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A tent in the snow at Devil's Garden |
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Written by Juliana Chapman
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Thursday, 14 February 2008 |
Most people do not see the snow on the ground and think: “Ah, now would be a good time to go camping.” And yet, now can be a great time to go camping and chances are you won’t have to vie for a spot, there are usually plenty to go around.
In this vein, we recently took our four kids camping at the Devil’s Garden Campground in Arches National Park.
As a family we are not new to the idea of sleeping in a tent in the winter, we went camping for Christmas five years ago (Santa left presents for the two kids under a bristlecone pine tree we had strung with lights and tinsel garland), we’ve camped throughout Wisconsin in the winter, and various places in Southern Utah over the years. The biggest issue with winter camping is finding a spot you can get to. Even with 4-wheel drive, most of the mountains in northern Utah are closed in the winter, all the roads leading into them gated until spring. The closing of the mountains is one of the saddest moments of the year to me, and the most frustrating. But the beauty of Southern Utah is that they don’t close the mountains down there, at least not many. Therefore, it is a prime candidate for winter camping—easy access, availability, and space.
When we camp in winter with four kids we now almost always go car camping. We either drive out into BLM land and find a nice spot to pitch the tent, or drive into a designated campground where you choose a numbered site with picnic table, parking space, and fire pit, and pitch the tent. We have gone backpacking in winter before, but generally the amount of gear necessary to keep 6 people warm and dry quickly becomes almost absurd to carry, or pull on a sled, so car camping is a nice option. Although we usually prefer backcountry spots during the rest of the year, the access to our car (and its heater) is worth it during the winter. The great thing is that although designated campgrounds often fill up during the summer, they are so sparsely populated in winter that the solitude we seek when we go out is right there, conveniently located near a bathroom.
We chose Arches National Park for this trip because it is a longstanding favorite, with great hiking, and a campground itself that is like a slick-rock playground for young and old alike. The campground is aptly named the Devil’s Garden, offering a lot of entertainment for our little devils. But first, you have to get there. For some reason, despite the fact that we have been to Arches a number of times, we always remember it as taking much longer to get there than it actually does. From Provo it took us (with four kids and the necessary stops as part of that) 3.5 hours—that was it! We went through Price, along Highway 6. That highway is worth the trip. You drop down through the mountains, along the steep, 2-lane highway, twisting through this gorge as the mountain ranges of northern Utah seem to be breaking up and dropping away into the desert of southern Utah all around you. For the sheer grandeur of it I suggest driving this section sometime during the day.
We arrived at Arches NP and spent the day hiking around, enjoying the solitude of the trails (we saw a dozen or so people, but nothing like the masses enjoying them in the summer). We had checked on the status of the campground at the Visitor Center before we started playing. The ranger told us, as we had suspected, that it was far from full, we could go in and grab a spot whenever we wanted and probably only have 3-5 other groups in there at all. Knowing this, we didn’t even get to the campground until about 8 p.m., after we’d had a day full of hiking and a yummy dinner at Zax Pizza in Moab (awesome town with a great feel and fun restaurants, from chain to unique, only five miles south of the park entrance). We drove around the campground first, checking out all the possible sites, and finally chose one based on the great slick-rock surrounding it, snow covered but promising fun in the morning.
My husband and I unbuckled the kids and let them tumble around the car a bit while we set up the tent and got the sleeping pads and bags out and ready for their tired bodies. There was about 4-6 inches of snow cover on the ground, but not too much to hammer a couple tent stakes into (though we weren’t sure if we would be able to get them out again in the morning — we’ve left so many stakes behind). When beds were ready we quickly changed diapers, got everyone set in their warm long underwear for pajamas and took a family trip to the bathroom, hoping it was the last for the night.
Because our youngest is 11 months old, we wanted to be sure that she stayed plenty warm at night. To make sure that happened we decided that Dad and the two oldest kids would sleep in the tent, and I and the two youngest would sleep in the car, our 2-year-old in the very back of the car (3rd row seat), me in the front passenger seat, laid down to make a bed of sorts with the 2nd row seat, and the youngest in her car seat. The benefit of this was two fold: I could turn on the car occasionally throughout the night to run the heater for 5-10 minutes and get everyone warmed up if I thought they were getting cold, since they are both too young to reliably stay put in a sleeping bag; and if anyone small woke up crying at night they wouldn’t disturb the rest of the family nor any other campers.
