Canadian Boreal Forest Bushcraft with Ray Mears

This is a trip I've been looking forward to for a long time, a true once in a lifetime adventure to learn bushcraft in the wilderness of the Canadian North with Ray Mears. We've been preparing for over a year, endlessly researching the kit to buy and spending a small fortune buying it. When the aim is to survive, thrive and sleep outdoors in temperatures that can drop to minus 40 centigrade you need a lot of insulation!

I just about manage to squeeze in below my 23kg baggage allowance; by fully using my hand luggage allocation and I'm still feeling odd about taking a knife, Swiss Army knife, saw and snow shovel on a plane, but Air Canada assured me it was ok. We meet the other 14 people on the trip and a member of the trip staff at Winnipeg airport and I realised I am the only female on the trip; I'd guessed we would be in the minority but I was hoping I wasn't the only one! There is lots of banter as we queue for our small charter flight to Red Lake, the men doing a little sizing up of each other; checking out kit and asking about experience. 

The flight is quick and easy, even though the airline seemingly only have four staff and hand write their boarding passes

When we arrive in Red Lake we check into a hotel and head out to the only restaurant in town for a meal; this isn't what I was expecting!

Red Lake is a town where you get around in a pick up or a snowmobile 

Our hotel is the resting stop for some of the drivers and the film crew for the Ice Road Truckers TV show; despite all the talk from the guys in the group I am the only one who plucks up courage to actually talk to the feisty girl who stars in the show...!

I then understand more about why we are in the hotel first; we get out kit checked and some are told to buy more items, Matt and I luckily pass. We are however told our good, goretex, snowboard gloves will shatter when it drops below -50... We get the opportunity later in the day to visit an outfitters to buy any extras we need and also pick up our hunting and fishing licences; I'm quite proud of mine!

Yes I realise they spelt my name wrong :) The shop also sells a huge range of outdoors gear, hunting equipment, guns, bows, fishing bait and scent you can use to lure animals closer; including "female Moose in heat"...!

We have a day and a half of lectures based at the hotel; about the environment we will be travelling in, cold illnesses like hyperthermia and frost bite, how careful you have to be, what kit to wear when and other dangers. I get that the briefs are to try to calm any gung-ho members of the group and get people focussed, but as someone who was already on the nervous side they got me quite worried... We also had a test that proved what little I knew!

The fun bit was getting sized up for snowshoes and trying out walking in them; I got on with mine and really came to love them over the rest of the trip. 

We also got to get to know the team a little;

Ray; who needs little introduction and is unbelievably knowledgable. Full of detailed information, anecdotes, stories, advice and endless curiosity about the things he doesn't yet know

Ruth; Ray's wife who is constantly on the look out for people, spots when you go quite or look cold, and makes sure everyone has what they needs. She's a very strong, intelligent and capable person in these climates.

Keith; an instructor who has an unflappably calm demeanour and is great at calmly organising and explaining things. He went on to become someone I really trusted on the trip.

Dan; who organised the whole thing! Incredible skilled outdoors man, patient at explaining and very confident in the environment.

After two nights in the hotel getting to know each other as one group we headed out to our camp via 4x4 pick up along treacherously icy uncleared roads and then via snow shoe for a mile into the woods. The camp is a fishing camp in the summer and wasn't ideally set up for use in the winter; no running water and a few roof leaks as the snow thawed. But the warm wood cabins were our home from home for the week and we soon settled in.

It's -12 when we arrive and after more lectures we head to bed, my first try of the arctic, down sleeping bag I've bought. Given I was inside it wasn't as toasty as I'd hoped...

The following day we spent much more time outdoors, learning ourselves how many layers to wear. Just moving around a little keeps you quite warm compared with being still, hard effort like snow shoeing or chopping wood and you get very warm. The rule is to adjust layers before you need to, as the last thing you want to do is sweat; it freezes and you get very cold very quickly. There is lots to learn especially when a lot of our kit is new. Matt and I are unusual in that we aren't top to toe olive green from outdoor bushcraft shops; mixing it up with bright snowboard gear instead. Incidentally that worked quite well, and managed down to -35.

