Winter Camping for Beginners- A Night at Silent Lake Provincial Park Near Bancroft, ON

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This year, we were determined to try winter camping for the first time. And we almost missed our chance! With how crazy the weather has been in Ottawa, we headed up to Bancroft to make sure our first experience of winter camping would feel like- well, winter. Silent Lake Provincial Park was just the place for us to set up (winter) camp for the first time. Temperatures were forecast to be between -1⁰C and -9⁰C, and we felt that was a good range to try out.

We woke up bright and early this past Saturday, and hopped in the car, headed towards Silent Lake. We were pretty pumped. Our clueless dog, with no idea what she was in store for, seemed pretty pumped too.

Silent Lake Provincial Park is technically in Bancroft, but is still a 20 minute drive east of the “core.” We drove through Arnprior and Renfrew to get there, and the scenery on the way was really quite stunning. I’d never taken this route before, so I was very happy with how beautiful (and snow covered!) everything was starting to look.

Planning Ahead

I had called ahead, so we knew that all the campsites in the park were open, and that we could reserve a spot upon our arrival. Calling directly to the Silent Lake Park Office seemed to be the ticket- I had tried calling the main number for making reservations at Ontario Parks (1-888-ONT-PARK), but I found the staff I talked to at that number didn’t have a lot of information about the individual parks.

When I called the park directly (at 613-339-2807), I had asked the woman on the phone if we were at risk of not getting a spot by just showing up, but she laughed and assured me this wouldn’t happen.

After driving for about three hours (the things we do for a new adventure!), we pulled up behind the most beautiful park building I’d ever seen. You can use these coordinates to get there: 44.924489, -78.072818.

There are staff on site every day of the week at Silent Lake, so we walked in the front doors in order to reserve a spot. There was a tiny little gift shop in this main building, with cute T-shirts for sale, as well as other helpful camping items like matches, toothpaste, buffs, and more.

Making Our Reservation

The woman at the counter was very helpful. She provided us with a full sized map of the park, and basically told us to pick a spot! It turns out that while all the yurts were rented out for the evening, EVERY SINGLE TENT SITE WAS AVAILABLE. Amazing.

Originally, we had wanted to try out the walk-in campsites at the park. These are sites near the lake, where you can park and walk in about 500 metres to your site. That felt like the perfect way to ease into winter camping, but there was one minor glitch. Silent Lake plows some of their roads during the winter, but not all of them. The staff let us know that they plowed the roads in order to provide access to the Granite Ridge campground, as well as the Pincer Bay campground. They said that we were welcome to walk into the walk-in sites at Pincer Bay (these are sites where in the summer you can park and walk in 500 metres to your site) as well. The staff noted that the way the roads were plowed, it would take us about twenty minutes to walk into these sites.

Ultimately, we chose to camp a little closer. We wanted to check out the Bonnie’s Pond Hiking Trail, which starts right near the Pincer Bay campground, and we knew that our little dog only had so many miles in her. Adding on a forty minute walk ahead of our hike would have been too much for her, so the Pincer Bay campground it was!

We paid the overnight fee, and we also bought a bag of firewood. Altogether, it cost $43.00. They were able to accept cash, debit, or credit. Finally, we tossed the firewood into our car and then we were off.

Finding Our Campsite

We drove out towards the Pincer Bay Campground, parking at the small parking lot where the Bonnie’s Pond Trail began. Across the road, there was a sign on one of the trees showing us the path to follow in order to get to the yurts. We knew we were going to be picking a spot just behind the yurts, so we pulled our sled and our packs out of the car, and headed off in that direction.

One thing that we’ve found super handy when it comes to using the sled is packing it up how we’re going to carry it, even before we leave the house. That way, everything is where we want it, and it’s strapped down and ready to go as soon as we arrive. So far, we haven’t had to carry so much gear that we haven’t been able to just pop the sled in our trunk “as is.” It makes getting organized and on our way whenever we reach our location SO much easier. I hate wasting time getting organized once I’m somewhere cool, so this really works for us.

We didn’t use our snowshoes to walk into the sites, because we saw park staff driving along the path on a side by side, so we knew that the path would be pretty packed down.

There were four yurts in the loop closest to the road, and we passed by them to walk the whole length of the second loop. We wanted to make sure that we got the best campsite there was! We started the loop near site 19, and had almost finished it when we arrived at site 30. As soon as we saw number 30, we decided it was probably the best, so we headed in to set up camp.

