The trip began in a flurry as I had things to get taken care of before I left. I wanted to get some snowshoes for the hike. The conditions were great, cold, about 20 degrees during the day and maybe 10 at night. This would help so I would not get wet. I borrowed a pair that had some good size and nice claws on the bottom. Things were thrown in the pack and the car and away I went.
It is about an hour and a half drive up to the Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness area from Grand Haven. I arrived at the end of the plowed road on the south side of the area. I carefully backed my car through the snow into a parking space so I might have a better chance of getting out should the plow come around again.
The simple task of throwing on the pack becomes quite tricky with those snow shoes are on your feet. Too bad I had no video of that. The hike out to the beach is about 2 miles from the trail head. I thought, "piece of cake". Hah! The pack was large and heavy, I was stomping through deep soft snow, and there are hills. It was slow going to say the least. I fell over once due to a photo opportunity. I had my gloves off and no jacket as I was generating some heat. So I had to put my gloves on while I lay there so I did not get my hands cold. The whole affair was quite comical I can imagine.
I soon came out into the area of the dunes known as a blowout. This is where the sand begins to take out or erode and move with the wind back from the beach. The blowouts generally form huge bowl shaped areas that rise into the typical dune shape inland of the beach. I walked along the fore-dune, just east of the beach until I found a nice sheltered area in some trees. I pitched my tent, got the sleeping pads rolled out and unstuffed my sleeping bag. It was getting to be sunset so I thought I would go explore down by the beach for some photos.
In the blowout the snow was generally wind packed or blown away down to the frozen sand. I left the snowshoes back at camp. I think it was the previous week, the weather had gone above freezing, and rained, then it froze. I was crossing a slight slope on the back side of dune just before the beach and stepped on some glare ice. I went down instantly. I landed on my left wrist. That hurt. Fortunately, no other damage. That would have put an early end to my trip.
The sunset photos were not as good as I had hoped as the shoreline at Nordhouse dunes faces NNW. So the sun was setting around the point to the south.
Dinner was the next item on the agenda. This was accomplished by lying on my stomach in my sleeping bag and cooking in the open vestibule of the tent. Quite routine. I like to use Zatarains for dinner camping with some Parmesan cheese. I ate my dinner while I read a book.
The unfortunate part about camping in the winter is that it gets dark so early. So I spent a couple of hours reading before I went to sleep. The night was quite windy. I was sleeping nicely, when I woke up to almost absolute silence. The wind had died down to almost nothing. Amazing. It is so quite in the winter when the wind is not blowing, no animal life crittering around.
When I awoke the next day, I boiled some water for oatmeal. I then took a walk around the dunes with the snowshoes on. No need to replay the evening before. It was quite nice to walk up to the top of the blowout and look out over the dark forest to the east. There were deer everywhere. It amazes me how they can just lie down on the snow and sleep.
Well, the time came to pack up and hike out. This went much easier then the hike in as the trail had set up a little from my stroll out the day before. I got back to the car and headed back.
This had been something I had not done for many years. It was interesting to see this area in the winter and stay out over night. I had hoped for some snow, maybe next time.
I thought about some changes for the next trip: use a sled instead of carrying the pack, and use skis instead of the snowshoes. Perhaps I can convince Herself to join in this fun also.
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