Winter cottage visit (part 1)

This past weekend, Jeff and I went to the cottage with my sister and her family. Visiting the cottage in winter is a more complicated process than during the summer. The lake is frozen, for example, which means we can't use the motorboat. Instead, we have to lug sleds (with all our food and gear) across the ice...a trek that can take anywhere from 40 minutes to well over an hour. Some trips are easier than others; it depends on the condition of the ice, the temperature, and the weather. Last March, I posted about a particularly slushy trip across.

This past weekend wasn't as bad, although it got pretty slushy in places, as you can see from the photo below:



The weekend was also colder than some others, which meant that the slush froze quickly. A little bit of slush would cling to the bottom of sleds and snowshoes and then freeze. Then more slush would collect, freeze, and so on. In only a matter of minutes, you felt as if you were pulling a beached whale. You'd stop, paintstakingly scrape off all the ice, start pulling...and the next time you hit a slushy spot, the process would start again.

Here is a close-up of some frozen slush on the bottom of my sisters snow shoe:



One of our niece's snowpants:



I am determined to find a more comfortable way of pulling the sleds for our next winter visit. I still have nasty-looking bruises from where the thin rope cut into me; I'm going to look for more comfortable straps, ideally padded. Partway across the lake, I was really struggling, so my heroic brother-in-law Kaarel took some of my load and took it on his sled. Thank you, Kaarel!

Here's a photo I took shortly after we set off across the lake. I turned around and took this photo of my sled, with Kaarel standing behind ready to pull his own sled. You can just see my sister Ruth peering over Kaarel's shoulder:



This photo shows part of our tracks across the lake. Our origin point: the other side of the bay on the far shore of the lake; you can just see the entrance to the bay about 2/3 way across the photo with the dip in the horizon:



My sister Ruth, hanging out on the cottage deck:



I just found out, by the way, that Ruth is a finalist for the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award this year!

But back to the cottage...

In the photo below, Jeff and one of our nieces chop a hole through the lake for water. We boiled the water for drinking as well as using it for washing dishes:



The trick was that it was so cold that the water froze over quickly, so they had to chop through the ice each time we needed to get more water. We kept several containers of water inside the cottage for daily use.

Having limited water made us much more conscious about how many dishes we used during the day. I pre-cooked several meals in advance to cut down on both the amount of cooking needed as well as the number of pots to be washed. Plus we didn't know until we actually GOT to the cottage whether or not we'd have power; so often, ice-laden electric wires get pulled down during the winter.

If that happened, we'd heat up food and water over the wood stove or camp stove. Our nieces were actually hoping for a power outage because it would make the trip more of an adventure. :-) Sadly (for them, anyway), we did have power.

Still, it was definitely more exciting than a regular cottage visit. There's no running water, after all. No bugs! You can walk on the lake! Plus there was a rim of ice around the toilet seat in the outhouse when we arrived. :-D

My nieces had great fun on this trip, and can't wait to go back.

More pics...

On Saturday, Jeff built an outdoor fire on the snow above the fire pit. As the snow melted, the logs sank lower:



My appetite whetted by the trek across the ice, I prepare to eat Jeff's brains:



Photo by one of my nieces.

Tomorrow: birthdays and ice candles!



Livejournal comments