Scoutmaster Podcast 357

And now it's the old Scoutmaster. This is why you should go out in the wilderness. You are who you are out there. You cannot fake your character. There's no facade, And I love that, especially when you go out as a group, especially with the scouts. They'll be friends with those kids for life.

For that, because of that trip, because they went through all that, especially on a winter trip. Imagine that They go off into the wilderness, into a snowstorm. It's minus 20..

They're warm all the time, but they come back and tell everybody how miserable it was, what it really wasn't, and reconnect with themselves and reconnect with nature, And I think that's what's all about. If you've listened to the podcast for a while, you recognize that voice. That is our friend from Canada, Kevin Callan, the happy camper. He's got a great new book. I can hardly wait to have him tell you all about it.

This is podcast number 357.. Hey,

Joining me today on the Scoutmaster Podcast is author Kevin Callan And if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you've heard Kevin on the podcast before one of my favorite authors. He's up there in the wild North country of Canada and Kevin has written the complete guide to winter camping and I don't know that I've ever seen a book exactly like it.

It's really wonderful and I'm glad to have you back, Kevin, Hello, Hello, Are you up there? I am Far, far north of Ridge North.

You know, Nobody's done this book before. Derek Conover actually did a really good job with Snow Walker. I would say that's the Bible. Him and Caltham's Paradise, Blue Zero, are the two main books. Garrett wrote the core to my book, which was a huge honor. Yeah, Yeah, It's only been out.

Now for how long? Just like two weeks, Two weeks. Yeah, Yesterday I was at the winter camping symposium in Kitchener, Marleau in Ontario, and it was sold out. It was 300 people and I had a sold 100, 150 books. Wow, It scared the living day like that I really did. I was nervous.

I was signing books and I was actually shaking while signing, Because now you're an expert or something. No, I'm not really the expert in winter camping. I love winter camping. I love hot-tenting.

In fact, I think sometimes I can't more than the winter time they do in the summer. I know a lot of people that know more about it than I do. I went out and reached out to them. The book has all these sidebars and all these other information from other people, Mm-hmm. And that's how the book was born. It's sort of a collaboration of all our minds together and all our ideas together, not just this one individual Kind of reminded me of Expedition Canoing.

Looking over his book, I went: wait a minute, he did that, Yeah. So yeah, exactly, It works, and putting it all together in this context really helps. There's a lot of very useful stuff.

What's the temperature got to be, to call it winter camping? For me it's got to be colder than minus 10.. I'm talking Celsius. You need a really nice dry cold. If it's a damp cold, it's just miserable out, But if it's a nice minus 10,, minus 20, it's amazing really. Whenever I've been out in anything close to zero or below zero in Fahrenheit, it's dry, the snow squeaks.

People look at it and they think, oh gosh, I would never, ever go out when it's that cold. Well, anything below freezing ain't so bad.

Which, in Celsius, is zero, right? Yeah, That's true winter. I mean what people really think of winter is to go from their car to the shopping mall in a damp, cold, sort of miserable day, when it's kind of sleety, raining.

Well, that's not winter camping at all, Because when you go winter camping it's good: minus 10,, minus 20 Celsius. You get out of your car and you think you're insane. You really do. I've done what many people have never done this before. They look at me like I do not want to do this camping.

We're going to go for how many days in this environment? I would look. You're not used to the environment. Once you start hauling that freight to log in or carrying that pack down the trail, you're going to warm up.

But what gets cold is when you stop and then you have to make camp. And if you do cold camping and you do a four-season tent, which is great, It's all right. If you do a tarp or even a hammock, or with a quilt underneath, or or you do a Quincy or whatever, the only thing that's going to get you warm is your own body heat.

So just imagine the beauty of it- And again, it might be because I'm older and wiser or whatever. But get a hot tent with canvas, like a snow trucker that's made in the United States, And you get that thing set up. You get a wood stove inside. It's a sauna inside. I mean, you're sitting there with a t-shirt on, Everybody's talking, We're playing cards. We're making a good meal in a Dutch oven.

We're making a curry or stew on the stove, We're having some tea, enjoying ourselves. We're not in the tent hoping the morning is coming, Right, Yeah, And it's almost like you're carrying your log cabin with you. That's exactly what it is. Everybody wants to have a log cabin.

Well, a prospector tent with a wood stove inside, on a freight log, and it's exactly the same thing, except you can move it. So if we talk somebody into this right and we say, okay, winter camping is great and you want to be out, You definitely want to be out when it's below freezing, How are you going to tell them to put together a kit where they can go out and be comfortable in that kind of weather for a night or two? You can say to them: you won't be cold, Bake, seal and borrow before you go and buy stuff. I mean, a sleeping bag for the winter is like 600 bucks.

