This week’s Wallpaper Wednesday is a callout to see if there is any interest in a group winter camping overnighter yet this season. I have a couple people interested in something in my area of Northern Wisconsin, so we thought why see if others want to put something together in their neck of the woods. Everyone who participates will be eligible for some randomly drawn prizes from Fat-Bike.com.
The rules would be to go camping, solo, bring your dog, or go with a group, anytime before the vernal equinox (March 20th), ride fat bikes, and share a few photos and short write-up of your adventure with us. It doesn;t matter if there is snow where you live, but we would like you to ride fat bikes. We’d like to hear what the weather conditions were, where you camped, how long the ride was, something about your gear choice, and the fun you had of course! We will publish the stories, draw winners and ship out the prizes.
The idea for this started about 5 years ago when I lived in Milwaukee and was still working for the Wisconsin Bike Fed. I planned the ROAM Winter Rendezvous, a group camping trip March 18th, 2019 at ROAM Adventure Basecamp here in Seeley where I now live ironically. The idea was to bring together other people who like winter camping to share tips, see what gear they use and just have some fun in the woods.
Unfortunately, the forecast for that weekend was for lows of -27°F with daytime highs still below zero. So my dog Cowboy and I were the only ones who braved the cold. Cowboy is a trooper, but I think he would have rather stayed home. Besides the cold temps and the snow in the forest was so deep, he could not explore outside the plowed out area around our campground.
The photos below are from Winnebago Bicycle‘s recent winter camping trip across Lake Winnebago to camp at High Cliff State Park. The Oshkosh-based show holds a series of bikepacking trips throughout the year.
This is kind of a last minute idea, and we have no way of gauging interest except by throwing it out there, so we haven’t got a list of prizes yet. I know I have some Barmitts I can offer up, but we are confident we can put together some cool stuff that we will announce soon if there is reasonable interest from our readers. Of course the real prize is the fun adventure you have on your campout.
Let us know if you are interested in the comments below, or by emailing me at [email protected]. If we get just a few folks who want to give this a go, we will put together a prize list and share that with everyone. If you want to come up to Seeley and join my crew, you are welcome to do that. We haven’t nailed down a date yet, but will do so soon.