Now, for hardcore enthusiasts this may sound wimpy, but really, that’s the great thing about car camping in the winter. If you love to sleep with tons of blankets and pillows, bring them along; if you like to watch a movie before bed take the portable DVD player; if you like gourmet meals, stick the stuff in a cooler and take it; if you want to be sure you don’t get too cold, or are worried about it at all, the car is right there, ready to warm you up (assuming you’ve thought ahead and topped off the gas beforehand—but it doesn’t really take a lot to run it for 5-10 minutes three times during the night). Certainly, during the summer months, when we backpack we are geared out with ultra-light equipment and keep it simple. But regardless of how much your pack weighs or how many blankets you pile in your trunk, if you aren’t comfortable or have the things that you think you want, then you aren’t going to have fun, and heavy or light, fun is what we do this for.
Once the kids were all snuggled in their sleeping bags, warm and asleep, my husband and I sat at the picnic table, enjoying the quiet. We like to make some hot apple cider or hot chocolate and enjoy it together in the darkness. The nature of the darkness is what is so surprising after you’ve been in the valley too long. Even in the mountains around here, there is so much light pollution from all the surrounding towns, that the sky and the starts are lost. Maybe it’s a sign that I haven’t been out often enough the past few months, but the sky was almost too full of stars, at first glance it seemed almost claustrophobic or oppressive; such a mass of stars, like a weight closing in. But after a minute to get used to it again it was as if the sky retracted, opening up and out. The night is not dark, so much as deep. Even with a tiny sliver of a moon, which set early in a blaze of orange light, a last reflection from the sun, just as the moon passed below the horizon, the multitude of stars in the inky blue, reflecting their individually pale light off the snow of the world below, combined to imbue the campsite with a cold, quiet light — not enough to read by, but enough to get around and illuminate the backdrop of rock, snow and sand.
Finally we crawled into bed, too. The night wasn’t perfectly quiet, one of the kids needed to go to the bathroom at 3 a.m., which meant a production of bundling up and trooping to the bathroom with her, and our youngest cried for a few minutes a couple times during the night, she isn’t perfect about sleeping through the night yet anyway, but we still managed to wake up in the morning, sleeping in a bit, even, refreshed and happy.
Morning was the most surprising part of the trip for me. I’m used to winter camping where mornings are frigid and it’s hard to break camp and cook breakfast because gloves are awkward and yet it’s too cold to be without them. This is where winter in southern Utah is so great. The temperature only got down as low as about 26 degrees, which meant it was in the high 20s to low 30s in the morning. This may sound cold still, and it is, but it was not nearly at cold as, say, the 0 degrees that we regularly endured in Wisconsin or the 10-15 degrees that we’ve encountered in the mountains of Utah previously, which made all the difference in the world.
We bundled the kids into coats, snow pants, boots, gloves and hats, and they went between the car for a moment to warm up to climbing on every rock around us, trying desperately to sled down anything sloping — on a sleeping pad in lieu of a sled. As they played and clambered about, my husband and I made breakfast: hot apple cider, hot chocolate, fruit, croissants with jam, and bacon — a great breakfast, camping or not.
The only tricky part was camping with an 11-month-old in the snow who wants to play, too. She can’t walk yet, and crawling through the snow was too cold, so she needed to be held when she was outside. Even so, she had a fun time crawling around inside the tent before we packed it up again, and climbing on and off the seats in the car, playing with some toys.
The two oldest managed to climb towers of red rock that at times made us nervous — sure they were about to slide all the way down again, their bundled forms looking far too small to us to be as high as they were. But they were safe, and we did keep them off truly dangerous areas. They named each rock they climbed, glowing with pride and exertion, leading us on their climbs as well.
After playing at the site for several hours we finally broke camp, packing up and being sure to clean up after ourselves, just before lunch. To sighs of sadness and pleas for more time, we loaded into the car and drove back home, needing to get back to daily life, glad for the break from it, our appetites whetted for the next adventure, already thinking ahead to where we might go and how we can store our gear so it is ready to go when we are, without a lot of packing effort.
MY FAVORITE PIECE OF GEAR:
My down air mattress by Exped. Although most of our gear is ultra-light, allowing my husband and I to go on a weeklong backpacking trip to Isle Royale with packs that both weighed under 20 pounds (including food and water), I do have this one luxury. It is not the most compressible or compact sleeping pad, or the lightest, but the bit of extra weight is worth it for the warm (down insulation) and comfortable (4+ inches of cushiony softness) night’s sleep I get on it.
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