Strung Out Episode 234: WINTER CAMPING WITH EXPERT KATE VOGEL. PART ONE

Join artist, writer, and musician Martin Laurence McCormack in this exciting episode of Strung Out as he teams up with winter camping expert, Kate Vogel. Filmed on a winter location, Marty and Kate delve into the unique and often misunderstood world of winter camping. They discuss the ins and outs of preparing for the cold, from choosing the right gear and understanding how to stay warm to the fascinating details about what makes winter camping different from your typical camping experience. This episode covers essential tips, tricks, and wisdom for anyone looking to brave the cold and enjoy the beauty of the outdoors in winter. Perfect for both beginners and seasoned campers, this is part one of a two-part special you won't want to miss. Grab your hot cocoa, get cozy, and tune in!

Transcript

 Strung Out Episode 234 WINTER CAMPING WITH EXPERT KATE VOGEL PART ONE

[00:00:00] Welcome to Strung Out, the podcast that looks at life through the lens of an artist. Your host is the artist, writer, and musician, Martin Lawrence McCormack. Now here's Marty. Hey, welcome to an on location Strung Out. Uh, and I have with me, uh, an expert on winter camping, Kate Vogel. Uh, no, no stranger to, uh, uh, winter camping.

[00:00:30] The Mr. Marty world, but this is your first time doing the podcast and we've been at this for a while trying to get you and on Strung out and thank God it's winter. Yes We I spend a lot of my winter in the woods So it's nice to be able to kind of you know Come out and have a short time to talk here with Marty about winter camping.

[00:00:52] Well, uh what I wanted to Tell tell our our listeners our viewers what? Just where you were at you were at I was just at an event called the frozen butthang Um, that's run by a friend of mine named Nick Gordon and his company is now outdoors and he does expedition camping You can go with him to the base of Mount Everest You can go to Machu Picchu, you know, things people think that like, you know, if you want to go to Mount Everest, like you have to like spend millions of dollars and like be wanting to climb it, but you know, it's certainly accessible to have expeditions around the area to be able to just enjoy the majesty of the mountain, um, you know, without, you know, spending the money for the full climb.

[00:01:30] So he does a lot of expeditions. One of his main events, and this is, uh, uh, an event that he's run for a good number of years, called the Frozen Butthang. And, uh, it's in northern Wisconsin. And, uh, we usually, it's, uh, referred to as the Frozen Butthang because we sleep in hammocks. So, um, you are hanging. I like that.

[00:01:48] Okay. Some people do have hot tents, uh, that you can do in. But, um, it can be kind of a trek out there. So anything that you're bringing in, right, if you are bringing a hot tent, that's an extra, you know, 50 to 80 pounds. Already you're saying something that I'm like, Wow, what is a hot tent? So, imagine a canvas tent if you grew up, uh, in Boy Scouts.

[00:02:08] Okay. That very similar, and then you have in there a wood stove, a metal wood stove, and it has a pipe. That comes out the top of and you can, you know, chop wood and it's very warm in those. Okay. I think it's nice I like to hang I like to be outside. I you know, I think if I ever got a hot tent I'd probably never leave it.

[00:02:25] Well, what got what got you into a winter camping and and researching and doing all this you've done this for years now and What got you into this because uh, you know, there's a lot of people that have a hard time camping period They, they will maybe look at glamping, but you, you're pretty hardcore.

[00:02:48] Yeah, we get very rugged out there. Um, I've always enjoyed camping. Um, you know, and one of the main things, one of the main selling points for people that, you know, have a difficult time with camping. I find a lot of times their issues are the bugs. The mosquitoes and things and the heat, the bugs, you don't have any of that with winter camping.

[00:03:05] It is the most pleasant experience that you can have in the woods, nothing's biting at you. You don't have to deal with, you know, any of the excessive heat, being too hot to sleep. I like being a little colder. You know when I sleep, so I find that that's really nice. There's also a lot of things that we do You know your happiness in winter camping is completely related to how prepared you are So if you're warm, you're gonna be happy if you are not prepared and you are cold You will be just as miserable as anything, but there's lots of things that we can do I don't think I've ever, you know, particularly been cold.

