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.
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