We were demoed a few different techniques to build a fire and were set off into the forest to try them. The key is to dig down to the ground first, otherwise your fire will melt its way down into a hole and put itself out. The other thing to look out for is dry wood; twigs that snap cleanly and dead wood that's still standing. Birch bark is great with fire sticks to get things going and you need kindling and wood of increasing sizes to pile on top. It was quite a location for my first ever, lit from scratch, fire!

Our next demo was how to build a simple shelter, I had a sinking feeling where this was going... It took Ray, with two experienced helping hands and pre gathered materials, an hour to set up one shelter of a compressed snow bed with spruce mattress and a wooden frame and tarp roof. A three log fire was lit in front to heat the length of the bed. It was 3:30pm and our task was to pair up and build our own, with two shelters either side of the fire. We would be sleeping in them that night...

We cracked on! Heading into the forest, marking where we left the snowmobile trail, with another pair from the group. You never travel alone in these conditions, always as a pair and ideally with another pair so you can all keep an eye on each other. We stopped down and dug and lifted the snow so it would set into a hard base for our beds. We dug down for our fire, though not far enough we found out later, and we set about collecting wood for the fire and for the shelter frame and spruce boughs for a mattress. The forest was looking beautiful

But it was getting cold and the air really bit into any exposed skin. At 6pm we were called to see a different type of fire that Ray had built, and then to go for dinner. Our shelters didn't have roofs on yet and we had no firewood. I started to get a bit panicky, it was -20. 

Dinner was quiet, no one was happy with their progress and many people were nervous. I had to have a few minutes on my own to try and quell the rising levels of panic. I only got myself out of the cabin and into the forest again by saying I was just going to help Matt with the shelters and then I would head back. Once we were out there the sky was dark and flushed with the green of the northern lights.

The moon was bright and you could see enough for most tasks without a head torch. Once back out at the shelters we settled into the work a bit more; I was collecting spruce and firewood and Matt concentrated on getting the fire going which made such a difference to warmth and morale. By keeping moving I was still feeling warm, even though I was in my lighter coat. 

Ray uses the term "mothership" for your warmest coat, which for me is a level 5 arctic spec Canada Goose; the first item I have ever bought with real fur, coyote trim on the hood. We find out that faux fur is just rubbish in this cold, freezing, brittle and sticking to ice and snow. Your mothership, a good hat and pair of mittens are your key to staying warm. 

Once we stopped moving around and had finished the shelters and had enough wood for the fire the mothership went on and we made our beds. The lesson on what to take off and how to get into your sleeping bag still fresh in my memory; but it looked really, well, cold! It was hard to manoeuvre around the shelters as despite packing the snow you still sunk into it unexpectedly if you took off your snow shoes. After a hot drink from my frankly brilliant thermos we got into our sleeping bags; for my whilst still wearing 200 and 400 weight merino leggings, thick socks, 200 and 260 weight merino tops, merino balaclava, woolly hat and a buff around my neck. My outer waterproofs trousers, down jacket and boot liners joined me in the sleeping bag. Boots went between the sleeping and bivvy bag. The mother ship coat went on top of you for more warmth. The sleeping bag was so so cold, and instead of me warming it up it felt like it was cooling me down. I got in with warm feet and within 15 minutes I was struggling to keep the feeling in them. The fire was starting to sink and losing its heat.

