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Winter Camp
1st Whitecourt Venturers
December 8,9,10 2000

Some doubts foreshadowed our camp that we had planned, as Rick and Matt had both had bad previous winter camping experiences, and weren’t sure as to what the camp would be like. On Thursday December 6, 2000 we packed most of our group equipment at the scout hall, and went to IGA to buy our groceries. Being the very responsible Venturers we jumped at the chance to help with sandbags, even though this would cut down on our packing time. (Vicki really volunteered us). We called Bill Hilchie down to scout hall, and he gave us the low-down on Hypothermia and Frost –bite, after that we had even more doubts about our trip. On Friday December 8, 2000, Mrs. Greene picked us up at our houses, for the trip to our campsite. When we got to the scout hall we quickly gathered up our gear, and headed out towards eagle river campground. It was a bit cloudy outside which made it a bit warmer (thankfully), and there was scattering snowfalls. We (Matt, Rick, Greg, Derek) unloaded our gear and walked maybe 700m down a snowmobile trail until we found a suitable campsite. After our gear was transported there, Rick and his mom took off (Rick was a wussy and decided to come out Saturday morning; ha ha) Matt, Derek, and Greg started to construct our “outdoor habitational Unit” (lean-to). We started of course by pushing a numerous amount of trees down, mostly for fun. By now the time was 5 pm and the sun had already gone down, however we were very fortunate, that there was a very large moon. We spent about a two hours making a very nice lean-to with a raised bed. We covered the bed with boughs of spruce, which proved to be very comfortable. Then Greg started the fire with a little bit of “fire starting aid”, and we gathered some firewood. Greg, Matt, and Derek were just about to have a supper of ravioli and hobo pies when Bill came to visit them. Bill brought us a cell phone and some wise advice. (Just when we thought cell phones were portable!) So any ways after tireless hours of trying to open our ravioli cans (ha ha) we finally had a supper, and then we headed off to bed. We found out that it was just great until we had to get up for something. We all sorta froze, except Greg didn’t want to admit he was cold. Derek got up during the night to stock the fire for Matt and Greg because they were too lazy to get up (Greg eventually got up and helped Derek). Then a few hours later we all got up and started a fire to warm ourselves up. We started building a kitchen platform so we could cook breakfast. Mr. Bakker and Josef came out to visit us and to give us some much appreciated hot chocolate. Just a little bit later Mrs. Greene came out to drop off Rick, and Matt left. (Matt was just too cool to stay with us at the camp)! Cooking breakfast proved difficult as our stove refused to work, so we just threw the grill on the fire and started to make some real CANADIAN bacon, with compliments of hash browns and frozen eggs. In order to cook the eggs we had to carve off the shells! After Breakfast we collected fire wood, and had flag break (don’t tell anyone the flag was upside down. . . oops). Then we set off for a hike. We started walking down a frozen creek and found that it had lots of beaver dams that had frozen up. Talk about a winter wonderland; we walked through a few kilometers of untouched wilderness, of course leaving snow angels and footprints behind. Then we got tired of walking up the creek (Ha ha ahahaha hahah ahah) so we took off through the bush in the direction we thought that the Highway should be. Instead we met up with a path, and that path led us thankful to the highway. Back to camp was a breeze (literally as the semis passed by us). Finally after a long hike we arrived at camp. Greg and Derek began lunch, (Rick had said he would have lunch at three and it wasn’t quite three yet, just kidding he ate all our food). The rest of the afternoon we spent gathering fire wood and preparing for supper which was tin dins. Then we played some cards before supper, and Bill and Vicki came to visit us. Supper turned out great . . .for Derek, Rick’s supper took forever to cook, and even then, I don’t think he liked it all that much. Next we went over to the eagle river campsite to smoke some peace pipe with the natives (Ha Ha). Actually we went for a late night round of horseshoes, and to take care of some “business”. Then we went back to our camp and heaped almost all our wood on the fire and got ready for bed. Rick wanted to play cards but Derek and Greg were much too lethargic for that. We all quickly fell asleep, with a false sense of warmth the fire gave us. Mrs. And Mr. Bakker were worried about us, and came out at 1:30 in the morning to check up on us. (Crazy heh!) We were all warm in our sleeping bags, but Dan told us that it was –35 degrees Celsius. (Now who’s crazy) Thankfully Dan started up our fire and perhaps we would have felt its warmth had we all not have been so tired. If you ever thought it was hard to get up at home you better consider yourself lucky, because for us to get up meant going from a 20 degree environment to a –20 degree environment. After we got a fire going we had it made though. After a little breakfast we packed up our bags, and put them out on the path. Next we threw on all the wood used in our lean-too on the fire, creating what we called a “FIRE”. Then we headed down to the creak again to chip a hole through the ice, as we threw slush balls at each other. Unfortunately none of us had enough energy to do much of that. Then when the cold must have been really getting to us we decided to see who could fell the largest tree. This also ended shortly when we ran out of energy in about five minutes. Derek and Greg went and found their old camp where they had camped 2 year’s previous. Finally Mrs. Greene picked us up and we packed up and put out our fire, which proved very difficult since we had melted all the snow in a large radius, and we had no water. But atlas we left the camp, and drove to the scout hall, to throw all our gear off, and the we drove home.