DUKE OF EDINBURGH March 7+8, 2013

Winter Overnight Camping Trip – Bronze Level Outdoor Adventure

Eveline Juce – Hamiota Mb

Before we started our trip into Deep Lake, we all gathered around to review some of the things we had discussed in our pre-trip planning. We got told about the buddy system which means we have to be with our “buddy” at all times in case something went wrong. We were reminded of our basic rules like; no littering because it is a national park, no bullying, no electronic devices allowed and we got told to be on our best behaviour. Each of us introduced ourselves to the group by saying our name and what school we are from.

Here are the students from Birtle Collegiate. Their head teacher was Mr. Wilson who brought 2 girls and 5 boys.

From Hamiota Collegiate, there was Jacquelyn and I. Ian was another student who came on the trip from Strathclair school.

Me

Jacq

uelyn

Ian

Group shot before we head off into the great outdoors.

These are pictures of us heading into our camp spot. The hike consisted of many hills over a 4km stretch. On the way in, all of the students and teachers except my dad and I snowshoed in while we cross country skied. Each one of us had all of our overnight gear on a sleigh which we pulled behind ourselves.

We had a gorgeous view of the Deep Lake area as we skied/snowshoed into our camping spot. We were even lucky to see some Lynx tracks along the trail.

Once we arrived at the Deep Lake camping spot, we all started shovelling so we could have room to put our tents down. There was a lot of snow to be shovelled out but it wasn’t bad as we thought it would be!

Here are our tents set up and ready to go for the night after all that shoveling!

Mine and Jacquelyn’s tent.

The boy’s tent.

The other 2 girls from Birtle tent.

As part of our pre-trip safety planning our supervisors had set up a large hot-tent a few days before we went in. This tent had a wood burning stove. It was very nice to have that source of heat in this large canvas tent. It kept us all very nice and warm when we got chilled.

Even though we were camping, there were still “decent” washroom facilities for use! A bit chilly but still better than nothing.

No winter camping trip is complete without building a quinzy. The Birtle students found some more need to shovel so they made a quinzy from a large drift of snow that was found near the lake.

Some shots of our camping spot, us preparing a drink and preparing for another activity.

As night started to fall we put some wood in the fire pit and we had a nice fire. We roasted marshmallows, drank hot chocolate and shared many laughs.

After our fire, we headed off to sleep. Here is us in the morning walking around the lake for a quick activity before we started our walk back to the Deep Lake station and some of us packing our sleighs and bags back up.

When everyone was ready to go, we started our walk back home with the little energy we all had left. We had to wait for a little bit for some of the parent chaperones.

Our last and final picture before we all headed off to Benny’s pizza for lunch in Shoal Lake. We were lucky to have such great weather on this trip and even better people.