Who has 600 bucks per sleeping bag? Yeah, So I would do a two fall sleeping bags put together, or I would rent a sleeping bag and put a liner inside and for scouts. It's amazing. There's a lot of things in here that are. I like the way that it's put together here, because it's not.

I wrote it for the general person to get them to go winter camping, So I sort of it was a shotgun effect. It's like: here's all the information. You can do this, You can do this, You can do this, You can do this. Here's some problems that may happen. They may happen. They may happen.

Here's some great meals you can have. Here's some great experiences you can have. This is why I like winter. That's the whole thing about too.

So why do I like winter? Well, first of all, as a Canadian, it's our God-given right to enjoy winter. You had better. Oh, I know. And you're one more person.

I don't know how many radio interviews I did last week- controlling all They're like: are you insane? No, I'm Canadian.

I might as well enjoy what we have, and I think winter is a fantastic time of the season, especially in the wilderness. It's very silent. You'll see more wildlife, even though there's less wildlife to see, but you'll see more of it in the winter, Lying on the ice at minus 30 and hearing or even feeling the ice crack and grown underneath you because it expands and contracts underneath you while you're watching the northern lands. That's a lot better than watching Netflix reruns. It's an amazing, amazing time to be outside and it's a shame if you don't do it. You really have to make yourself get out and do it.

If you do it and it's minus 20, minus 30 and everybody's at home wondering about you and I guarantee you're not going to be cold. But man, the bragging rights you got when you get home, Oh, it's far beyond anything.

Because you're going to get home and they're: are you all right? Yep, Oh, no, no, that's.

When you get home and they say, are you all right? You say well, oh, just barely, just barely, it was did fine.

I think that's what boys do most of the time when they go home. I hear from their mothers about all the horrible things that happened that I had no idea.

You know all the horrible privations and how cold they were and how miserable they were as they were laughing and cavorting through an entire weekend. But that's another story.

Well, there's a photo in the book of a group of scouts my buddy, Andy, and I came upon. They had made a snow cape to stay in. I've never seen the happiest kids ever like they were at.

And you know, it's true what they say: a snow storm looks terrible. When you're looking at the window and you're wondering if you should go to work and you wonder if you should go on the road.

When you're on a winter camping trip and there's a snow storm, you're in absolute bliss. Yeah, it's amazing because the snow is dry. If the sun's out, it's great. If it's snowing, it's great. If it's cloudy, it's great.

And there are some dangers to that. Like, going across the ice is dangerous.

So there's some dangers with that. There's dangers with getting a snow blind. Yeah, you just wear goggles or sunglasses. And, yeah, remember the great glacier glasses. Remember that in the 70s, Yes, Yeah, everybody had to have glacier glasses.

Now you just go to the dollar store and you buy a pair of cheap sunglasses. You're good, Yeah, but the glacier glasses for the cool effect. Come on, you want to look cool.

Well, you know it's funny, I wear mucklucks and I wear an interact. Everybody's like, wow, you really looked apart.

And you know, what do you really wear out there? No, I wear that. Yeah, I mean, the common thing that you hear down here when we start talking about winter camping is: cotton kills.

But that's not necessarily so, is it? It does.

If it's, it's again if it's against your body, like blue jeans, if you do sweat, it will soak up that sweat and then put it right to your skin and you're going to get a hypothermia. But if you layer in wool, when the sweat goes on your body, it actually escapes into the wool and then, when it's cold enough, it will actually crystallize on the outside of the wool and you shake it off and you're dropped.

Now if you have a canvas anorak, what all that is doing is breaking the wind and your breathing is through the canvas, so you're basically you're not getting wet underneath. Now I wore, what's the really fancy jacket?

Uh, like a puffy jacket? No, well, you wear that, but no, the windshell. They uh, Oh, Gore-Tex, Gore-Tex, yes, Yeah, It's been a long day.

You know, It's okay, we're both past the 50 mark, we're loud, But yeah, you wear the Gore-Tex. You can spend 500 bucks on it if you want.

I just find it doesn't work as well as that traditional system of wool. And then the canvas anorak. Yeah, no, I'm a big fan of wool. Even go to the Army Surplus and actually find something like that for for a few dollars. That's far better than actually spending 500 bucks on a really good jacket.

