Hot Tenting at Sucker Lake

Have you ever been to Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park? If you follow this blog you’d know that during the summer my family and I frequent this park and are quite familiar with some of it’s canoeing routes. However, we have never been there during the winter, so this past weekend Christina and I headed there to go hot tenting.

If you are familiar with Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park the sites are accessible by canoe in the summer, but of course in winter most require ice travel (with some also accessible by following local snowmobile trails).

Christina did some research and found a route following a trail that led us to Bottle and Sucker Lake. We decided to hike in towards Sucker and stay near one of the sites there – winter camping rules say you must camp at least 100 m away from any established site.

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Saturday Morning

The forecast for the weekend was predicting snow and temperatures between +1 and -4, however the weather was much milder near my house, so the drive Saturday morning was a mix of rain and freezing rain which eventually turned to snow. It was not a fun drive, but I made it to the parking area where I met Christina and got our gear ready.

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We headed down the trail and both of us were happy with our toboggans and the ease with which we were able to pull them. Having never been to this area we checked our maps along the trail to make sure we were going the right way and to determine how much further left we had to go. There are multiple intersections that lead to other parts of the park, so following the map was very important.

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Our hike to Sucker Lake took us about an hour and a half and we came to an opening near one of the sites and found a great spot to set up. I had assisted Christina in setting up her new hot tent at the winter camping symposium, so I had some knowledge of what to do and I was amazed at just how fast and easy it was to set it up on the snow. The great thing is that her new tent is HUGE!! We were able to set up our beds, seating area, stove, gear etc and still had spots inside that were free open space. How amazing is that? Being able to tow in a hot tent with that much space, and only weighing in at 25 pounds.

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Once all the gear was set up, we got the fire going and started warming up our lunch. I had brought ham and cheese sandwiches that we grilled on the stove to have a nice warm lunch.

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Saturday Afternoon

Now that our bellies were happy and full, we headed out for a hike to check out the area and to hopefully find a nice downed tree to cut for some extra fire wood. We didn’t carry in too much, so we wanted to supplement our supply as back up.

We wandered the trails checking out all the cool trees covered in the beautiful fresh snowfall which led us to the edge of Sucker Lake and the views were just fantastic. I was also amazed at just how quiet it was.

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Saturday Evening

We had hiked the area for a few hours, found a nice piece of dead wood to cut and headed back to the tent for our evening activities. Our evening was full of laughs as we sported some funny teeth that I brought along in a small pocket on my backpack. I like to have something small and fun on trips to help pass the longer nights. You will have to watch Christina’s video to get the full effect of the laughs.

For a snack, Christina brought some marshmallows filled with chocolate. One of her fans found a package and sent them to her, so I was lucky to also get to try them out. They were just the right amount of chocolate and marshmallow and oh so good.

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It seems we decided to have a backwards night as we had hot drinks and dessert before we started our supper – pork roast with rice courtesy of Christina. My mouth was drooling as the smells of supper filled the tent and neither of us said much as we ate and cleaned our plates.

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We chatted into the evening and eventually headed to bed. Again I was amazed at the space in this tent – we were both able to sleep and not play footsies with each other (baby hot tent probs)

Sunday Morning

I woke up only once in the night and was really happy with my sleep. It was probably one of the better nights for sleep in a hot tent. My morning trip to the privy area was just beautiful. The picture below was not enhanced in any way and the trees were glowing this beautiful blue colour as it was just before sunrise.

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Since we were not in a huge rush that morning, we laid in bed chatting and eventually got up and started the day. I was on breakfast duty and even got to sit in the “captains” chair area while I warmed up the food. We had turkey kielbasa, old cheddar cheese omelettes with a side of English muffins and jam. As you see we eat well on our trips 🙂

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The time had come for us to pack up the tent and get going. We had a lot of snow fall overnight, so once again we had a beautiful hike out. There were multiple downhill sections, so we decided to ride our toboggans down a few of the hills. There is some great video footage of this, which you will have to stay tuned to catch in Christina’s video.

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It only took us an hour to get back to our vehicles and in no time had everything packed up and headed in our opposite directions home. We had lots of laughs as we always do and it was a great overnight trip. I am looking forward to our next adventure together.

If you have ever been to Kawartha in the winter I would love to hear about it in the comments below. I’m really looking forward to expanding my winter adventures in this park.