To be honest, most of the sites we saw looked great. They were surrounded by trees, and nice and big. Most also seemed pretty flat, and were set back pretty far from the road.

Getting Our Camp Set Up

Probably the smartest thing we did was to bring a full sized tarp with us. Having the tarp easily accessible on top of the sled let us pull it off, spread it out on the ground, and drop our packs on top of it right away. We also set up the dog’s stuff on the tarp, and didn’t have to worry about anything getting wet. We found having that extra space to be really helpful, because it allowed us to spread things out and stay organized while we were putting up the tent.

Before pitching our tent, we used a little snow shovel to remove as much snow as we could from where we were going to lay the base. There wasn’t much snow (maybe four inches?) but we knew that if we left it there, we would just end up melting it with our body heat in the night. We weren’t entirely sure if it would then leak through the tent, but we didn’t really want to take a chance.

Making quick work of the snow, we unrolled our tent, and got the poles put in. Then it was time to try and get the stakes in the ground! We had opted to not bring a hammer or a mallet, thinking we could just use the flat end of our hatchet. That seemed to work just fine. We had very little trouble getting the stakes into the ground, despite it still being frozen.

We put the fly on over top of the tent, and we were all set! Next, we unrolled our sleeping pads and sleeping bags, inflated our little pillows, and hung up our lantern. If it weren’t for the dog, we would have been almost done, but of course she needed somewhere comfortable to sleep too.

Almost Finished

We did a quick reorganization of our packs, putting everything we would need inside the tent (like toiletries, a change of clothes, books, headlamps, etc.) in one pack. We stored that pack inside the tent, and put the other one back in the sled.

There wasn’t too much else around the camp to set up- we put our firewood near the fireplace, then popped our chairs open and that was about it.

Everything that was “leftover,” or just needed to stay out, we loaded back onto the sled, and covered it with the tarp. We used the bungee cords to keep the tarp strapped down. Originally, we hadn’t been sure if a tarp would be necessary because we had checked the weather and knew it wasn’t supposed to rain or snow. What we found though, is that quite a bit of snow blew off the evergreens, so it was really handy to have the tarp covering the extra pack, the hatchet, and a few other things.

Hiking

After setting up, we wolfed down a few sandwiches. Then, we returned to where we had parked, to find the trailhead for the Bonnie’s Pond Trail. We spent a good few hours hiking, and then headed back to camp to settle in for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

There was an outhouse a few hundred metres away from our site, closer to the yurts. During the summer, it looked like the sink there would have running water but of course while we were using it there were no frills. We had brought our own hand sanitizer, which was a good thing because there wasn’t any available in the outhouse.

Dinner

Late in the afternoon, we were getting pretty hungry. We had planned on “cooking” over the fire that night, so I set about making kindling to start a fire with. I also shoveled out the fire pit so that there wasn’t a pile of snow in the bottom of it.

We had brought along our usual fire starting kit, and had paper, a fire starting stick, and a lighter + matches with us. We also packed a bit of extra tissue paper that was on it’s way to the recycling- it went up REALLY quick.

Starting the fire was easy, and I think the fire starting stick really helped. They burn a lot longer than paper can, so it’s really helpful in helping the smaller sticks catch fire. This is extra helpful when it’s windy or wet (like it was this weekend).

We had enough of a fire going that we were able to warm up the quesadillas we had brought for dinner, and we munched on them beside our tiny fire. The fireplaces at Silent Lake had a built in grate that could be flipped over top of them, and it was super handy! We had brought a little grate of our own, but chose not to use it because the one already on the fire pit was the perfect size, and totally stable.

We had brought all of our food (including dog food) and drinks inside of a bear barrel, despite the time of year. Although we were pretty sure there wouldn’t be bears out and about in March, it still seemed to be the most logical storage solution given we didn’t have direct access to the car. We were also confident this would keep any little guys, like squirrels or raccoons, from getting into our things overnight.

Struggling To Keep the Fire Alive

At this point, our toes were getting pretty cold. I had only brought one pair of boots- my hiking boots. That wasn’t too bright, but my husband had on his winter boots and his toes were starting to get chilly too, from standing and sitting with our feet on the cold ground all day.

