Algonquin Park: Camping Trip Logs: 022 - Pinetree Lake Winter Camping - Access Point #12

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Day 3

February 17, 2013 - Pinetree Lake Relaxing

The threatened cold temperature didn’t disappoint. We awoke to about -26 Celsius and the overnight low was -32.7 Celsius. Brandon failed miserably at keeping the stove going, only firing it up once or twice through the night. It’s a different experience sleeping when it’s that cold, but luckily my two sleeping bags (one a -17 and the other a -7 down) were up to the task. At one point in the early morning I kept rubbing my eyes, thinking they were full of sleep gunk. Nope, it was actually my breath in the cold air making everything blurry in the dim tent.

The first order of the day, as always, was to get coffee started. Off to the lake I headed, almost three inches of ice had to be chopped out of the water hole before I could fill the percolator. It looked like a nice day with the sun shining brightly, but the temperature and brisk wind was brutally cold.

There was a hole in the ice yesterday.

Clear and cold February morning.

It was unanimously decided that today would be a more relaxing day, maybe huddled around the roaring wood stove? I cooked up my standard breakfast of Laurie Loves Mike Egg Patties and we put on a second pot of coffee.

We did have to head out of the tent, to get some fresh air as well as to collect more firewood so we could make it warmly through the rest of the weekend. A good hours work and we had more than enough wood cut and stacked in the tent. It was a bit of a chore climbing the hills nearby to get firewood, lots of steep sections and rocky outcroppings.

The cliffy surroundings of Pinetree Lake.

With necessities out of the way we headed back to the tent. We attempted a bit of a fire outside but that didn’t last long, it was just too windy and cold to be standing around. Inside the tent we had a great assortment of junk food to nibble on as we waited for supper time to roll around.

Scooping out a glass of orange juice.

Jeffrey! Save some for the rest of us.

While relaxing in the tent Brandon had the stupid idea of shining his flashlight into his water bottle, filled from the lake. He shouldn’t have done that.

If you could forget about the -20 Celsius temperature and -30 Celsius wind chill it was a nice evening.

Sun setting on a chilly evening at Pinetree Lake.

Once again we were set for the evening, the tent was toasty warm and all I had to do was wait for Brandon to serve me dinner. He cooked up a great roast beef and mashed potato feast.

The hot tent all ready for another cold night.

Brandon cooking up our roast beef dinner.

The finished meal. Delicious!

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