Winter camping in Wisconsin

Two of my good friends and I have been talking about camping for a couple of months now. I bought a two person tent in November, and wanted to use it. We decided that winter would be a great time to test the tents (and ourselves) against the elements.

We ended up using two tents. The first one was a two person backpacking tent. This was the one I recently purchased, but hadn't gotten the chance to use. The other tent was a little bigger, and could hold 3 people. It was pretty old, but it worked for us. We probably could have all fit into the 3 person tent and slept comfortably, but I really wanted to try out my new tent.

The first thing we did after setting up the tents was put some padding down so we weren't sleeping right on top of snow. I believe this helped us significantly. We then threw our sleeping bags in there and crawled in. The temperature was somewhere in the single digits, so we made sure to dress warmly. I had long underwear on underneath some sweatpants, and had 2 longsleeve shirts on underneath the sleeping bag, in addition to a warm pear of socks.

In my tent, there were two of us, in the other tent, one of my friends stayed solo. I found it nice to have someone to talk to, distracting us from the noises outside, one of which was a nearby owl. I fell asleep pretty quick, but woke up twice during the night. The first time, I was cold. I had somehow came out of my sleeping bag a little, and my back was touching the cold tent. I moved around for a bit and eventually fell back asleep. The next time I woke up, there was no turning back, as the sunlight was shining, and I could hear the ice auger of some nearby fishermen.

It was a fun experience to spend the night outside in the winter. I would be willing to do it again, but would like to get a smaller sleeping pad. Not sure if I'll do it again this winter, but maybe next year.