[00:03:36] I personally have a negative 45 Marmot sleeping bag Okay. Inside of, you know, my hammock that also it is, uh, everything that we use for winter camping is down. Um, you know, if you, if you are a vegan or there are synthetic materials, I've never used anything but down and it is amazing. You don't think of feathers.

[00:03:57] It's in the same way after they've kept you warm in negative degree weather, isn't it? I think it's very cool that here we are, you know, with all of our synthetic stuff, but you're still going with goose down absolutely to be the insulating fabric for a, um, uh, a sleeping bag. A lot of people were in the Midwest, um, you know, trying to find a place to camp.

[00:04:22] First of all, why don't we, why don't we start from there? Winter camping. Where do you like to go in the Midwest? Uh, to get away from at all? You don't have to go too far. I'm assuming. Well, definitely people need to know your state parks aren't closed just because it's cold outside, right? I think people think of state national parks as being the summertime activity.

[00:04:42] You take your family out. You didn't give their open 365 days a year. They are national parks are open every day of the year. They are for us. These are our parks. This is what you know, um, you know, back in the days of Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, and they created these things for us. We are supposed to be using them.

[00:05:01] That's a great, that's an excellent point. Uh, and, uh, so many people just kind of avoid, uh, going outside period in the winter. Oh yeah. And there is something, you know, Today we have kind of a balmy day as we're filming this. We're about to go into sub zero. I love how us Midwesterners think that 30 degrees is balmy.

[00:05:22] 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Balmy, guys. Let's party. This is, uh, get out the sun tan. But, you know, uh, what is the coldest you've ever camped in? Um, so, real actual temperature is negative 12. Uh, when you factor in like wind chill and everything, we get negative 12. into the negative twenties. That's the coldest I've ever done.

[00:05:42] A lot of some of the other winter campers have been, um, you can take a, it's actually named the polar express train in Canada. You can go up into the arctic circle, um, up into some of those parks and get, you know, really cold. Um, a few years back, a few of the people that I camp with, we had this big polar vortex and they were still out camping in that, um, you know, like I said, it's proportionate to your preparedness.

[00:06:02] Um, one of the main things as far as like keeping warm is a lot of people think that you have to keep You know, you see me out here. I've got my fingerless gloves on, right? I do this even when it's negative two because keeping my hands warm, I've come to find out over the years, has nothing to do with my hands or fingers.

[00:06:17] It has everything to do with my brachial artery. Oh. And, um, I think that's actually a piece of wisdom that like we as humans have kind of lost. Um, if you go back to like old Dickens novels and look at like the illustrations, you'll see these kids with fabric. Tied and wrapped. Like, have you seen that in like old?

[00:06:32] Yeah. Yeah. They have fabric tied all the way around their wrists up till right here. Um, now they make these things called wristies. So is this the brachial artery that we're looking at? So it's just basically descends from the end of your thumb muscle, I guess. Right into here. And then, so what you're doing is, if you're sending warm blood to your hands, you're not going to get frostbite.

[00:06:51] So knowing what's important to keep covered. So now if I only had gloves that went to the bottom of my wrist, it doesn't matter how, even if they were filled with 800 down. They're not going to keep me warm because the blood going to my hand is cold. And so learning how to warm yourself like that makes a huge difference.

[00:07:07] And like I said, I really feel like as far as wristies and wrapping up that brachial artery, that's something that we've just kind of stopped doing. So I'm noticing with your, your gloves that they, they extend a good three or four inches then down. Yeah. So these are called wristies. And they're literally just a piece of fabric that is made to cover that brachial artery to make it so that, you know, your fingers stay warm.

[00:07:28] And what is the inner gear for you folks that are listening? Uh, what Kate has is she has kind of like a, Sure. This is an outdoor research fingerless glove. Um, you know, the pretty most basic gloves that you can get. It's not particularly warm or, or anything. It's just, you know, a basic hand protection. All the warmth that I'm getting from my hands is coming from just simply supplying warm blood to them.

[00:07:52] This is something when I'm driving around in Chicago and I've homeless man comes to my door with the dollar, they get a lecture about their brachial artery and keeping it warm. It's definitely something we've lost. I'm one of those guys. People that, yeah, I, my, my fingertips, I, they get cold right away and my toes.