Movement makes warmth (one of Ray's quotes); so a wriggled and wriggled and wriggled to try and warm up myself, the bag and mostly my feet. It didn't seem to work. That beautiful sky now looked scary; like it was stealing my heat. The small amount of exposed face froze and I felt the panic returning. I lost track of time but at some point I started having these uncontrollably bouts of all body shivers, but I was afraid to get up and out of the bag as we'd been warned that you get even colder then and there is a bigger cold injury risk. After a while we made the call to head back and Matt patiently guided my slow, uncoordinated, shivering form back to camp. Despite warm drinks, sitting by the stove and a heated cabin I didn't fully warm up until the following afternoon (when we were out working hard in the forest again) if I wasn't careful the shivers would return, it was scary. We managed around three hours in the sleeping bags. We found out later that it had dropped to nearly -40 and other groups had got into their bags much later, which may have helped.

This is a picture of the shelter taken a few days later

The following day was nice and active, thankfully. Learning the right technique to chop wood on a soft surface like snow, how to easily split logs into suitable sizes for fire. How to carve kindling into fire sticks with lots of small curling bits of wood that were easy to light.

We also learnt how to build a Quinzee, similar to an igloo but made with lots of snow shovelled into a dome and stamped down with snow shoes so it freezes solid. You then comes back later to hollow it out, after pushing in sticks so you know the right depth. I was the last person stamping down so had to do the precarious slide off the top, without destroying the shelter, at the end. The weather conspired against us and they didn't freeze fully until right at the end of the week so no one got a chance to sleep out in them.

We learnt a lot about knives and my wonderful knife, primarily bought due to it's pretty curly birch handle, came into its own. It's very sharp and perfect for carving and working with wood. We learnt how to carve basic shapes and got set on our first carving task; making a frame saw in our groups of 4. The theory here is that you take the saw blade inside a cooking pot into the forest and make the rest of the saw from wood when you get there to save carrying it.

After a very long and very good nights sleep back in the cabin we were out snowmobiling for the day. 

Steep learning curve; a quick intro to the controls, small test ride around camp and then out onto a lake covered in "overflow" (where lake water sits between the ice and the snow on top) which is notoriously difficult on a snowmobile. I was driving first, although when I say driving it was more like hanging on whilst the machine slid, gripped, hopped, bogged down and shot off over the varying surfaces that were indistinguishable to me under the snow. If you slow you get stuck so I just pinned the throttle, topping out at 60mph while the others on bigger four stroke machines were pulling away (we were on a two stroke and two up). It was exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure!

Matt and I swapped driving, which was good as the hip really didn't like the battering in such a low seating position. You work hard to drive them so the breaks were welcome. The pieces of single track through the woods were wonderful and the 4 hours is took us to travel 100km felt like it went far faster. You often unexpected came across an uncleared road which made for fast progress

The following day was all about more preparation for another night in the woods. We were in our groups of four and practiced putting out our canvas snow tents and portable wood burning stoves in the camp, they get warm quickly which I was pleased about!

Over the last day we'd been carving our own small fishing rods and also making tip ups; fishing rod devices that can be left alone with bait in the water and a flag that tips up in the air to alert you to a bite

We tested them out on the ice, wearing all the warm clothes available. First clearing snow, then drilling through the ice, clearing the slush out and manning the ice hole keeping the bait moving. I had a couple of bites but no luck catching anything.

Final lesson of the day was how to cook bannock, delicious bread,from flour, milk powder and baking powder that you can bake in 20 minutes in a pan on a stove or fire. 

We also learnt how to set traps, with bits of wire twisted into a noose and how to position them so that animals would go through them but also be killed quickly when they did. Armed with all this knowledge we set off into the woods for another night.

We took turns hauling the toboggan deep into the woods and started working well in our team of four to clear and dig down an area for our tent, collect firewood and collect spruce for bedding. I was on spruce and managed to strip 9 trees of their springiest looking branches in a couple of hours :) We went big on the amount of firewood and split logs we needed and hot the tent up and stove going whilst it was still light. It was really nice to make that much progress and get a cup of tea on the go; amazing how much better you feel. 

