Winter Expedition

My group was on the first winter ex which was from Monday March 9th till Wednesday the 11th. It was only me and Rene in our cooking group so we had an easy time preparing and buying food. It was also really easy to pack. We decided to go for Chicken Alfredo the first night, and a hearty chili mix made from dehydrated veggies and chili mix. Both meals turned out remarkably well even though they were just dehydrated mix's. For lunch's we went with 2 bagels each for each lunch (we were to have 3 lunch's in total, so 12 bagels). That was probably the largest portion, the bagels, but I managed to get my water air tight barrel into my bag, so I just crammed everything into it, and it actually worked remarkably well and kept everything dry and still in there original shape. For breakfast we went super simple, portage, the classic campers breakfast.

I joined another group of 3 for the leading portion of the trip. In our leader group we had, Mooda (2nd year ODA), Dan (1st year), Peter S.(1st year), and myself. We were in charge of leading the second day. For each day that each group lead, they were supposed to lead the group to two checkpoints and then to base camp, for the third group instead of base camp they lead us to Wilderness Tours (our take out point).

Our entire group consisted of two leaders, and a mix of four ODAN'S, seven first year ODA's, and one second year ODA, total of 14 all together.

The overall trip there wasn't too much of hiccups, some people didn't enjoy my leading style. I guess I wasn't as cautious thinking as some others were hoping, and I guess I may have taken then on some rougher terrain than they wanted to risk. I may have used the phrase "Were just gonna Skirt around this hill here", apparently I used that line a lot, and there were a few hills. But we did manage to get past all the ups and downs and eventually found a nice spot of even ground where we set up camp.

The last day was a short one, it felt a little longer near the end though for me. My pack decided to break only a couple kilometers from WT, which made the rest of the hike very hard. But we made it, and I must say that was a great experience. The trip definitely gave me a better idea of how to pack and what to wear and bring for these kinds of trips. Plus it gave me an idea of what gear I still need to get. I am also happy I was on the first group where we actually used our snowshoe's and weren't having to worry too much about melting snow. Overall Great time, look forward to my chance to go on my own winter trip.