Doug and I decided in the new year holidays we would do a little snowshoeing expedition in the British Colombia Rockies. We had gone to Yoho National Park in the summer before but never in the winter. This would be a whole new experience. Our style always includes arriving at a place late in the night, sleeping in the car and setting off the next morning. It just so happened that we got all our gear and made it out to the mountain base around Lake O'Hara area in time to hike in (if we were fast).
So we set out trudging through the amazingly deep snow. We hiked for 10 kilometers which took us a couple of hours and made it to this shack just as it got dark. We had nothing but sleeping bags so we decided to camp out in the food shed. Otherwise there was just a big open eating area with just a roof over it. Inside the food shed there were shelves which weren't comfortable but it was the best we could do.
The next morning we set out and snowshoed up hills and mountain sides, found frozen waterfalls and enjoyed the amazing scenery around Lake O'Hara. By the evening we were itching for some hot food. This is where 2 engineering minds needed to be combined for maximum output.
We had a couple packages of oriental noodles and there were fire stoves back in that eating hut I mentioned. Here is what we eventually found to cook our dinner: We found some elbow pipe near some abandon shacks (probably abandoned for the winter hehe). After cleaning it out we melted snow in the elbow pipes and then boiled the water. We poured the water into our Nalgene bottles and then put the noodles in. This kind of innovation went on all night as we fried peanuts from our trail mix on the hot stove and had some good man to man talk.
-steve-
