March 6, 2011
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Bell tent in the Arctic
If any of you scout people are out there and have spent any time camping with 1st Manvers or my fam in general you would remember this tent. It has been packed to so many different camps and Operation alerts, and Huck Finn Raft races I can hardly count them all.
I have been thinking about this tent since our first winter up here and after much research discovered that this is one of the more popular tents in some arctic regions ... That being said I think it's the only one in this town...most here use what we called Prospector tents, everyone in Pang calls them frame tent.
I decided that today was finally the day to try it out... Markus came along to help and just check the tent out...
We left and Nicole received a phone call shortly after from Meeka one of our good friends. She laughed when she found out we left and told Nicole that we needed a psychiatrist, and that it was even to cold for Inuit .... you see the temperature was -40c with wind chill and up in the mountains where we went it must have been another 10 or 15 degrees colder... you may have guessed the wind was blowing pretty good. Or at least good enough that it was difficult to differentiate the ground from the sky. But Markus and I decided that it would be a good day as it would truly test the tent.
So anyway we went out and set the tent up in only a few minutes and in we went with the Coleman stove and had some tea. The tent warmed up to what we guessed was about -15c nice and warm with the wind howling outside. After the tea we even cooked up some soup. We learned from this outing that the stove is ok but I'm pretty sure Nic and I are going to convert the tent into a tent with a chimney, and at the bottom of the chimney is going to be a prospector wood burning travel stove. You can pick them up withat Le Baron or other outdoor stores for pretty cheap. You may be asking yourself about firewood... well as you know there are no trees around us
but there is a dump with a very good selection of assorted wood....
worked pretty good for a tent from 1940.. there was actually a stamp on it with the date it was made cool eh ?
Markus relaxing in front of the stove
Me havin a cup of tea.. the orange glow is just the tint of the tent.
So all in all we were out there for about 4 hours and we both loved every second of the tent. The not so fun part was the drive home, we were not too far but the wind picked up on the way and it made the trail a little tricky to follow.
So that's this weekend's adventure..
Maybe fishing next week.. but not if it's -40c
TTYL
M&N&A
