EWES WILDERNESS COURSE LEVEL 1 - Cold Module
A few months after the main module, it was time for the first elective module of the course: the cold module. The cold module has a core focus on hard skills. You will be be learning everything you need to know to be prepared for a future winter trip with skis and a pulk. If you want to know more about the technical aspects of winter camping, I would advise Barts stories on his trip to Finse and the Harddangervidda. He discusses everything on gear in detail!
BEFORE GOING TO NORWAY
Preparing for the Cold Module was one of the most stressful preparations I’ve ever done. A big part of this was because I decided to go on a solo trip with one of the other participants after the module. This meant I couldn’t rent gear from EWES, like a sleeping bag or jacket, since I would need it the following week as well. So, I had to gather a lot of gear myself. Since I had never been on skis before, a whole new world opened up. Thanks to many blogs online and Bart, who had gone through the same gear gathering process before, I began to get a grip on all the terms and things to consider when buying winter gear. I quickly found myself researching different glove systems and watching YouTube videos on how to secure all your gear on a pulka. If you’ve never experienced such cold temperatures, it’s hard to understand how much of a problem it can be if something doesn’t work properly. At the same time, you don’t want to spend a lot of money on items you might end up hating after using them just once or twice.
At some point in the proces, I was wondering if this was all worth it. Normally these trips are supposed to give me some stress-free time, now, my mind was constanly busy questioning if everything I had gathered was good enough. Spoiler: it was worth it.
Next to gathering all you gear, we had to write a protocol for the trip. This protocol had to include a fictive day to day programm and a list of potential hazards and how to deal with if they would occur. I had to task of making a fictive route in the area we were going to. This ended up quite a challenge because I found it hard to decide what tracks we could take and where to look at when you would go off track. Looking back at it, I did not realise enough how hard it is to plan trips like these as you dependancy on weather condition is so enormous. It is impossible to exactly follow the GPX files as you had it in mind. It is more important to always know your possible escapes and to be very aware of your surroundings.
DURING THE MODULE
As I mentioned, I had never been on skis before, so everything taught during this course was new to me. In the end, skiing turned out to be one of the smallest challenges. At first, I struggled a lot with loading my pulka, causing it to tip over at every small turn due to the weight being unevenly distributed. The whole group spent a lot of time watching me reposition my pulka correctly. Another challenge I faced was keeping my gear dry. I’m not the most organized person, and I often found myself tossing my gloves into the snow and forgetting to put my gaiters on properly. As a result, snow quickly got into my gloves and boots. Due to my body heat, the snow melted, and before I knew it, I had frozen boots and gloves every morning. I could go on, but the main takeaway from this module was to work precisely and efficiently. Rushing through tasks only leads to problems that end up taking up more time to fix.
During the module, we were taught shelter building, first aid in the cold, setting up camp, and navigating in the snow. All of these subjects were really interesting and well explained by our extremely experienced guide. This module was designed to be a introduction to safely survive in the cold. You will simply need a lot more practicing time to become an expert at this stuff. I did however feel very skilled in the end, finding myself getting very comfortable with preparing my camp, skiing and preparing water by melting snow on a daily basis.
AFTER
When the module ended, another participant and I traveled further north for a 4-day solo adventure. We carefully selected a ski rental spot where we could hire backcountry skis since we planned to go off-track for most of the time. We had a lot of email communication with the ski rental company, explaining our plans, before we arrived. However, when we got to the rental shop, we found out they didn’t have full-length skins for the skis. Without a pulka, the skins wouldn’t have been necessary, but with one, going uphill became nearly impossible. The weight of the pulka was pulling us back down too much, as we didn’t have enough grip on the skis to safely walk up a slope. This led to us falling on our backsides many times and forced us to change our plans. Despite this, we had a great time and managed to practice and master many of the things we had learned during the module. With a bag filled with new experiences, we finished our adventure with a sense of accomplishment.
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