On Wednesday, the 30th of January we had our first overnight stay in tents out in Jegersberg. This was a trip meant for us to test our equipment and experience a night in tents in the winter environment. All of that was based only a 15min walk into Jegersberg which left the option to walk out at any time just in case something doesn’t go as planned.
On the day we met around 12 o clock packed up with everything we needed for 24 hours out. I planned to cook dinner together in a cooking group of 4 to simplify the cooking process for everybody. I found that to be a very good idea as it was very handy and fun to cook together rather then alone. After inspecting the tents and hiking out to our campside we used our shovels to create a flat and hard base of snow big enough for our tent. Our campside was well and quickly chosen as it wasn’t located under any trees and out of danger of big snow pieces slipping of branches. We had to put a couple of pegs in sideways as we had made camp on top of a rocky base but it worked out fine after a bit of thinking and advice.
Moving on to the cooking competition I was very surprised by how quickly everybody was able to make such a nice and nutritious dish in such a short time. Since my group consisting of Lea, Alex, Michael and me got organised very quickly (cutting/trangias/gas/red spirit/matches) we succeeded to cook a tasty chicken pasta with veggies. I am still quite sceptical on taking fresh veggies/meat/pasta etc. on to trips lasting more than one night as they will just take up much more room than rice/couscous/dried meat/veg-soup-powder/nuts. Though I was happy to extend my cooking artillery for 1-overnight-trips this way and it got me thinking what would be possible in terms of weight and pack-size to vary in food choices.
Throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening fro 4 o clock onwards we were given free time to ourselves. Since we had all the dirty dishes from the cooking competition and it was getting colder and dark in about an hour I suggested that some do the dishes while all the others collect firewood. That was a plan that everybody seemed to support at first. After helping with the dishes I collected firewood because I figured we wouldn’t have enough and encouraged the others to join. In the end I still think making a plan like we did with dishes and firewood was a great idea. Unfortunately some ended up putting much more work into these two in my opinion inevitable tasks for a cosy evening than some others did. I figure that is a result of the big group size of 16 people as well as the general new situation most of us found themselves in. And that is fair enough. I nevertheless thoroughly enjoyed a shared dinner, good chat with a couple of the group and hot chocolate at a warm fire until later in the evening. Also I learned that when collecting firewood in a snowcovered forest fallen down branches that got stuck hanging in the trees tend to be a lot more dry than anything laying on the ground.
As it was my first night sleeping in tents right on the snow I must say that I am very please with my equipment. My Gregory Baltoro Backpack for getting the stuff there worked just as well as my many different clothing layers, sleeping mat and bag to keep me warm throughout the evening and night hours.