The trip really started on Tuesday, as we received 10 cm of snow and we decided that we really wanted to do wintercamp. Students spent the next 3 days piling snow and digging out their quinzhees. The back field of C.W. was quite the sight, as we had 14 quinzhees build. The quality of the quinzhees was quite excellent, with lots of space (some more than others), nice platforms and good cold sinks. A great job considering we did it with a day less than usual.
The night itself was perfect. At a - 10 C and no wind, it was a very pleasant evening. The students were there right as school finished, with most groups putting the final touches on their homes for the night, while others started to gather firewood for our fires. Once it got dark, everyone started preparing their dinners. With some cooking on the fires and some on stoves, the meals looked great, with chili, spaghetti and garlic bread, stews and soups ensuring everyone got a warm start to the evening. The rest of the night saw people singing songs around the campfire, eating frozen marshmallows, games of soccer in the snow and some good story telling.
The only concern was that some of the quinzhees seemed to be shrinking. Something that happens normally over time, but this seemed to be happening quite quickly. We decided to collapse one quinzhee for safety and we had to lower the platform in our quinzhee to ensure that we had enough headroom to sleep. Around 10:30 PM, we had our last call to brush our teeth and got ready for bed. This is when all the groups headed into their quinzhees, most of which were beautifully lit by candlelight, and hunkered down for the night. It was a great night for sleeping out, not too cold and with well build quinzhees, most students had comfortable nights. There were a few interesting stories in the morning while we ate our pancake breakfast, but we will let the students tell those in the reflections attached to this post.