So you can go to the Goodwill or the Salvation Army Store and you can find, like an old wool sweater, even even wool dress pants that are heavy enough, you know, for five or six bucks, and those will change your life in the winter time outside. I even went to the Army Surplus a couple years ago and got what's called neos. Uh, they're pullover boots that you pull over on your boots or your mucklucks.

Oh yeah, I was looking, you know, as I was going through the footwear thing, I said, oh, I can't wait to tell Kevin about neos. And then, oh, no, he already knows. Oh, great, great, yeah, they're hard to find, though.

I actually, uh, learned about them working on a movie set years ago, like 10 years ago, and we were outside in the snow for weeks and everybody in the crew had neos. No, I've been talking about those for a long time. They're great.

Now you do look like Herman Mosser when you're walking in. Oh, absolutely, these are like guy uggs. Yeah, Oh, no, no, they're far better than that. We've got the women on the fashion, I'm telling you.

So, wool over the polyprose, I would go. Wool instead of a fleece, I would go mucklucks with the neos more than I would.

Just a good winter boot? Well, the, those are like the pack boots, Yeah.

So don't buy boots that don't have liners. We get below a certain temperature, propane stoves not going to work anymore.

And then there's, um, the kili kettle. Oh, the kili kettle, The kili kettle. Here's to the kili kettle.

Oh, here she is, doesn't she? Will you never be firing up the kili kettle? I love that thing.

You know, I I learned about the kili kettle years ago when I was on a trip in Scotland with my daughter and the outfitter dropped us off and then I opened up the kit that he gave me and there was no stove except this kili kettle. It's a sick stove, but I knew nothing about, even about stick stoves at the time. But but there we would gather the, the sticks and burn them and that's what you would use, and I thought this is really cool.

So then I bought one. When I got back the idea of having a boil up did I should stop during the day and make a cup of tea, and I think my introduction of the book tells a really good story. With that, I was traveling with Charlie, this native Cree elder, up in Northern Quebec for a month and he taught me how to live with the land as opposed to try to to survive it.

And I was only maybe five, six days into the month and I was hungry and there was a snowshoe here in front of me, so I shot it and I missed and I ran after it and he goes: oh you're silly white man, and I am a really silly hyper white man, I really am. So he's right with that characterization.

And so he said: let's just have a boil up. I went: oh, come on, Charlie, now I really respected the man.

I didn't really know him that well, but I respected him. So I did what he wanted and it was minus 42 celsius, right, yeah, so do a boil up. You have to chisel through the ice because you don't drink snow up there, because that's just wrong.

Now that would take about 40 minutes minimum to chisel through the ice to get water. So I got water, got the fire going, got some spruce boughs to sit on, got the tea going.

You know, I was just about to put the fire out. He was: well, let's have lunch, Kevin.

I went, what do you mean? See the rabbit, the snowshoe hare, goes on its own run in the winter time, so traveled back by that point. I killed the rabbit, we ate it, and I wasn't silly white man anymore.

Okay, so tell me about the tea, because you talk about some teas in here. You got white pine tea. Yeah, white pine tea, spruce tea- I prefer black spruce tea. Laboratory tea is good because that those leaves are still going to be there in the winter time. You take a bundle of white pine needles and you throw them in water and you get a tea. Yeah, I've never tried that.

Oh, it's good. Wow, I put a bit of brown sugar in. I would say that black spruce actually gives you a bit of a kick.

Now, if you find yellow birch, oh, it tastes of wintergreen. If you get a bunch of yellow birch twigs and throw that in and boil it up, whoa, it's amazing. I am gonna have to try that. I'm looking forward to it. I'm gonna take the Kelly kettle out and we'll find us a white pine and have a bit of tea. Going off into Ontario and have in the Canada and having a Kelly kettle with some some yellow birch twigs with a bit of scotch in it.

Oh lord, that's like it's really good. I think in one sense because you're stopping and you're taking what you have around you in your environment, but also you're stopping and getting warm liquid in you and, I suppose, to again surviving. You're actually replenishing your resources and rethinking what, what you're- I don't be in a hurry out there, I don't be in a hurry at all. Have lots of tea, have lots of boil ups, and you're not out to try and make miles. You're not. Yeah, I mean it's not, it's not for bragging rights.

I did 75 miles in three days, or kilometers. You're not out to make kilometers. It doesn't work here. Though, when you get pulled over, a speeding, if you say I'm sorry, I'm American, I didn't understand. They still give you. I haven't had the pleasure yet yet.

Where's a piece of wood? Not gonna?

Yeah, all I have is like a three season regular old two, three-man tent, and I want to take it out in the winter. What do I do?

