On March 10, Oliver McCloskey and I packed our toboggans and headed to to the mountains to have a winter camp. We both had a bad case of cabin fever and were needing to get out and get away. We left the settlements a little later than we wanted but made it to the mountains before dark. He chose to camp near Hancock Peak on Cedar Mountain above Brian head at about 11000 feet. I had some trouble with my snow shoes and toboggan but eventually made it on the trail. Our goal was some beaver ponds a couple of miles away. Being my first time on snow shoes I struggled fell over a couple of time. We didn't make it to the ponds as it was getting dark. Oliver had a camp site picked in a grove of trees about 3/4 mile from the tr
uck. We dug down into the snow about 2 1/2 feet so the wind would blow over the top of us. Oliver got the fire going, I gathered some wood, then dug out my side of camp. Our fire pit melted down about 3 more feet, we figured we were still sleeping on six or seven more feet of snow. Oliver's bed gear consisted of two wool blankets, two water proof canvases, and a buffalo robe. He also had a buffalo coat, buckskin breeches and leggings, wool socks, and some moccasins made of buffalo and a coon skin cap. For myself, I had 4 wool blankets, 1/4 of a buffalo hide, a wool blanket capote, wool socks, moccasins, and a bear skin cap. Our water was frozen by the time we went to bed. We figured it got down to about 0 degrees. I was pretty worn out by the time we were settled into camp. I wasn't much company. I dozed off to sleep pretty early. As the fire pit melted, my bedroll began to fall into the fire. Oliver woke me up several times to say I was on fire. The night went buy slowly as I had a hard time getting comfortable, and had a headache, due to the elevation. When daylight came, I put my snowshoes on and gathered more firewood for the breakfast fire. We cooked breakfast over the fire. I had a couple of slices of bacon, cooked on a stick and melted some snow to drink. We had a lazy morning about camp and finally loaded up around 2 p.m. and started out for the beaver ponds. The snow had melted much that day and made going slow. We decided to head back to the truck and head for the lower country. When we got back down the the settlements we stopped at the first trading post and purchased a pepsi. It sure tasted good. While winter camp was shorter than we had planned it was a good time and much was learned.
