The guys who run it believe firmly anyone who wants to experience the outdoors can with a little prior planning.
Staab told us during a classroom session, “Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance. The six P’s. Remember them, they’re important.”
Prepare. It sounded easy, but I thought about it and … you have to be warm, you have to be dry, your food can’t freeze and neither can your toothpaste. And I wear contacts, what about that? And how do we … you know, where does the toilet paper go?
By the end of a month, I wasn’t so worried. Our instructors spent classroom sessions offering checklists, book excerpts and mental notes on everything we’d need for the weekend.
After only two hours of mad scrambling, I had it all put together before we set out on the trail Friday morning.
And I was surprised. We hit the trail and it all … just … worked. Those of us who couldn’t ski snow shoed. Camping gear was easy to find, between friends and the ORC. What we forgot, we shared – or did without.
“That’s the great thing about being outdoors. It’s a learning experience, every time,” Darek said in his office after the trip.
He started camping as soon as he could walk, so it’s second nature to him by now. But he still makes mistakes, he said. He packed too fast this time.
“I forgot my sunscreen, I didn’t bring a hat. What else did I do wrong?”
“Sunglasses,” Bowen offered.
Bowen went on the trip with a cold – not the best of all possible conditions to be in for three days in the snow. But it’s better if everything doesn’t go perfectly.
“That’s one of the most wonderful things – finding out you’re still mortal,” he said.
We drank our hot drinks quietly. The sun hesitated for the longest time above the peaks. I almost hoped it would play Alaskan summer and we could stay there on that bench surrounded by aspen for the rest of the night. But even in winter, time doesn’t freeze well, and the next day we would break up camp and head back to real life.
The nice thing is, winter will come again, and this time I’ll know what to do with it.