On January 19, I woke up at 7am to find the campsite enshrouded in fog so thick I couldn’t see Burger’s or Yann’s tents in the distance. It was much too chilly to leave my tent, so after putting on a fleece jacket and activating a fresh pair of hand warmers to put inside my sleeping bag, I tightened the drawstring around the hood, leaving only my nose poking out. I stayed in my warm cocoon for another two hours before emerging from the tent to find that the fog had dissipated. The boys were up and around, boiling water on camp stoves for their coffee.
“Sleeping Beauty,” remarked Burger.
I’m glad he and Yann didn’t end up scraping my frozen corpse off the tent platform at Montague Harbour Provincial Park. I’d survived my first ever winter camping trip.
The weather forecast for Victoria had been spot-on. The conditions were a trifle different on Galiano Island, which is located just 26km NNE of Swartz Bay (the nearest ferry terminal to Victoria).
Galiano Island had been swallowed up by heavy fog.
I could feel the blasts of the foghorn as the ship broke into the fog. The fog was so dense that the ship was about 30 degrees off course as the berth finally came into view. This was swiftly corrected, and we disembarked without incident, along with our bikes and an absurd amount of gear for just one night.
My absurd amount of clothing turned out to be not-so-absurd. I was relieved to have packed my insulated merino hooded vest, my fleece jacket, and even my hardshell jacket, which I’d added at the last minute when Yann said he was bringing his.
We made our first stop within 200m, at one of Galiano’s two grocery stores.
Groceries are already more expensive on Vancouver Island than on the mainland (except for Bubly, for some reason), but the smaller the island, the larger the markup. “Litter” Sport chocolates were going for almost $6 apiece.
Avid supporters of the local economy, Yann and Burger picked up some beer and food. Burger adhered to his cycle camping tradition with the essential block of cheese, along with a box of Triscuits, and a girthy tube of meat. Meanwhile, Yann went inside with the modest intention of purchasing beer for himself and a 4-litre jug of water to share with everyone. Dazzled by the idea of fire-popped popcorn, he ended up adding two shiny foil pans of Jiffy Pop to the mix.
I’d packed enough food from the “big island”, but with the guys’ panniers bulging with beer and extra snacks, I volunteered to tote the communal 4L jug of water.
There is one big, long hill between Sturdies Bay and Montague Harbour, where we were headed. Even with the additional 8 pounds of water on my bike, Yann was carrying the most weight. By far. We stopped halfway up the climb only to shed some layers, then valiantly soldiered on.
A one-way trip to any of the five Southern Gulf Islands accessible by ferry is a <50km (30mi) bike ride, making it a convenient single-night camping option, provided that you learn to love the climbs.
Pros of Winter Camping:
- Significantly fewer campsite neighbours.
- Significantly fewer bugs.
- The campground toilets are clean.
- Fire bans are unlikely.
Cons of Winter Camping:
- The ranger station was closed, so we couldn’t purchase firewood at the park.
- It gets dark early.
- It is cold. Duh.
Well, with the ranger station closed, our only source for firewood was in the direction from which we came: up that big, long hill.
I’d already struggled to muster the confidence to match Burger and Yann’s speed on the descent through the mist, and now that the sun was setting, I wasn’t eager to try again. So, I offered to stay behind and set up the guys’ tents while they fetched the firewood.
I started with my tent, expecting it to get done in under five minutes. However, it had been so long since I last used it that the shock cord had crapped out while in storage. Instead of the poles snapping together almost automatically, I wrangled floppy segments of aluminum poles that didn’t want to stay together. My solution had me fastening the poles together one by one, taking in the slack and anchoring the end with a knot. After that, setup was a cinch.
Next was Yann’s tent. Now I had even less daylight to work with. The other piece of my camping gear that had crapped out was my headlamp. I’d known for a while that it had gone kaput; I’ve just kept forgetting to replace it before every camping trip. My only source of light was a battery-powered 60-lumen bike light; plenty bright enough, but I needed both hands to set up the tent.
