Winter Camping Alone in Michigan’s UP

I'm in the Sylvania wilderness and my plan is to find a trail to a campsite on Crooked Lake and hopefully spend the next couple of days solo camping in my hot tent. I have been here before but covered in snow like this it's pretty much unrecognizable and in winter it seems like even the most simple plans find a way to unravel. It's been a couple of hours now and I still haven't been able to find the campsite. I also had a gear malfunction. It made it basically impossible to pull all this gear so I think I found where the campsite might be but I'm going back up trail where I left half my gear to get that before I keep looking. So change of plans. I'm headed back to the car now because I'm just way too exhausted to keep looking for this campsite in the dark. I need to find a place to stay tonight so I can come back in the morning but staying in my car is not an option because my gear is still on the trail. So I ended up driving a little over an hour to Rhineland, Wisconsin to get a hotel tonight and both of the straps on the backpack that I was wearing to pull the sled actually broke. So I had to stop at Walmart and get a new backpack. So hopefully this eastbound backpack that I picked up will work out a lot better but my plan is to wake up extremely early. I want to get out on trail like as soon as the sun comes up because not only is my gear still out there but I just I don't want to run out of time like I did today. I plan on it being a three night. It's going to be a two night and that's just how it goes. Winter camping is so hard. I mean I think everything just takes so much longer but then at the same time the days are so much shorter so the combination of those things and then just snow and pulling gear around through snow is hard. So all I can do is just like I said wake up as early as possible and get out there as early as possible and then give it another go. So yesterday I followed this sled trail and it took me completely away from where I was trying to go but I have to follow it again because I've got to get back to my gear before I try and find the campsite. So my first stash in here. I think that hauling a sled through snow is probably the most challenging cardio workout period. I've got to keep taking breaks because even though it's only three degrees outside just pulling this sled is making me sweat. So the worst thing that you could do in weather like this is sweat and get wet but I've got to get going. I don't want to waste too much time. So I ran into the guy that broke this sled trail and he said that he had been lost so that makes sense. So I just found my second stash of gear and the campsite and oh my gosh I'm so happy. It's beautiful. Definitely worth all the trouble. Just happy to finally be able to go ahead and get set up. First thing is to tamp down some of this snow. Okay so I just stepped through the ice right here on shore so we know that the ice on the lake is not good. Thankfully my boot didn't get wet. Yeah I definitely am moving camp up a little bit higher since clearly the ice is not good down there. So I had another gear malfunction. I accidentally ripped off the guy outline somehow in the corner of the tent so I had to poke a hole through it and then use this stick as a little anchor. So I just got my tent all set up. I just needed to come inside for a second and get warmed up but I still got lots of firewood to go ahead and process because it's freezing. I'm pretty sure it's like two degrees outside right now. So last time I went winter camping it was like 25 degrees and it might even get down into the negatives tonight so it's a lot colder. You can definitely tell a massive difference just with how cold it is outside so I still have to go out and process firewood. So excited because since I've got these windows on my tent I'll be able to go to sleep to the full moon over the lake. Okay so the tent has finally gotten reasonably warm. Pretty much all my food is frozen solid. Avocado oil is frozen so I'm just gonna make a concoction out of what ends up unthawing the fastest. I have a steak dinner for one meal and then I was gonna make a pasta dinner for another so I'm actually gonna combine them. I've got onions and garlic. I really like this stove it just clearly it's not the best for cooking. Okay so I just added some flour, cream but it's frozen, and some frozen pumpkin puree. This is gonna be a creamy pumpkin pasta. Adding some parmesan cheese, adding in some sage, some spinach which is froze. Try to do this without knocking this pan off. Add some extra parmesan. There's my steak and creamy pumpkin pasta. Looks like a lot of food but I guarantee you I'm gonna eat all of that. This is so good especially the pasta. I mean you can't go wrong with steak but I'm using these little fatwood hockey puck thingies that just make it a lot easier to get the fire going especially when everything's damp from being either frozen or covered in snow. They're still kind of tough to start though so I still use a cotton round with petroleum jelly to get it going but then they burn a while so then it gives the sticks a chance to light. So I'm just waiting for my coffee to finish. Somehow it's now 12 o'clock but I'm starting to get nervous about my firewood situation. Not because I don't think I can get more firewood. It is hard to find. Everything is covered in snow so just trying to find dead dry wood is tough in and of itself but the wood that I have been able to find just it really it doesn't burn all that great. Even it's split with my axe and everything so the inside seems dry but it's hard to tell because