winter camping

I have rediscovered the joy of winter. Living in Lethbridge for the last 7 years has tainted my appreciation of winter because you don't really get one. It snows but then within two weeks a chinook comes and melts it all. When it gets cold it doesn't stay cold so you don't really ever get used to it so it seems unbearable.

Thankfully when winter comes in Ottawa (we were wondering if we were ever going to get winter in the beginning of January) its here to stay and the residents of Ottawa don't let the cold keep them indoors.

I volunteered to join the winter camping trip that the outdoor ed kids went on last week. It was great. We went out on Thursday morning, built quinsees, cross country skied, snowshoed, practiced our orienteering skills and played in the snow.

Maggie (the other female teacher) and I built a quinsee with snowshoes because we didn't bring any shovels. We thought that we'd be able to borrow some from the students but they were all using theirs. When it came time to dig it out we used our hands, so we literally built it with our own bare hands!

Some highlights...
Maggie with our snow pile before digging it out.

After digging it out with our sleeping bags inside.

Orienteering with our compass and course guide. They had these markers set up on trees and they would give you a series of bearings to follow and you'd have to find the markers and use the stamp to prove that you had been there. Maggie and I were doing so well until the third one and we went WAY past the marker and had to back track.

Stamping our course guide. The compass didn't let us down!

After going cross country skiing twice in the past few weeks, Chris and I decided to head out yesterday just to scope out what it would cost to set ourselves up with some skis. At all the stores we said that we'd just look and didn't try anything on. All except the last store... we came home with these.