[00:08:10] Make sure you're warming there. Make sure that everything with your boots is going, your ankles are warm. Let's, uh, let's, let's talk a little bit, uh, before we take a break, let's talk about your gear because you seem to me lightly attired. You have like, uh, for the listener, uh, listeners on our podcast, uh, Kate is wearing what looks like, um, like a onesie.

[00:08:31] Yeah. So for that, uh, Like what a little kid would wear and it almost is the same kind of fabric. It's like a It's a cotton wool weave. Okay. This is actually the inner lining of a cold water dive suit from the United States Coast Guard. So anyone who's watching this and can see that I have the, uh, the, uh, United States ice cutter Acacia.

[00:08:54] Okay. Uh, that is, uh, yes, I did say that. this off a Coast Guard ship. Thank you, Mark. All right. Full disclosure, full disclosure. It was 20 years ago, man. Come get it. It looks warm. It is. Yes, it's really nice. I mean, you know, obviously this isn't gonna work if it's negative, you know, to outside, I would need some other things.

[00:09:14] Um, in my car, I also brought, um, I have, we, we buy anorex. So this is a big wool, um, hoodie. You know, but it's a giant, um, the lady that we buy them from is a lady named Sarah Sims in Alaska and she makes them all. You send her her measurement, your measurements, and um, it's a full hooded cloak and a rack and it ties up with leather and it's wool and it goes all the way to my knees and you know, this is something, I mean, you know, we as humans, we've been out in the cold forever.

[00:09:44] I mean, wherever we've lived, That's been cold. We've had to learn to adapt. And you know, here we are. It's 2025. I am using goose down and wool, exact same stuff that would have been available to me if I was in, you know, Renaissance England or earlier. I mean, um, I noticed your boots are pretty, pretty, uh, intense.

[00:10:06] These are very intense boots. Um, this is a full lacrosse. And then I think these are thermal lights. Um, and then they also have a wool lining within them. Um, these I do use in negative degree weather. Um, maybe with some additional wool liners. They're like duck boots in the sense that they have the, uh, the rubber, uh, lining on the exterior, uh, lace.

[00:10:30] Which is interesting. Something I don't like. I don't like laced boots, but that's because I'm lazy. If you did 18 miles on the trail pulling about 120 pounds behind you, you want your boots laced. You want them. I promise you want them. Okay. You will blister so bad. You will blister so bad. See, we're learning a lot here on Winter Camping with Kate Vogel.

[00:10:49] We're going to take a little break and, uh, we're going to be back with, uh, more on how to enjoy the great outdoors Winter Camping. You are listening and watching Strung Out. Hello, I'm Polly Chase, here with artwork by Marty McCormick. This is titled, Dream. It's an 8 by 10, pen and ink drawing. Be lovely in an office or child's room.

[00:11:16] Anywhere you need inspiration to let go and see where your dreams can take you. To inquire about pricing and to view other pieces of Marty's artwork, go to martinmcormick. com

[00:11:37] Freedom, such a beautiful word Wondered if you'd heard All about freedom Freedom comes with a fee To get a little Freedom, such a funny thing, we think we are free. Next moment we lose it. Freedom, the enemy of those who fear liberty.

[00:12:09] We act like it's free, as freedom is free. Free for the taking. We can only have liberty. Freedom, for wanting to move free. Freedom, for fear of never being free. Freedom, to pray our way openly. Freedom, freedom.

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[00:13:20] Such a precious dream for the free. Those who can only dream of freedom Wanting to be free Freedom Fear of never being free Freedom To pray our way openly Freedom, freedom Say they cannot go away But they are lying They

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[00:14:50] Freedom. Telling you freedom. Freedom. We need freedom. Freedom.

[00:15:05] We're back with Kate Vogel. Um, I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about, uh, my, this is called a gator. Um, again, just a piece of wool fabric. Um, now what this is though, um, this is merino wool. Um, these come from sheep in Italy. Um, and it, it's the weave of the fabric can actually get a lot closer together just because it's a finer.

[00:15:26] So I find merino wool to be really, really nice. Um, a lot of my really fancy ladies that wear cashmere, you really should look into merino as far as like, you know, an alternative to cashmere. It can be just as fancy, just as nice looking. It's definitely just as soft as cashmere. I mean, if you want to feel that, like it's soft.

