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Good article -- I liked it, and it certainly brought back old memories.
Interesting to contrast a few of the article's points with my experience. They do not always agree. Different people? Different times? Different places? Different climate?
My best (most serious) winter experience was back East (White Mountains of NH and the Adirondaks) -- stormier and colder than in the Sierras. There were winds such as the article mentions, and temperatures down to -20F (common) and -40F (once, for me).
At the time, the state of the art for tents was not what it is today -- my main tent was a 2-person tent with an aluminum A-frame at the front, and a lower vertical pole at the rear. No vestibule. Inner tent with fly. Totaled 5 1/4 lbs as I recall. I was interested to see that this is the sort of tent that the article says has problems with snow loading and does not work. These tents worked for us -- all it took was pitching carefully, and knocking any snow accumulation off your tent during the night so it did not get overloaded. Not really a big deal. Just part of snow camping.
Anchors -- our main anchors were our snowshoes (skis, if that is what we had). No problem with immobilizing them -- we traveled until dark, pitched the tent, and then got inside for the rest of the night. Not being able to use our snowshoes at night was not a problem in our case. Then in the AM we cooked breakfast (before dawn), got up and packed, and then hit the trail as early as we could. Would have been different if doing a base camp, but that's not what we were doing.
Cooking -- it never would have occurred to us to cook any way other than stove in the front of the tent and us in the sleeping bags. When it was -10F heading for -20F it was just too cold to do it any other way. Besides, lying down and relaxing as the snow melted for dinner felt good after a hard day.
Shovel -- article says it is important; we never carried one unless going into avalanche terrain, which we usually did not. It would never have occurred to us to clear a tent site with a shovel -- we just packed out our tent platform while still wearing our snowshoes or skis, let it set up a bit, and then were careful not to put holes in the surface (e.g. knees or elbows). Snow done that way retains quite a bit of air, and is a comparatively warm surface to sleep on -- certainly better than ground, ice, or boot-packed snow.
If you are worried about the strength / support of snow packed that way, consider that is the same way you can create snow suitable for cutting into blocks to make an igloo. If it is strong enough for igloos (I have put on crampons and walked on igloos I have built that way), it is strong enough to sleep on.
Direction of sun -- I agree with the easterly exposure where possible -- it is already dark that night, so late-in-the-day sun is a moot point. It will be very nice to have what sun you can as you get going around dawn the following morning. Besides, it will probably be colder in the morning.
"The snow can pile up around the branches in a most deceptive manner. You walk close to the tree, and fall through into the space inside the branches. It can be quite difficult getting out of there." -- you bet. We had a term for that -- "spruce trap". Picture stepping into one with your snowshoes on -- not only do you get tangled up in the branches, but all of the snow you have disturbed falls in on top of your snowshoe (and then, of course, tends to set up). It can be hard to get out of, especially if you are wearing a pack of much consequence.
Creating a platform -- the article describes not just boot packing the snow, but stomping it -- getting it as compacted as you can. We taught people to try very hard to avoid doing that. The problem is that doing so makes the snow harder, icier and colder to sleep on than packing with your snowshoes or skis, as described above. We also found no need to do any digging -- we could shuffle enough snow around with our snowshoes / skis to make a level tent platform. Our platforms were probably more subject to such things as a careless knee poking a hole, that would then freeze up and could be uncomfortable. Best answer to that is "be careful, pay attention, don't do that".
Ventilation -- we cooked inside the front of the tent (we had no vestibule). We always had plenty of ventilation while cooking -- needed it to let the steam out if you did not want it to condense and freeze on the tent interior. Presume that also took care of CO. We'd close up quite a bit (but not airtight) after the cooking was done.
Yes, we cooked in the tents -- at those temperatures, everyone cooked and ate from their sleeping bag. Never had any problems other than needing to be careful to not spill anything (especially water). I could see the non-sleeping bag cooking as shown in the article under two conditions: (1) probably earlier in the day than we did (I see a sunset in the outdoor kitchen picture) and (2) warmer than our weather (Sierras may well be OK for that). But under our conditions, being snugly in your sleeping bag was most welcome.
Midnight maintenance -- yup. As I mentioned above, it comes with the territory. As long as you do it, you should not find your tent looking like the snow load disaster photos in the article. (Wind is a whole different subject.)
--MV
Edited by blean on 02/24/2009 23:42:45 MST.
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