it's frozen. It has been burning along with the compressed hardwood bricks that I brought and those things are like literally magic but I brought six and I'm down to my last one. I'm just worried that any firewood that I find from here out isn't gonna burn without those once I run out of those compressed bricks. So not to mention like all my food and everything is frozen solid all over again. So now I have to decide am I gonna go find more firewood right now or am I gonna make breakfast and the thing is I've got a fire right now so I feel like I should probably take advantage and cook while I can but then I just I just have that anxiety of like dwindling firewood. But since I have one of the compressed bricks in there right now I figured I probably should go ahead and make the most of it. I originally planned to make black-eyed pea soup the first night I was supposed to stay out here which was New Year's Day so I think I'm gonna go ahead and just make that and even though it's not a breakfast it'll still be really good. It's something I can cook low and slow on the stove even if the stove isn't super hot it can just it takes a long time to cook anyway and then I should have leftovers also for tonight in case the stove doesn't get hot hot and I can't cook tonight and I could also while it's cooking be getting some stuff done in the way of firewood as well. I mean my black-eyed peas aren't pretty frozen solid but I should be able to get these out of here at least and in the pan. I've got some ham and andouille sausage, peppers, onions, chicken broth. So I like using this bear canister even in winter it just gives me a hard surface almost like a table to be able to cook on and chop things on. One thing I've always wondered when I watched other people hot tent camp is about cooking in your tent because you always hear like never ever cook in your tent. In the wintertime bears are typically asleep although they can wake up and they do wake up from hibernation in wintertime at times the likelihood of something happening with a bear in wintertime is a lot less than in spring summer so I'm accepting that risk more versus going out there and trying to cook and eat in two degrees. Okay so the low and slow is really slow but I've got ham andouille sausage, onions, peppers, and garlic cooking in here. The celery was just straight mush after being frozen so I didn't put the celery in here. So just I guess gonna go ahead and let this cook. Okay so frozen black-eyed peas are in the pot. I'm gonna put the lid on this turn the damper back down to low and go out and get some firewood processing. So this might be rotten so I'm gonna cut it and see though. Unfortunately that is totally rotten. Okay so here's the situation I just got back from trying to find as much firewood as possible and it really wasn't that much. I do keep a couple bundles of firewood at my car in case of an emergency situation. It's about an hour hike there and back so like two hours round trip to go and get that firewood. So I'm just trying to decide right now because at this point um it would mean night hiking again but at the same time I don't want to end up running out of firewood tonight either. Oh such a tough call. I am gonna go ahead and eat some of this black-eyed pea soup while I figure it out. The fire pretty much went out when I was looking for firewood um so I think that kind of made my mind up that I am gonna go ahead and go get my emergency supply for my car. Just want to get some food in me real quick. All right so I am heading to the car um it's about four o'clock. There is no way I'm gonna go back the way that I came in here so um I'm trying to find the actual trail back to the trailhead. So I'm not too far from the car now and that was a lot quicker that way. Here we are again. Biggest thing is making sure that I follow the right trail on the way back because it's just so hard to see. It's already so easy to get lost out here and it being dark on top of that so I've got to be really careful to stay on the map this time. So I'm back at the tent but I've still got to split all this wood. I spent like three hours processing that firewood. Came in here was so excited because that fire burned so hot so I shoved a bunch of wood in the stove and closed the damper not all the way but closed the damper up somewhat um and then suddenly it got like super smoky in here and I ended up having to completely let the fire die down, let it cool down, take off the pipe, get all the creosote that had built up out of the pipe and then restart the fire from scratch. Um mind you there's a lot of troubleshooting for me to figure out that that's what I needed to do. It's safe to say that you don't want to do that so don't shove a bunch of wood in the stove and now I'm afraid to mess even with the damper. Long story short it's almost one o'clock in the morning now after all that. It is so nice to have wood security. It's just a totally different feeling being out here and knowing that you're going to be able to stay warm. I'm trying to keep the tent from smoking up. That's another story. My um co2 monitor actually went off so that kind of freaked me out. Glad I've got that thing though. At least I know it works. Every other time it just sits there at zero and I'm like I hope it actually even works but I don't know something caused it to go off. So I'm having grits for breakfast. I've got to hurry up and finish eating and get packed up and get out of here. I am happy that this one worked out. Tribulations and all. So let's see what the next one's like. Well I am all packed up and making that last trip back to the car.