sleeping bear
New member
3 years ago I took a Wilderness Education Association Wilderness Steward Program course as a student at Northern Michigan University. Since then I graduated, moved to Mass, moved back to MI and am now teaching at NMU. NMU now currently offers a winter stewardship course which also includes ice climbing instruction. Not having the proper certifications to assist in teaching the course I decided to go as a participant. I was pretty hesitant at first as most of the other participants had been in one of my classes last semester.
The course officially started on December 29 when we met at the school to check and issue gear, plan, ration food (30+ pounds each!
) and do some lessons. We spent that first night at the school as a shakedown run. Then we drove to Cananda and camped for another night at a place called the Mad Moose Lodge at Montreal River Harbor. While there it rained and was just downright nasty.
From there we moved to a place called Cierre de Hielo (mountain of ice?, Mamainse Hill area) where we were supposed to camp the rest of the time and go ice climbing. The lack of snow and ice threw some wrenches in our plans. There was no ice to climb and the temperature never got below 25 F.
We did a bunch of dayhikes, had a lot of lessons on leadership and camping skills and moved camp once. It rained on us a couple of days and then finally snowed the last night we were there. At least that gave us something to pull our sleds out on.
All in all, it was a really fun trip and I learned a TON. It wasn't really winter camping per se, but it was 10 days out in the cold.
Photos and maps are here
The course officially started on December 29 when we met at the school to check and issue gear, plan, ration food (30+ pounds each!
) and do some lessons. We spent that first night at the school as a shakedown run. Then we drove to Cananda and camped for another night at a place called the Mad Moose Lodge at Montreal River Harbor. While there it rained and was just downright nasty.From there we moved to a place called Cierre de Hielo (mountain of ice?, Mamainse Hill area) where we were supposed to camp the rest of the time and go ice climbing. The lack of snow and ice threw some wrenches in our plans. There was no ice to climb and the temperature never got below 25 F.
We did a bunch of dayhikes, had a lot of lessons on leadership and camping skills and moved camp once. It rained on us a couple of days and then finally snowed the last night we were there. At least that gave us something to pull our sleds out on.
All in all, it was a really fun trip and I learned a TON. It wasn't really winter camping per se, but it was 10 days out in the cold.
Photos and maps are here
