DECEMBER 15, 2020 – The overnight low reached a low for this season thus far: 11F. That’s officially . . . cold.
Growing up in Minnesota I had plenty of exposure to extreme cold. I didn’t mind it, mainly because it was always a precursor to hot chocolate, which I loved—and still do.
In seventh grade I went through an “arctic” phase. I was so enamored of cold and snow, I read nothing but books about arctic explorers such as Peary, Amundsen, Shackleton. (I’d later graduate from Peary’s alma mater, where the polar bear was mascot.) I imagined myself an explorer-in-training, and on the coldest, windiest, snowiest days after school, I’d take my sled-dog (Björn, our collie) on treks up the frozen Mississippi, which was across the street from our house. I never told my mother that Björn and I’d be walking “the length of Greenland” or from “Ellesmere Island [our house] to the North Pole [Jackson Island]” and back. In fact, since she was pre-occupied with after-school piano students, I never even told Mother I’d be taking Björn for a long walk.
Often I’d be close to frozen by the time we returned to “base camp”—just in time for supper.
While skiing I’ve encountered much extreme cold, especially on the chairlift up the backside of Big Mountain in Montana. But one of my coldest ski ventures was the American Birkebeiner marathon x-c ski race from Mt. Telemark to Hayward, Wisconsin. The temperature was -10F at the start, and by the finish 52 kilometers later, my eyeballs were frozen. Well, not frozen frozen, but clinically frost-nipped. Many skiers suffered the same fate, so there was plenty of extra body heat to warm up the medical tent at the finish line.
The coldest I’ve ever been was on a winter Outward Bound trip during my freshman year of high school. The experience was compulsory at our little boarding school in northern Vermont. After soccer season ended, we trained every day after classes—running obstacle courses and learning basic winter survival skills, such as building all-natural lean-tos and campfires. Our preparation led up to a three-day camping trip in the middle of nowhere—two weeks before winter break.
Already two feet of snow had blanketed the region, and we had a heavy slog from our drop-off point to our destination. By the time we reached our goal, the temperature was -15F. Just before turning in for the night, we were supposed to melt snow, fill our canteens, and slip them into our sleeping bags so that in the morning, we’d have water for oatmeal and . . . hot chocolate.
In my case, the canteen leaked. By morning, my sleeping bag was frozen—along with my feet. Other kids suffered normal frost bite. The leaders realized they had a fiasco on their (own frostbitten) hands and decided to ferry us out by snowmobile—two at a time—to an abandoned logging camp. There we built fires in the old stoves, and thawed out while consuming our entire supply of . . . hot chocolate.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