[00:15:42] Yeah, I mean, this is pure wool and there's nothing scratchy. It's not like you're wearing a big thick thing. I mean, so that's, uh. So what these do. Yeah. Straight up over your head. Just right over the head. And you can do. Anything but that. Like a little. It goes up here. Great. And it can go up here. Yeah. Um, it can completely cover everything and definitely sometimes when it's like negative four and there's like 20, like, you know, 30, 40 mile an hour winds, you will definitely see me as nothing but a little circle of my face.

[00:16:14] Now, before we took the break, you were talking about like hauling weight and stuff like that into the woods. Uh, What do you recommend to the first time winter camper? So how I learned to do this is we took sleds like that you would just buy at Walmart, your regular kids sleds. Uh, you drill two holes towards the front of the sled.

[00:16:38] And then what you're going to want is like a shepherd's hook screw right at the bottom. And then we attached like just PVC pipe as pokes. Okay. And you can do that for about 60 pounds. So you can have you know folks and then I attach that to you go to Home Depot you buy You know a regular harness like that You'd need for climbing a tree or anything and you hook in they already come with the hooks and lots of carabiner clips Clip them up and um, you know, we did I think our first truck with that was, you know, 16 miles Wow And you know, that's 60 pounds each with these plastic slats the other thing that you can do is you can sandwich if you're going on like a longer sled and What you're really going to want to do, because part of the problem, it's not flat land.

[00:17:22] I know Marty said he likes to have his boots untied. I think he, if you're used to walking on flat land, when we're going up and down in these ravines, a lot of these things flip over. So you kind of sandwich them. So then you buy another 10 sled and you pop it right on top of that other one. So now your entire gear can be upside down this way, that way.

[00:17:40] Um, There's a, uh, course, and I, I believe that actually one of them occurs within the city of Chicago in February for Now Outdoors that will actually help you to make a sled. Oh, cool. So, like, and, and, like, uh, make your own sled box as well. But those plastic sleds from Walmart, like you're saying, make a sandwich.

[00:17:57] You can do it. Yep, you can do it. Get a little PVC so you've got a harness. Yeah, it's all, you make your own poke sled. Okay. And you can pull a lot. So what are we pulling? You talked a little bit about a hot tent, a possible stove, but let's go bare bones. Bare bones. I have in there my hammock. My clothes. Um, you also need to bring food.

[00:18:16] I mean, it's wintertime. Okay. So any idea that you're going to be able to like get game or be able to like do anything. It's out the window. Okay. The only, but the only people are animals that I've seen getting game out there are coyotes. Okay. Are we talking like, uh, high carbs? Are we talking about stuff to cook?

[00:18:35] Right. See, normally when you're backpacking, you want like rehydrated meals. You want that. The absolute lightest thing that you could have when I summer backpack, I'm loading that thing with nothing but, you know, mountain house, like you're rehydrating meals that are nice and easy in the summertime and they're nice and light on my back.

[00:18:52] Okay. That is not possible in the winter. As you know, you're from Montana, right? Well, my family from out west, yeah. Right, but you know that, you know, boiling water, it freezes instantly, right? So I've got an MRE pack. It's negative two. I take my boiling water and put it in the MRE. Now all I have is a solid block of ice with no rehydrated food.

[00:19:10] Right. It's not fun. No. Right. Um, you really want, even though it's a little bit extra weight, um, one of the biggest recommendations, one of the best meals I've ever had in there, just bring a whole fish. Okay. A whole fish. A whole fish. What kind of fish? Like salmon? We brought salmon, yeah. And just you wrap it up in aluminum foil, chunk off a piece of it with your, at times an axe, because it can be very cold.

[00:19:32] Wrap it up in aluminum foil and chuck it on the fire. But everything pretty much has to be eaten immediately. If I take that salmon out and place it on a table for a minute, it's, it's broken. We're talking very, uh, like hands on kind of than eating, uh, uh, I like that idea of the salmon that you can just, you know, wrap it Tinfoil, pull it off the fire.

[00:19:53] What about stuff like, uh, fruits? Uh, dried fruit. Dried nuts. I mean, what do you have for, what is a cake gel winter meal? If you were, you were gonna come to your camp. What are you going to make us besides salmon in the fire? What do you got? I definitely, um, I bring, uh, soups. Um, so what I'm going to do is pre freeze those.