In the tent we had about two thirds as a sleeping platform with two thick layers of spruce, upside down for extra springiness, either side of a tarp. We dug a porch area to the ground to act as a cold well and so the stove didn't sink into the snow. We got a bannock on for dinner and there is us ate our camping rations whilst looking on jealously as Andy fried himself fish and chips from the pike he caught and a couple of pilfered potatoes! 

The camp was lit with candles, and we had tea lights outside to light the way to the path out of the woods and the designated toilet areas. It felt so cosy inside

We set up a rota of people to look after the fire, keeping it stoked, ensuring people's clothes were drying and making sure we had a good stock of melted snow. I slept well and woke up very warm and cosy, woo Hoo! Fresh breakfast bannock had been made and Matt had tea on the go. Perfect way to start the day!

The temperature had gone below -30 outside and we'd measured the temperature at ground level in the tent at +18. Awesome! The inside of the tent was decorated with brilliant intricate frost patterns. 

We chilled out in the tent for a bit, I cooked more bannock with a packet of biltong kneaded into it for lunch, nearly slicing the end of my finger off in the process, proof how sharp my knife is. Quickly covered up with dressing and gaffa tape before my squeamishness got the better of me, it went a bit zombie for a while but is recovering now. 

We went out to set some traps near tracks we'd seen nearby, great fun but caught absolutely nothing. 

We unpacked everything, having to time it around the cooling stove, and hauled everything back to camp. Lots of unpacking to do and then a session learning types of knots; to tie up a tarp or to rescue someone from the ice. I found them hard to master but will keep practicing!

I was feeling really at home in the forest now and so happy with our night out in the tent. Our last night in camp was great fun and a late one as no one really wanted the experience to end.

Our last day in camp involved learning about safety and rescue signs of you get into trouble and a practice in making Swedish marshmallows, where you put a big piece of snow on a stick near a fire so it melts water into a pot below. It worked and I was left with a cup of very smoky tasting water, goes well with a dram of whisky apparently!

With that and with a last long look around camp, and a little lump in the throat, we walked back out of the woods and were driven out to Red Lake. We got reintroduced to civilisation in stages, from our hotel, out into Red Lake for dinner, flying back to Winnipeg the following day. (After substantial negotiations on which people and who's bags didn't make it onto our charter flight; we were so spectacularly over our weight limit for the plane)

It felt very odd to be back on a city again, being around so many people and amongst the sky rises felt plain weird. We've had many conversations about what we did on the trip, what we've learnt and how we feel about it all; and it's all quite hard to put into words. I feel stronger, more knowledgable and more empowered to live in one of the toughest environments in the world and I am so proud of that. It's given me more overall confidence in myself. I am also pleased with how we got on as a couple working together and under lots of real pressure; life and death type stuff makes you stronger. I am left feeling even more strongly that I need to have plenty of time in the outdoors in my life and that a desk job really isn't where I am happiest; this just might be something life changing :)

I am also left in awe of Ray and his team; the knowledge and skill in the outdoors is stunning and their ability to teach it so well and let people confidently practice what they've learn was excellent. Ray himself is a real treasure trove of lost arts, skills, techniques and stories that he doesn't just remember and recount but keeps alive by using and teaching them. A truly inspiring person.

And as if to test what we've learnt the fire alarm goes off in our Winnipeg hotel early in the morning after the trip; I instinctively grab my hat, mittens and mothership and run out of the door. Ray would, hopefully, be proud. 

Winter bushcraft

I'm struggling to explain why I wanted to do this: A week in freezing conditions learning traditional techniques for managing in the cold with Ray Mears, but I've been eyeing this course since 2009. I thought I'd missed the opportunity as it hadn't been offered for a few years, he seemed to be more focussed in training anti-poaching Forces in Africa so when we had the call that this was available - about 18 months ago - we instantly said yes. This course though is in Canada instead of Arctic Finland so we'll enjoy more hours of daylight but similar conditions. Though Finland is currently retraining it's reservist forces (Thats all men between 18 and 60) in preparation to defend the country from Russia(!).