How do I make myself comfortable? If you only have a three season, that's fine, and where you are in more southern, you're gonna be fine as well. The big thing about the tent- a cold tent- is ventilation.

So there's the fly over the tent, there's a body of the tent and there's a fly over the tent. The body of the tent should actually have a lot of mesh in it, because you're in your sleeping bag and you're breathing out all that.

That air coming out of your mouth is going up up top and if they can't escape it's actually going to collect onto the walls as crystals and then you get really warm in there. Because it will get warm, it will fall down like raining on you and it'll get everything wet. I'm good with my three season 10, as long as we're not going to get a whole bunch of snow dumped, dumped on us, yeah, and I'm getting ready to get into bed and crawl into my sleeping bag.

But, especially if I'm talking to scouts or I'm talking to people who aren't very experienced with winter camping, what's the, what's the regimen for going to sleep? Make sure that your sleeping bag is a good sleeping bag and if you don't have a good one, make use two or three of them layered. Also, what's underneath you is important, because you're sleeping on the snow and everybody's freaking out about sleeping on the snow or the or the cold ground. You're better off if there is snow.

Snow is insulation, so it's going to be warmer, but your body is going to melt that snow and you're going to melt into it and then you're going to get cold because of that. So make sure you have a good thermo rest underneath you now, if you don't have a good thermo rest, get a cheap thermo rest.

Go to the hardware store and get the pipe insulation and cut a six foot length of that and that will actually go underneath you and that will actually reflect heat underneath you, and then you'll get that for six bucks- a little bit of extra insulation on the underneath, and then, whatever I've been wearing during the day, I want to get out of that. Yeah, you do, because you sweat it in that, even though you're not supposed to sweat, you are going to sweat.

So then, therefore, you want to get the clammy gear off you and then put fresh stuff on, and you're not going to want to do that. Yeah, you're going to. I always wear a brand new pair of socks, a brand new marina wool sweater. I wear a toke- a toke.

What? What the heck is that?

What's wrong with you down there? You've never worn a toke before. Oh, of course, I've worn many a toke. I always wear a toke. Eh, eh, eh. Yeah, a hat, and I wear a wool hat.

Don't cover your face in your sleeping bag, because if you do, your breath is going to go in the sleeping bag and climb it all up. I think it's really good is how you get out. The outdoor store is a SOL bivvy. It's just one of those reflector blankets that you put in your sleeping bag or over your sleeping bag and that's going to give you another 10 degrees warmer. It's a good thing to carry along a second pair of thermals and, like you said, a nice dry pair of socks and you can leave them right in the sleeping bag. Actually, I do.

Yeah, my big woolies I put in there. And, uh, what's more important is the pillow I got on sale the other day.

So the pillow that he is showing me right now- because I have the benefit of being able to see all of this live- is a glorious, sequined snowman pillow and you should just see the light on it. Yes, it's the the best pillow I've ever seen in my life. It's like getting a Christmas sweater, uh.

So what happened was I saw this pillow and, uh, my daughter goes is the ugliest pillow I've ever seen in my life, dad. That's why I bought it and absolutely, you have to buy it then, so it actually cost me 45 dollars. That's a lot of sequins. I've never spent that much money on a pillow before my. Sometimes a man's got to do what a man's got to do. Kevin, that's right.

Yeah, you like that pillow, you buy that pillow. That's gotta be.

I want to see that in a video in a hot tent. Oh, I know that I said that's what I thought. My next, uh, my next uh, winter trip, uh, I'm gonna go in a couple weeks actually, with my buddy Andy. I'm bringing that pillow.

It's not a comfortable pillow but it's tacky, so it's absolutely a must. It's a key piece of gear.

Kevin, thanks so much for joining us again. It's always great to talk to.

You love the book and I think a lot of people are gonna like it. You say it's doing pretty well. Huh, it is Clarke. I was actually, um, I was a little nervous.

Uh, you know, we guess it's a. It's a book on winter camping. You would think.

Who goes winter camping? Just, it's insane, right?

I think people in general, more and more people, want to get out there in the wilderness. There's so much stuff going on in life that the only time that that gives you sort of solace is to be out in the woods and winter time is a long time just to sit there and not do anything.

So I I just really found winter camping to be on the rise and, uh, I guess I've proven it because it's just selling like crazy. It's a great book and, once again, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, and uh, and make sure you keep getting those kids out there, because if they, if the kids don't go out there, we're all going to die in a terrible zombie apocalypse, apocalypse something like that, even in Canada.