MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Winter 2019

52 ML BLUE WINTER 2019 “Packing light for me, doesn’t exist,” he adds. “When it comes to packing, I think, ‘can I put it in a canoe that can carry 1,000 pounds of gear?’ Ryan had one cup. His coffee cup was his bowl. To me that’s crazy. I’m used to a bowl, a coffee cup, a spoon. Ryan had a titanium fork. I had cutlery from my kitchen. Stainless steel.” With two inReach satellite devices to take care of any true emergencies, the team managed to reach their final destination in 11 days without any major difficulties. And while it was a good challenge for all of them, it was the juxtaposition of winter and summer in Algonquin that struck them. “I was jonesing for a real middle-of-nowhere experience,” says Miller. “If you want to be in the middle of nowhere, you can’t do it in the park in the summer.” “In the summer there are so many people there and all the campsites are booked and it’s just like Toronto’s wilderness access point,” says Atkins. “But then in the winter, there’s no one there. Obviously the campsites and the portages are still there, but there are no signs of people. It’s kind of tame wilderness in the summer, but then in the winter, it’s pretty full on. You’re out there, secluded from anyone.” With such a successful mission under their belts, it inevitably leads to the question, what’s next? “We’re thinking about a really long bike ride in the north, in the winter,” says Miller. “We’re working on that. We’ll probably start putting the trip together in the late summer.” “We would get a pile of twigs, probably the size of a smart car, and that would last us a night.”