[00:20:10] I'm going to make up those soups and then I'm going to freeze them as flat as I can get them in like Ziploc bags and stack those up. Anything that I can then take that and in my pot of boiling water on my fire, I can add that in. directly into there and just heat it up. Um, what, like you said, nuts and dried fruit are really great as snacks.

[00:20:26] Um, I would avoid some people's favorite snacks. You might get very sad like I did. Um, so potato chips in normal weather or in this balmy 30 degrees, the oils on them are still kind of liquid. They might stick to your fingers or whatever. If you open that same bag of Lay's in negative two, you have a hunk of grease, a frozen hunk of grease.

[00:20:47] grease with potato chips sticking out of it. And the bad part is that the potato chips kind of melt melt in your mouth quicker than the grease. So you wind up with a very chewy potato in a hunk of cold grease. No potato chips. What do you do for breakfast? Nuts, fruit are good. Usually for breakfast we bring beef broths.

[00:21:05] So like powdered beef broth that I can put in a cup of hot water. Um, and even to that, like if you wanted to like make a soup within that, something like an egg drop soup. Okay. Um, you would be able to do that with like, um, frozen eggs, but, um, if you bring like the egg yolk cartons, you'll have to slice off a piece of them and then, you know, make that into your liquid eggs.

[00:21:24] I find real eggs work pretty well. If you put them in a cooler bag with some hand warmers, you can get them. And even a frozen egg, it's actually surprisingly easy to get the shell off of. And you can heat that right up into a hard boiled egg. Oh, how cool is that? Yeah. Okay. Uh, water. What do you bring? So, um, I have Most of the time when I'm winter camping, there's no way that I would go to a place that did not have a natural source of water.

[00:21:49] So, we have filters, um, and, you know, we're going to be using, you know, a Sawyer Squeeze drip filter, hang it from a tree, we're going to filter our water, we're also going to boil it. Um, I, if I had to do it, that's a lot of weight. Um, to bring in on water. Um, that's one of those things you have to learn. It has to be consumed immediately.

[00:22:07] So, um, when I go to bed, um, I will take, uh, you know, and I'll fill up my bottle of water, and then it goes directly into that negative 45 sleeping bag with me, or I will have nothing. It freezes very quickly. Before we take another break, I wanna, you, you said hammock, uh, and I have this image of like a pup tent with you trying to have a hammock in there.

[00:22:28] No, what's going on? Do you camp outside? There's no tent. No tent. You're outside. There's no tent. My hammock is hung from one tree to another tree. Okay. There's no tent. I don't know where he got a tent from. There was no tent. I just had a tent in my mind. I guess a hot tent. Now that is possible, Marty, if that's something that you would like.

[00:22:45] I would like the hot tent myself, but you are, you are, I am just in a hammock. If I had a hot tent, I'd never leave it. I would live there. I would never go home. Okay. How do you not freeze in a hammock when you're surrounded by cold air? Okay, so, um, like I said, uh, it is, my hammock is completely made of goose down.

[00:23:02] I have an underquilt that also attaches to the bottom of my hammock that is also made out of goose down. I have that negative 45 marmot sleeping bag. Um, I also will string up a tarp in between, if it's particularly windy, between two trees to be an overlay to kind of block some of the wind and then you can kind of stake that out, um, if you needed to.

[00:23:22] Um, but surprisingly getting yourself up off the ground. Actually creates a good deal of warmth. Really? I find that the people who kind of chicken out or that leave. Step a little closer to me. Sorry. I'm going to say you keep walking off. Sorry. I'm a wanderer. Um, so a lot of the people that, you know, have a really rough time.

[00:23:41] Uh huh. It's because they were in a tent. They were sleeping on the ground. That cold from the ground transfers so easily. So, uh, a hammock with a, a, a very simple windbreak, uh, Yes. And, uh, so it's goosed down to about what? Negative what? Uh, a negative, uh, you mean my hammock itself? My, my hammock itself only goes to zero.

[00:24:02] Okay. My sleeping bag goes to negative 45. Okay. But you will talk to people that say that if it goes to zero, it doesn't actually matter past that. Really? Yes. Okay. That it that sounds kind of cool. Are you, uh, are you, just, uh, last question before I break. Okay. Are you freaking out when you're in a hammock out in the woods?