We're not here for that type of training and I'm delighted to find the others on this course aren't Survivalist preppers, Rambo types, knife loving weirdos or special forces wannabes. We all meet in Winnipeg airport from where a privately chartered plane will take us to Red Lake, gateway to a national park which in the summer is popular with fishermen and bear hunters but is deserted in winter when the lake is frozen and the bears are asleep.

The tiny 18 seat charter is little more than a smartie tube, too small to stand up in the flight attendant shouts out instructions to do up your seat belt then crouches along the craft into the cockpit as he is the pilot too!

We meet Ray Mears (and his wife Ruth) at a motel in Red Lake, our base for two days while we are fitted out with kit and learn what's required to live in this environment. He explains we can't be dropped straight into the forest or we'll each make the mistakes that will cost us fingers, toes and lives. Ray gives a series of talks punctuated with his own experiences and illustrated with anecdotes, it's all slightly surreal, deeply fascinating but ends in a detailed kit inspection which we scrape through. Last summer we'd received a detailed (but expensive) kit list to bring with us, we'd substituted some of the items (which are hard to source in the UK) for ski and snowboard gear, synthetic, modern materials which concern him: Goretex fails at -18C and many of these materials will shatter below that leaving you in a serious situation. Though we do have at least one outfit that should get us through the colder nights and we're better placed than some in the group, the other concern is that synthetic materials catch fire easily and we're going to be working closely with, and be very dependant on making sparks and starting fires.

We're fitted with traditional snowshoes, and practise walking in them - we'll need them most days in the forest where the snow can be several metres thick, the surprise is that despite the simple binding secured at just the toes they are very easy to walk in, crouch down on but they still sink in the snow, more than I expected and turning around in them is a bit clumsy.

We're now ready to move out to the camp, 100Km into the park, the final leg being a mile snowshoe hike out to the frozen up huts on the lake edge. It's essential not to get wet but I'm boiling carrying this kit during the hike and sweat is freezing on my hair - you should never let this happen. I reach camp wearing just a single base layer and have to redress quickly as I start to cool. It's a chilly -12C.

Once assigned bunks, and with the stove lit the hut and it's thawing out. Ray then gives a lengthy lesson in "cold injury" which covers everything from what to do after falling through ice, spotting frost nip, identifying hypothermia, frostbite and trench foot and how to respond to each: It's three hours designed to scare and it does because these threats are suddenly very real and dependant on each other - you're unlikely to know yourself that you have hypothermia, one of us will need to spot it for you before it gets too severe. This buddy system is what the Inuit use when travelling in the ice and they never travel alone.

Next day we're given four methods for fire lighting and practise each repeatedly and it produces Alexa's first success in starting fire using birch bark and sparks from a fire stick. This is a milestone, we can share the jobs better now, and I've also managed to master carving a fire stick, a spruce branch which will take a spark. We're feeling much more confident going into the afternoon where Ray demonstrates the shelter that we each need to build for use that night. It consists of a bed of hardened snow, lined with spruce and uses a tarp roof. For warmth a 5 log fire is needed because tonight is expected to be very cold, possibly as low as -40C. 

We set out to build the shelter and it's quickly brought home how much hard work everything is in this environment, from manoeuvring in the Boreal forest in snowshoes, identifying the right trees, sawing down the tall trees that will provide your shelter, insulation and warmth and dragging them through metres of snow back to camp while juggling your layers to keep just on the cool side of sweating. This is hard graft and it's quickly getting dark. We're snapping at each other as we battle to remember how to build the shelter and gather the materials we need before it goes dark, it's a battle we lose. We're withdrawn back to base camp for dinner and a final lesson from Ray on how to get into the sleeping bag without touching the snow and what to do with your clothing overnight: nothing can be left out or left on the snow because it will freeze solid and you won't be able to wear it again in the morning. Most frostbite injuries happen when getting dressed, before you're warmed up and just putting a hand on the snow is enough for serious frostbite.