The light was too bulky to hold between my teeth, especially since I’m still missing a front tooth. I made do with the quickly fading daylight and put my tactile dexterity to the test. After fumbling with the poles for several minutes, I finally inserted the tips in all four corners of the tent’s grommets, only to discover that the nubs the tent body clips onto were facing outwards.
At that point, I’d lost the race against sunset and completed the setup by whipping the fly over the tent one-handed while holding my bike light in the other hand.
Now, I had Burger’s tent to do.
*sigh*
Fortunately for me, Burger had declined my offer to set up his tent, and I was grateful I hadn’t been insistent. I scrambled inside my tent to change out of my sweaty cycling gear and into almost every article of clothing I’d packed. Even at a relatively tame 60 lumens, my bike light was too powerful for use inside the tent. This, combined with the fact that I’m unable hear anything, gave me an unsettling feeling of floating in nothingness, protected only by sheets of nylon and fine mesh. I resorted to using my e-reader (specifically chapter 72 of The Tangled Tree) for illumination; its glow was just soft enough for me to see silhouettes through the mesh window of my tent.
I sat cross-legged on my sleeping bag, chowing on mini cucumbers while I awaited the firewood squad’s return. I’d taken so long to set up the two tents that Burger and Yann showed up shortly after I’d finished the last cucumber.
Amid the flood of Burger’s incredibly powerful bike light, I recounted my adventures setting up our campsites in the quickly diminishing daylight. Yann shone his headlamp on my phone when I showed him the above picture.
“Why did I just do that?!” Yann exclaimed, laughing at his gaffe.
“Honestly, I didn’t realize you had done anything funny until you pointed it out.”
My hour of solitude in the darkness had messed with my mind. It helped to remind myself that it was only, like, 6:30pm and that the nocturnal critters were probably still asleep.
Wait… lemme try something:
I’d used my time in Vancouver as an opportunity to break my evening habit of getting high on THC. Rather than quit weed altogether, I’d resolved to turn my routine into an occasional indulgence. Surprisingly, I made it 18 days into the new year drug-free. Now, as I prepared to sit in front of $30 of firewood burning, getting blazed seemed apt. It made me all the more stoked for Yann’s fire-popped popcorn and softened our disappointment when we tore open the bulging foil to discover that only half the kernels had popped.
I was the first one to retire to their tent, where I used my e-reader as intended, losing myself in tales of primordial earth. (When I began the book, I expected the story progress through the evolutionary tree of life, but I’m halfway through and Quammen is STILL discussing single-celled organisms.)
The next morning, after I’d accumulated enough body heat to wriggle out of my downy cocoon, I brewed some tea in my Primus trek pot, which, up until then, had been an acceptable substitution for a proper double-walled camping mug. By the time the three of us reached the frost-covered dock, I had half a pot of tepid tea. I quickly drank it before it could evaporate.
We left sunny Montague Harbour Provincial Park around 10:45am. As we crested the hill, we re-encountered heavy fog.
It wasn’t until we were on the boat that we escaped the fog, and from that point on, it was sunny skies for the rest of our trip.
Burger knows the manual alphabet and is very good about making an effort to communicate with me using sign language. When he and Yann were talking, though, instead of having Yann interpret, I pulled my phone out and opened the auto transcriber app. As a bonus, I made the guys laugh by gesturing the ferry safety information in the style of a flight attendant based on the app’s janky transcription.
Then, Burger delivered the joke of the year by interjecting something in the PA announcement about the cafeteria and gift shop closing as the ship approached Swartz Bay:
In that Burger had fooled me into believing a ferry crew member had hyped up the souvenir shop whale t-shirts made Yann laugh harder.
Regrettably, none of us made it to the gift shop in time to get our whale t-shirts, but I have a good feeling we have more cycle camping trips in our future. Perhaps not until spring arrives.
Unless…
Spring is here to stay.
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