Our group headed out early on Saturday, December 2, to go backpacking in the Wester Uplands area of Algonquin Park. We awoke to rain, but that soon turned into snow that took almost all the way to Algonquin, giving us quite the winter wonderland experience for the weekend.

This episode gives you a hint of the scenery, though doesn’t show the 5 or so rivers we had to cross. The one as you will see and hear was especially challenging for shorter legs – like mine.

We had two challenges. This first was finding campfire wood that would burn. The second was having enough hot water for everyone. We had to boil snow, which requires adding liquid water to the pot before adding the snow. Melting snow also requires adding snow constantly to the pot because as it melts the volume is reduced.

In case you are interested Here is a list of what went into the hotpot? We had two pots going. One for vegetarians and one for omnivores. The only differences was one had tofu and the other had meat.

• Mushroom soup base
• Egg Noodles
• Dehydrated green onion
• Dehydrated peppers
• Dehydrated mushrooms
• Snow peas
• Zucchini
• Bok choy
• Tofu
• Hotpot meat

For a winter backpacking packing list visit this page.