At these temperatures one mistake you can probably recover from, the second will cost you dearly: we're not used to working in gloves and frequently take them off for more intricate work, such as tying knots to secure the tarp and when threading the green branches of spruce to keep you off the snow.  I notice my glove has dropped on the floor by the fire and although I pluck it up in a split second the sweat and warmth in the glove instantly froze the second it hit snow and its a contorted hard leather husk that I cannot get my hand into. I'm fighting hard to make the leather malleable again so I can get the glove on, the impact of such a simple piece of carelessness is frightening. 

Before hiking back out to finish the shelter after dinner we're greeted by the Northern lights, an eery ellipse of green and purple is astonishing and frustrating to try and photograph. The Vikings thought these lights to be a warning of dangerous times ahead, the Inuit regard them more positively as ancestral spirits, I actually feel uneasy that the lights are here tonight.

Back in the forest we're quickly to work with renewed focus, complete the shelter and prepare to bed down. We're doing well relative to other groups who are still crashing about in the distance. Fire is burning well, it's 12.30am and preparing toned down, but it is getting colder. The fire is the full length of the shelter, long logs laid atop each other to look like a toblerone, the logs taken from a dead tree I'd chopped down just behind our shelter. I thought finding the right wood so close was a stroke of luck as I wouldn't need to haul it anywhere but the 30ft tree had fallen into the one behind it and needed a lot of brute force to get it to the ground though it should be enough to keep the fire going all night.

We go through the steps of getting into the sleeping bags which are buried in a bivi bag - these offer no warmth, it's essentially a bin bag to keep you waterproof and a thermorest matress underneath to keep you further insulated from the snow though the spruce branches are very effective. It's a tight and uncomfortable fit especially when your cloths and boot liners are brought inside the bag to prevent them freezing.

The fire is still burning but it's not as warm and the 5ft logs are starting to sink into the snow, we realise that when we dug it out we hadn't hit the ground but just some logs buried in the snow drift; now that snow had melted the fire was sinking and the warmth has stopped radiating towards us but up into the clear night sky. Around 2am it suddenly felt very, very cold. The sky seemed to open up and suck all the warmth from the land. I've not felt anything like it, the temperature dropped 9degrees in 15 minutes and we are both freezing.

Alexa tells me she is cold and it certainly is. Our sleeping bags are designed by Ray Mears and are good to -50C but they feel cold and they aren't getting warmer. We keep talking, I can't see her through the fire smoke and steam but Alexa is usually colder than me so I'm not surprised the subject keeps coming back to being cold, I need to know she isn't suffering any mild hypothermia so I'm looking for signs of the "umbles" (mumbles, grumbles, fumbles, stumbles, tumbles - they occur in that order) in this case any confusion or snappiness that are symptoms of the first two "umbles". All clear. Looking up at the sky I'm starting to shiver a bit and Alexa says she is too, then she says it again... "We never ignore shivering", Ray's words ringing in my ears. It's 2.30am, -35C and the coldest part of the night is yet to come (body is at its coldest and most vulnerable at 4am). Deciding to bail commits us to a lengthy pack-up and hike back to base but the activity is what we need to warm up, "movement is warmth", Ray's sound bites keep coming into mind.

The North Face expedition bags are frozen solid, they need to battered back into a shape that can accommodate the sleeping equipment that we'll still need when we reach base camp the rest I'll return for in daylight. I wrestle to get the Zips open, everything plastic is brittle and awkward, this is so much harder than it should be. We reach base camp at 3am to find it cold, the fire is out and the heating off, this feels like a test. I have a flask of hot water which Alexa starts on whilst I get the fire restarted. Luckily I still have some birch in my pocket and use it to restart the fire in the stove the same way I'd lit the fire beside our shelters. We're warming up when I remember I stashed a snickers in my bag and I give it to Alexa but she almost broke her teeth on it as its frozen hard!

