My friend, Dave Sumner, and I took a memorable ski touring jaunt into the heart of the Mosquito Range of the Colorado Rockies one bitter cold week in February. Dave was a wilderness photographer and wanted some shots of ptarmigan around abandoned silver mine shacks as well as some winter mountain scenics.
We skied in and set up a base camp midst the three highest peaks. We carried snowshoes and crampons to do some higher climbing. With food and camp stove fuel, to melt snow and cook for a week, as well as the rest of our winter gear, we were toting impressive loads.
So you can imagine my surprise seeing Dave, not just shooting dozens of rolls of film with his Nikon and a variety of heavy lenses, but hefting out a 4X5 Linhof Technika field camera, a sturdy tripod to hold this bulky metal monster, half a dozen film holders, and a variety of packs of 4x5 film.
He'd carried in a good 20 to 25 more pounds of photo gear along with his share of our other winter gear and never asked for help. And embarrassingly, I was a good 25 pounds stockier than Dave.
One side of winter backpacking that puts a special test on the party are its long nights. Because of the severity in the drop in temperatures at night, especially at higher altitudes, you want to be inside your tent snuggled somehow in warmer gear by about 4:30 in the afternoon. And you are not likely to be up and out of your tent until after breakfast at first light about 7:00 in the morning. So you had better have a good companion to wile away those 14 or so hours, for if you are like me, you can't sleep much more than seven hours.
Of course, if you like reading you can get through a lot of pages of an evening. But, since we had six full nights in the Mosquitos, it was great to have a good companion like, Dave, with whom to chat the nights away. Which reminds me of other treks with Dave, one of which I call our 'therapeutic trek.' I'll write about that in my next post.
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