The bag of pasta could feed four people, but those were frontcountry portions. Winter backpackers typically burn 4,000 to 7,000 calories a day, so the biggest danger is not packing in or eating enough and letting the fire within sputter out. Even after a day of breaking trail, when the mouth of my sleeping bag yawned enticingly, I knew I needed food—and lots of it.

I grabbed the pots (one for dinner, one for melting snow) and food. Pete grabbed the water bottles, canister of white gas, and his stove. Although some areas may permit campfires in the backcountry, firewood can be scarce if there is significant snowpack, so a lightweight backpacking stove is an absolute essential.

We walked down the path from our tent site to the shelter’s one lean-to. Above, the sky was blown clear by the wind that had risen up from the valley. Stars speckled the blackness, overpowering the small, yellow lights from the town of Gorham, N.H., that floated far below.

About a dozen boys and two guides from Gould Academy, a private school in nearby Bethel, Maine, occupied the three-sided log shelter. They were out on a weeklong backcountry trip designed to teach the high school students winter skills, teamwork, and self-reliance. It was good to meet them and trade stories under bright headlamps as the water boiled. The group had graciously moved gear and bodies aside so Pete and I could cook on the frozen dirt floor, rather than the deep snow outside. Backcountry hospitality at its finest.

On my first backpacking trip, Pete and I had camped at the Nauman tent sites, next to AMC’s Mizpah Spring Hut in Crawford Notch. There had been a stream running alongside the camping area where we collected water to cook with, make hot drinks, and refill our water bottles. That was ideal, as water requires less fuel to boil than snow and ultimately saves time.

In the three trips we have taken since, including this latest outing, there has been no running water and we have had to rely on snow. Unfortunately, it takes at least three to four times as much snow to melt the same volume of water for a 1-liter bottle. Luckily, Pete knows how his stove performs in the winter well enough to be able to plan on how much white gas to bring.

Sweat Dreams
“Susan.”
“Susan Sarandon.”
“Susan B. Anthony.”
“Anthony Hopkins.”
“Anthony Lane.”
“Christopher Lane.”

That round of “Celebrity Name Game” ended quickly after a few more turns. They never lasted long. Pete and I are out of touch with who’s who in Hollywood and run out of people to pair either the first or last name with the last person mentioned. Still, it was a game that had no parts or pieces (i.e., extra pack weight), and we could play it while fully zipped into our mummy sleeping bags, with only our faces visible.

Lying there, with the various baffles and cinch cords fully deployed on my bright-orange sleeping bag, was the best thing about winter camping—aside from the hiking and the views.

It was what I had dreaded the most though, before my first outing. Those long, cold nights when only a thin piece of foam atop an even thinner layer of nylon was all that separated you and your sleeping bag from the cold snow beneath. When the inside tent walls would glitter under your headlamp because your breath had frozen to them in a crystal tide. When you would have to get up at 2 a.m., unzip your cocoon, slip woolen-clad feet into the frozen plastic shells of your mountaineering boots, and then bare your bottom to the night air.

How could anyone survive such a night? Cope with the cold? And then I had tried it.

The frigid bathroom breaks are, of course, a reality if you are hydrated and have a small bladder, but, that aside, I found it’s quite possible to survive, even enjoy, sleeping on snow.

The trick, like any aspect of backcountry travel, is to be prepared and know what to expect. Winter camping is no luxury. It’s work, but the payoffs are often big—in terrain covered, vistas seen, or simply the delicious warmth of a sleeping bag after a brisk day in the mountains.

I had chosen a -20 degree synthetic sleeping bag for our winter overnights. I had wanted to be sure I would be warm enough in most of the weather we would encounter in the Northeast. Every bag is temperature-rated, but those ratings should be thought of as loose guidelines. Some people sleep hot, while others, like me, sleep cold. It’s hard to predict whether a person will feel warm enough in a bag rated for the temperatures she encounters, so it’s better to choose a bag rated colder than you think you’ll need.

I had also learned that I never sleep alone in the winter. After our pasta dinner, when we had scrubbed the pot with just a little snow and retired to the tent, I took everything into the sleeping bag with me that I didn’t want to freeze overnight. I stuffed my wet fleece gloves between the fleece pants and long johns I was wearing to dry them. Pete tucked a wet pair of wool socks under his shirt, against his skin (a feat I have not been bold enough to try). Two water bottles each were slid down along the insides of our sleeping bags. With water still hot from the stove, the bottles acted like space heaters for a time.

I started out wearing all my layers to bed, minus my down jacket, which was my pillow, and I shed as I warmed up, keeping the layers with me or adding to my pillow. The hardest additions to my sleeping bag were the two insulated liners to my double plastic boots. Wet from foot sweat, my liners went into a plastic garbage bag at the end of my sleeping bag. They crowded me a bit, but they would not be frozen when I woke in the morning. (Hikers should also sleep with leather hiking boots in their bags. Otherwise, the boots will be impossible to put on if allowed to freeze.)

Thus ensconced, I was ready for the night temperatures to plunge and the rousing “Celebrity Name Game” that was about to ensue. It was about 7:30 p.m. when the first name was tossed out. We’d be asleep before 8:30 p.m. Awake at dawn after a restful sleep, we would eat a hot oatmeal breakfast, break camp quickly, and tramp out to explore more backcountry in white.

Karen Ingraham, the magazine’s former senior editor, thinks bringing a chocolate bar to bed is one of the best fringe benefits of winter camping. 

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