We crash out and are met in the morning by Ray who says our shelters were really good and he was surprised we weren't in them, we recount the nights events (omitting the bit about feeding frozen chocolate to someone already very cold!) and he concludes a two sleeping bag system is better for Alexa, the outer one can be very thin - everyone is different. Ice condenses on the inside of the outermost layer, some people need to keep this further away from them to maintain any warmth. The whole night has been a lesson.

We discover that one other group had returned before us and this group contained a veteran of the Sweden expedition - where it was colder than this - who had also dropped a glove incident - when his hand froze preventing him from doing up the zip on his coat, he'd struggled to get a fire going and his team had decided he couldn't continue. Cold hits at alarming speed indiscriminately.

The next days are warmer and we're given a number of tasks to get through, we don't realise but this is building us up with the skills and tools to do another cold night out. 

They include carving a fishing rod for catching Pike, ice fishing and a lesson in filleting it - Pike are boney. How to set snares for hares, build a bow saw without needing screws or nails. 

We're also getting good with an axe and at splitting wood, melting snow from a Swedish marshmallow:

We're given a snow mobile and set out across the lake - 100km to master this. The lake is still slushy from the overflow and we're warned that if we hit water, hit the accelerator never stop. The lake surface isn't flat, it has ridges and dips so doing 60mph across it is full on adrenaline. Loved it. To turn you need to lean as you do a bike but the handling especially on slush is more like a barge, long arcs that are difficult to correct. 

Alexa did the first lake but found being on the back more comfortable so I did the next two and the wooded sections, branches pinging off the helmets and clawing at your jacket. With two of us on I have the heaviest snowmobile and keep the thumb operated accelerator flat against the handlebars all the way across the lake and weave about to avoid the slush which drastically slows the machine, everyone else thinks we're racing and it gets a bit lairy, but when the belt suddenly bites on hard pack the machine leaps forward again. It's great fun.

One group report seeing wolves on an early morning fishing trip and this is verified some days later with tracks and howls. We don't see them ourselves though in fact we didn't see much wildlife at all just few birds and a beaver lodge.

The next outdoor night is coming up and will be further from base camp so there is no aborting, we have to get it right but we're much better equipped for it now having acclimatised to the cold now and managing our layers ahead of beginning to sweat, we know what to wear and what has worked for us, what to prioritise when setting up the camp and as a bonus we'll be in proper winter tents - with a stove. This is meant to be the pinnacle of outdoor winter camping but the basics are the same as before, we'll need to make a hardpack base of snow lined with copious spruce to insulate from the snow, we'll need a lot of firewood to get through the night and someone to watch the stove isn't burning the tent or the occupants - it's going to be another cold one at -35C. 

We pack all our kit onto a sledge which we'll be hauling ourselves.

We pick our spot, stamp out the area for the canvas tent and sinter the snowbase, We fall 9 spruce trees (one of 30ft, though the smaller ones are better as they have softer branches), we pick out dead standing pine trees for logs, these will be dry and will burn much better, the bow saw with its ingenious tensioning system speeds up the logging process considerably. It's still a struggle to complete but no one is checking their watches anymore, time is irrelevant, we'll be ready to turn in when the camp is ready. We have rations for making bannock on the stove and we've lifted some tea bags from the stores along with two potatoes to go with the pike Andy caught earlier and is busy filleting. 

With the stove going a red jet of heat emerges from the tin chimney like a jets afterburner or a Bunsen burner in defiance at the cold vacuum of the black sky. The stars are out and I stop for a minute to just look at the forest, it's beautiful. 

Although he said he wouldn't, Ray drops by to check we've covered everything and reassures us we have enough firewood to get through the night, it's the one worry we'd had but everything is much easier this time, we don't need to take our gloves off, we're working comfortably in the cold and feel in tune with the frozen environment.

