I woke up, 2 inches of ice coated every surface of
My sleeping bag that touched the snow. Shivering, my feet felt like stone blocks and I could barely move. My breath in the frigid air left only a small trail. Man was I cold.
Here's my advice to you... if you ever decide to go snow camping, do a little research beforehand on what you need to do it properly. I hadn't, and here I was in the middle of the mountains freezing to death. A sleeping bag and waterproof sack is not enough, no matter how cold the bag is rated to. What gets you is contact with the ground. If there isn't something between the two of you, it's gonna be a rough time.
I was learning that the hard way.
Creeping out of my rigid sack I felt for my pack in the dark. My spot was off the path just outside of a town and there were no lights. Arriving earlier in the day I had checked with the local hotels on prices and being one of their holiday seasons, everything was 2.5x the normal rate. Way out of my range, in other words.
My boots were frozen, my clothes stiff with frost, not a good situation. Not at all. It's hard to cold start your warm clothes when you're about the same as the air around you. Another lesson I was learning the hard way. Good boots, good coat, good everything, just not good sense apparently.
Luckily I was in a hot spring town...luckily.
I was able to hop a fence to a public one, not too far away from where my gear lay. Stripping quickly I practically jumped in the water. It felt like daggers on my skin and I had to hold back a scream from the sudden changes my body was going through. Warmth began to seep back into my bones pouring life into my veins.
'So, next time...' I thought to myself. A hard lesson to learn and one that could have had some nasty consequences. There was always the last resort of knocking on someones door, but that was a last, last resort. Especially since it was 2a.m..
That meant I had 3 or 4 hours to wait before the first train and a route to salvation.
Time to walk, time to think, time to contemplate my stupidity. It did give me some time to snap some cool images, which was nice. But, all those hours of walking the same track through a small, one street town, did get really dull.
By the time the sun finally started to come up I was exhausted. From the cold, from the walking, from the lack of sleep, I was ready to close my eyes for a good long time. Unfortunately, to get to my next destination meant train transfers and a need to keep on my toes not to miss any stops.
But, the strength of youth is an amazing thing.
You swig some coffee, shake your shoulders, and just bully on through it. You turn that frown upside down and do your best to enjoy your circumstances. A lesson that I think we begin to forget later in life as our body loses its resiliency, as well as our minds. One that through this writing I am trying to rediscover.
Thank you for taking the time to read through how I almost died learning how to winter camp. These lessons served me well in the years that came as I explored more and more off-the-beaten-path towns that few foreigners ever see when I was too cheap to just get a room. Even when I did have the money I usually found it more fun to take the crazy route. I mean, what makes a better story? Right?
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