Possibly looking into snowshoes. Record stuff here.
Category: Season
Sugar Pine Point Campground, Lake Tahoe
Visited here the weekend of January 19. I highly recommend it for winter car camping, especially if you have kids.
I tried several campsites and all were either officially closed or snowed in. Sugar Pine Point is right on Lake Tahoe and was reasonably plowed, right up to where I could park the truck. Furthermore, it had metal boxes for storing food, picnic tables, fire pits, and was just a short walk to the lake.
We had easily over a foot of snow everywhere, temperature in the morning was 25 degrees and it climbed to 33. About as good as you can get if you want snow.
Winter Sleeping Bag
By far the best budget buy I found for a down bag was the REI Co-op Magma 10. Haven’t used it yet, but will report back.
Report: sleeping bag was comfortable at 25 degrees. Plenty of space, weighs next to nothing, packs down very small too.
Update: Next trip at 25 degrees, I froze. Horrible. I returned the bag.
Winter boots
We don’t get any snow in the San Francisco Bay Area, so I only need winter snow boots when I go winter camping. For that reason, I didn’t do a ton of research and just picked out the Columbia Men’s Bugaboot Plus IV Omni-Heat Mid Calf Boot.
We’ll see how well it holds up.
Update: These were fantastic in 18 inches of snow at 25 degrees. I wasn’t working up much of a sweat, mostly standing around, and my feet were quite warm in wool socks and these boots.
We’ll see how they hold up in wet conditions.
Off-road shoes chosen
I ended up getting The North Face Ultra 110 GTX. I went out today for a rainy hike and they were quite comfortable, light, kept my feet dry through shallow puddles, etc.
We’ll see how well they do in six months.
Project Hemingway 