Kroka Winter Semester 2019

We made it through Uapishka! Uapishka… the journey we excitedly planned for since the beginning of the semester. After our short stay at Heartbeet we drove through Quebec City and continued north until we reached the home of Jacques, a long time friend of Kroka who has been living in the mountains since the 1980’s. We set up our camp near his beautiful log cabin, and we were off early the next morning for our 26-day journey into the mountains. Revenge of the Frozen Anorak Our journey began as we climbed up a steep frozen creek bed. The amount of food needed for 15 people for such a long expedition required two sleds, pulled most stoically by Bobby and Grace Jessiman. These first few days physically taxed us more than any other time. When we finally made it to Lac Magique, where we had our first live-over, many of us were beat beyond belief. We had made an elevation gain of 1,700ft in just two days. On our live-over we had time to learn about this land reigned by spruce, who...

Our winter home On February 20th we ventured out from our basecamp in Marlow with high spirits, excited that we were finally getting on the trail. We crossed Lake Warren and continued on until we were 0.5 kilometers east of Beaver Wood Pond, where we had our first real experience of setting up our winter camp. We learned about site selection for our tent, stove setup, and evergreen bough harvesting for our tent floor. This would become our routine for the duration of our winter legs. We quickly learned how privileged we are to be “hot” camping when, at some point or another, each of us will have to leave the safety of our shelter in the middle of the night to go pee. Leaving Kroka Base Camp Cooking dinner over the outside firescreen In this same vein, we are learning to have a relationship to cold and one of my semester mates, Grace J., beautifully captured this in a reflection she wrote about befriending the cold: “I certainly know that when I...