[00:24:22] Uh, I mean, how does that translate? I don't know that I've ever been scared. Um, I've been concerned. I've had, um, some coyotes, uh, on a December trip and about 30 degree weather light. If you want to see coyotes and foxes and, you know, and deer and wildlife, camp when it's about 30. They, you know, they, they absolutely, they hunt then and it's great.

[00:24:42] I have had them where we could very much hear the, ah, you know, of their recent kill. And the following morning it was maybe, you know, 20 feet from, and we're in from our camp, we're in mid-January right now. And so this is the start of, uh, the mating season. Yeah. Or coyotes. So they're gonna be, uh, uh, around, but you're gonna hear things like, you know, creep around and go pump in the night.

[00:25:07] Well, we're gonna talk a little. Little more. We got a lot to actually talk about with Kate and we're going to do this as as always a two part podcast Um strung out so we're talking winter camping with our outdoors expert. Kate Vogel. We'll be back after this break Spotify pandora apple music alexa Did you know that you can listen to Marty's music on all these stations?

[00:25:34] All you have to do is enter Martin Lawrence McCormack in the search, subscribe, like, and listen. Well, I'm here with my, uh, expert on, uh, outdoor camping and, uh, we're, we're talking winter camping today. And, uh, we're in the great Midwest, which, um, You know, uh, around Chicago, besides coyotes and things like that, I think I would probably be scared of, uh, the one odd human being that's, uh, Uh, trying to live in the woods.

[00:26:07] I'm usually a little too far north for that. If they get all the way up into the boundary waters, then they mean it. You let them live there. So you go way up north of Minnesota? Yeah, as far up as I, you know, I usually can. You know, I mean, trying to, you know, Get into, you know, Canada and, um, I'd love to do some Arctic circle campaign.

[00:26:27] Um, usually a lot of the places in Northern Wisconsin and Northern Michigan, I know before the break you were asking about things that I'm afraid of as a hammock camper who sets up in between two trees. One of the main fears, especially in the winter time that I've come across, I am terrified of widow makers when that, you know what I mean?

[00:26:44] A tree that is dead and might fall on me. So if I'm in my hammock and we're swinging back and forth, I'm very concerned. Because you can't really see outside that something is going to fall on me. That's the only other kind of fear that I have out there. But nothing animal, nothing human, nothing like that?

[00:27:03] Yeah, I've never been afraid of that. Like waking up with a raccoon? No, but I will warn people. People who are hot tent campers, if you're staying more than one night, the mice will find you. Oh. Oh, that's an interesting point. Yeah. So, so really, uh, there's a, a, a great advantage to being in a hammock. Right.

[00:27:20] To cold weather hammock camping as opposed to And I've had raccoons and foxes underneath my hammock and, and, I mean, certainly if I had been in a tent, they might've come in, but they weren't able to, you know, get out there. But I, I've definitely had them down scurrying. Going through my things below my hammock.

[00:27:35] What about, uh, you know, you hear about, like, summertime camping, um, and, uh, you know, with summertime camping, uh, you know, you have to hang your food. Let's say you're up in the Boundary Waters, where there are bear, now this time of year, bear should be hibernating. Right, yeah, they won't bother you too much in the winter.

[00:27:54] I do still put my food up. Um, you know, I, I have never personally like had that type of an issue. I would say raccoons probably try to get you more than bears. Um, they're, they're more, you know, human familiar and they, they certainly more. They don't have fear. They don't have a fear of us. No. I mean, yeah, raccoons or, or possums I would imagine.

[00:28:14] You know, would be the critters. Uh, okay. Well, I would, I would say to anybody who's thinking about going out, make sure that you're not doing so alone. Um, if you do let somebody know where you're going of all the people that have ever been missing and found, they all have one thing in common and that was that somebody was looking for.

[00:28:33] So, you have to tell somebody where you're going, you have to let people know to look for you when you'll be back, and if you're missing. And just like on cue, here comes that Widowmaker. That's right, who was going to get one? It's because I said it. Wind blowing through, um. She was taken out by a large tree.

