Monday, March 16, 2015

Gatineau winter overnight


This year since I am a grade 12 student I got to go on a 3 day trip to Gatineau parks Brown cabin. Where I got to go cross country skiing and snowshoeing with my fellow classmates.

In the morning on the first day we had to pack and account for all of our equipment and food. In Hein site we all probably should have agreed on one specific checklist for things as appose to multiple and slightly confusing checklists of things. However we managed and didn’t forget to pack everything we had planned to bring. Once we got everybody and everything on the bus it was a relatively short bus ride to Gatineau Park. We decide to snowshoe in to Brown cabin. We all put on our snow shoes and headed off. In the beginning my left snowshoe kept sliding off, after struggling for ten minutes to fix it with the help of Dylan we got it secured and it gave me no trouble for the rest of the trip. I learned in that experience how to properly tighten the snowshoes which apparently I had been doing wrong for quite some time. We got to the cabin unpacked our stuff and then we went out on an amazing snowshoe adventure across the park. I learned that it’s super fun to snow shoe and make your own trail as appose to following the specific trail of those in front of you but that it does take a lot of energy out of you, so it’s best to alternate from following trails to creating your own path or following near the front of the group. We got back to the cabin and we began to cook dinner this was fun but as well a bit of a challenge. We had some trouble at first figuring out the stove as well as getting the water to boil since we had a limited amount of pots and extremely cold water to start with. Eventually it started to boil and we got the pasta cooking. The first batch of garlic bread was a little crispy since we were fiddling a lot with the temperature of the oven and a bit distracted with the other things that were happening at the same time. We managed to make a fairly decent meal in retrospect we didn’t need to bring as much pasta as we did because we ended up with an extra package that we never even bothered to cook.

The second day started off pretty slow but once we got moving and got things ready it was a really good day. We skied 11km then stopped for lunch at a cabin. After lunch we headed to the Caves that are in the park. This was really cool and quite the experience. I learned however on my way out of the caves to always be careful where you step because I stepped through a hole and broke ice which revealed a stream that was beneath us. Luckily my feet didn’t get wet. After that I was super carful where I stepped on my way out of the caves. We skied back to the cabin and dinner was basically ready thanks to Nick and Dylan. We ate played games and hung out by a fire outside and just basically relaxed for the rest of the evening.

The last day we woke up got breakfast made and packed fairly quickly. We snow shoed out and got there roughly the same time as the bus did.

All in all I had a great time on this trip to Gatineau Park. I learned a lot about hard work and attention to detail that I really wouldn’t have learned in any other class. I would defiantly encourage people to take this trip if they have the opportunity  

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