Next day we are heading back to Winnipeg but the plane that has come to collect us doesn't have sufficient lifting capacity and we have to leave our bags for the next flight which might arrive later. On landing at Winnipeg we need the passengers at the rear to come through the plane and step off before those at the front in order to keep the plane balanced on all its wheels and stop from tipping up. It's the first time I've ever come across such a concern!

Sat waiting in the airport with Ray and Ruth for our bags it's difficult to reconcile all we've done. We used techniques for living in the environment honed by First Nation peoples over hundreds of years to live in a land that technology still struggles with and we've been coached 24x7 by the worlds best. Ray Mears has spent over 30 years learning these techniques from aboriginal peoples all over the world and he distills it into jigsaw pieces that at the end give you a view of what it is like to live in these environments. Now we have gotten to know him over the last week, my respect for him has only grown, it's a wonderful thing he does that makes for an utterly unique experience that will never leave us.

Winnipeg; snow, ice and history

When we were in Montreal the ever friendly Canadians were always asking why we were visiting and where we were off to next; when we said Winnipeg we were often met with a slightly bemused silence. It's not on the tourist trail... To be fair when we arrived in Winnipeg and said we were then going to Red Lake on a wilderness course we were met with utter incomprehension! 

I didn't have a great impression of Winnipeg before we arrived, it's an industrial town with much of the industry being mining, and it's been Canada's murder capital until recently. (To be fair Canada's murder capital probably doesn't event register on the worldwide list). I'd also read a long article on the BBC site about the vast number of First Nation women who go missing, are assaulted or murdered here and are sometimes found when Red River thaws in the spring;

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32115683

My actual experience here could not have been more different; I have never been anywhere friendlier!

We spent two full days in Winnipeg and followed a walking route around the city for those two days. The first day had us visiting the city hall, the beautiful Fort Garry hotel and some very snowy gardens before stopping off at the Dalnavert Museum.

The museum was the restored house of the son of the first president of Canada. It's amazing to think that the whole area was once full of houses like this; all having been pulled down in the 60s and 70s to develop high rise offices and apartment blocks. 

It was a pretty house that was restored in the 80s after being used as a boarding lodge and it told the history of the family, of Winnipeg and of the people who travelled here from Europe to settle. The house had been filled with period furniture, much of it original, and even matched wallpaper; some of which I recognised from my Grandmothers house! The lady who gave the tour was fantastic and I would highly recommend a visit.

We found the original Hudson Bay Company HQ, now a department store

The afternoon was spent somewhat less seriously walking around the forks watching people skate on the river, special skate paths have been built

Having a go on the ski chairs

And visiting the ice show with Ice carving and toboggan runs!

We picked up the rest of the walking route the day after and started with the Museum of Human Rights; some heartbreaking displays and videos about human rights in Canada. They had a version of segregation at the time of apartheid. They have deep rooted issues with the treatment of their First Nation people and a display about the red dress programme trying to fight against and remember the victims of violence against First Nation women.

The building itself had stunning architecture

School kids were being taught about the holocaust, we found it unusual that they didn't already know. In turn we found out about the residential school programmes for First Nation children and the abuse and lack of identity that resulted...

Final stop of the day was at the Museum of Manitoba. This unassuming looking building contains a wonderful and in depth look at the history of the state of Manitoba; from its dinosaurs, ecology, geography, First Nation people, customs, the arrival of Europeans and the animals that live here. There is even a replica of the Nonsuch, a boat that arrived here from Bristol, to clamber around. Really worth the visit and has a very cheap entry fee!

The theme throughout all the places we visited on Winnipeg is how friendly everyone has been, in shops, restaurants, lifts, anywhere people just want to chat and are so interested when they find out we are from the UK. It's even the most cheery airport security I have ever been through, the city is well worth a visit!

We sign off our stay with locals beers, Poutine (chips with gravy and cheese) and Mac & Cheese served by the friendliest waitress I the world :)