[00:28:50] She was taken out by a large tree. Uh, well, and you bring up a really good point, the idea of um, uh, solo camping versus. I agree, yeah. Yeah, I mean, a lot more fun to camp. It is. Um, I would say with winter camping, you definitely need the help. You know, you need, you need somebody else out there with you just because, uh, you know, this is something my husband likes to say a lot.

[00:29:13] Everything takes more time in the cold. Everything is slower. Something if you, if you can maybe set up your tent or set up your hammock in the summertime in like 45 minutes, it's definitely going to take you two hours in the cold. Well, let's wrap up this podcast with this question. You know, you mentioned your husband, who's an outdoors person, um, and Uh, do you bring your kids out on winter camp?

[00:29:34] So, this is good for the whole family. The idea of a family going out there and camping. Do you personally lead expeditions too? Has this become a business for you? It is definitely not a business. I think I enjoy myself too much to ever lead anybody else. Just because, I do, I have a tendency to just, I will wander.

[00:29:53] Um, a lot of the things that I've done through Now Outdoors have taught me land navigation. They have land navigation courses. So I feel completely comfortable being, you know, off any trail. Being able to spot my camp from far away. Being able to understand the lay of the land. Understand what You know what?

[00:30:08] You know, the valleys are understand where to get a high vantage point to get back to camp. I feel very comfortable in the woods being able to do that. Um, as far as the Children, I definitely do lead my Children in that my 10 year old, she's camped in negative two. Okay. Um, so that's, you know, I mean, they have to, I would say that they had need to be of communicable age to you.

[00:30:28] They need to be able to tell you, Mom, I'm cold, Mom, this hurts, Mom, this is, you know, I would want to be able to have some sort of, you know, communication with them, but honestly, they like it just as much. They like being wrapped up. They like being by the fire and you know, it's, it's not something that we're not meant to do.

[00:30:44] I mean, this idea that we're not meant to be outside and we need this is, I mean, that's a very new idea to humans. You know, this, this idea of homes and suburbs and relatively new idea. I met, I'm, you know, I'm built to be outside. Um, something that happens. To me, I know when, uh, we're out there for a good number of days, especially if I go into a lake or a river, if I do a polar plunge or get myself wet in that time, um, my body actually will kind of go into this set.

[00:31:15] Um, I say it doesn't trust me, but it won't fully come back up to temperature because of, you know, in an exposure, it's like, Oh, is this our new normal? Oh, and so my body starts adjusting. To the, to the, the outdoor temperature. We are now in exposure. What my body would consider exposure. And that's a very serious thing.

[00:31:34] I'm not the homeless people die of exposure. There was actually a news reporter a few decades ago who went to go do a story on, on homelessness and he died of exposure. I mean, our bodies, if you are not used to it, if you're not acclimated to it, we'll definitely respond to that. But if you slowly acclimate yourself to that, you can enjoy nature 365 days a year.

[00:31:55] So don't go. Running a negative two in your shorts out camping right away. I mean, try to get your body, you're recommending like, do some hikes, do some stuff to get, get, uh, acclimated. We started out fully in our backyard. Okay. We, we have, uh, like, um, we created a metal rig, um, that, you know, hangs a hammock and we started in our backyard and, you know, the negative degree weather so that if anything was wrong, we could come in.

[00:32:23] Great. Well, we're going to leave it at that for this podcast. We're going to be following up with our next podcast, where we get into some of the more interesting things like hygiene on the winter camp. But, uh, this is, uh, uh, uh, once again, I want to thank our expert Kate Vogel. Uh, she's, uh, been on the Mr.

[00:32:42] Marty show. In fact, I believe. It was a year ago that we had some film of you doing a polar plunge. Yeah, I took a camera down with me this year, so that'll be up on the Mr. Marty Show soon. I cannot wait to see that footage. Uh, I, you know, it freaked me out when I saw her do it because that was in a pond, right?

[00:33:01] It was a lake, yeah. Yeah, it was a lake. Okay, so no real currents to speak of, I hope not. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Uh, you see those horrible YouTube videos where the person jumped in and, They never come out, but she's here. So we're good. And we'll be back with more, um, next week, um, winter camping and, uh, thanks for watching or listening and we'll catch you next week.

[00:33:26] Bye bye. Thank you for listening. For more information about this show or a transcript, visit martinmccormack. com. While there, sign up for our newsletter. See you next time on Strung Out.