We wanted to switch from a cooking fire to a bigger fire to warm up, but we were having a really hard time!

The ground underneath our fire had started to thaw, and that made it really hard for the coals to stay hot, and for the fire to get bigger (it wanted to die out). After experimenting with lots of different things, we realized we needed to build up a bigger base of coals, and we were able to make the fire a bit bigger. I really think it would have been helpful to bring along something to put in the bottom of the fire pit, to form a barrier between the water we were creating, and the coals. I haven’t figured out yet what that thing, would be, but I’m still thinking about it!

Sleeping

We had a great night’s sleep, even though the temperature was supposed to go down to -9⁰C. I’m not even kidding!

Our dog had spent most of our time in camp inside the tent, in her bed. We had set her up with a yoga mat (folded in two), a new dog bed (we thought it would trap more heat in because it had high sides), and her regular blanket from home. She also wore her coat whenever we weren’t walking or hiking.

When we got into the tent a little after the sun had set, we realized why she had spent most of her time there. It was way warmer!

We had brought fresh outfits to sleep in, and quickly changed into our wool long johns and fresh fleece sweaters. We had also packed fresh socks, and wool slippers, and we pulled those on. I slept with a buff around my ears too. Not wanting our boots to freeze, we put them into the dry bags that we had brought our clothing in. We placed them in the bottom of our sleeping bags. Our bags are size XL, and I had absolutely no problem with the amount of room that I had to stretch out, even with my boots in the bottom (I’m 5’8’’). We also slept with the clothes we were going to change back into the next day inside our bags, so they would be nice and warm to wake up to.

Our sleeping bags are Marmot “0⁰” bags- despite the name, they are rated for temperatures as low as -2.4⁰F, or -19.1⁰C. The sleeping pads we used were our Thermarest ProLite Plus four season pad, which has an R value of 3.4.

We spent a little bit of time reading and chatting, and feeling really warm and cozy.

After falling asleep, I woke up in the middle of the night with cold feet. I was also feeling some of the cold getting to me through the ground. Fortunately, I had packed some toe warmers, so I put those between my socks and my slippers and fell happily back to sleep with very warm feet.

But First, Coffee

When we woke up the next morning, it was already 8:30 a.m. (because of the time change), and we felt like we’d been sleeping forever!

A bit hesitant to leave our cozy tent, we realized we had to, if we wanted to eat.

We had brought along our MSR Windburner, thinking that we would probably want to make quick work of breakfast.

We packed 7 litres of water for the trip, and had stored it in three different ways, to see what would hold up against the temperature range of -1⁰C to -9⁰C. Four litres of water, we brought in an insulated Coleman water jug. We left it outside the tent overnight, in the sled. In the morning, it hadn’t frozen at all. We also packed 3 litres of water in separate Nalgene water bottles. One of these bottles, we left outside the tent (also in the sled), and it froze overnight. The other bottles, we kept inside the tent overnight with us. They froze just a tiny little bit on top and around the edges.

We boiled up some water and made instant coffee, then boiled up some more to make our granola for the morning.

Packing Up

We started packing up camp pretty early, and our pup was MAD. She just couldn’t understand the logic behind packing up the tent, which had treated us so well.

I had been worried about rolling up sleeping bags and pads in the cold, with frozen fingers, but that really wasn’t a problem since it was still much warmer in the tent than outside. Also, my husband packed them all up, so that helped…

It only took us about an hour and a half from the time we rolled out of bed until we were ready to head home. Once our dog understood that we had packed up the tent because we weren’t staying, she seemed to forgive us and was happy to nap in the car all the way home.

Final Thoughts on Winter Camping

We really enjoyed winter camping! With a few minor adjustments, I think that the winter camping experience could be completely and totally comfortable. There are two big things that I want to look into for next time. I’d like to get a fire pan (so we can have a nice big fire), and maybe bringing along foam pads to put under our sleeping pads, to prevent the ground from stealing our warmth.

If we weren’t bringing our dog with us, and could spend more time in an area doing longer hikes, I could totally see myself spending more than one night camping out in the winter. But, for this first try, one night was the perfect amount of time. It allowed us to figure out if we were going to be able to keep ourselves (and our pup) warm and happy.

We also can’t wait to come back to Silent Lake Provincial Park in the summer! We’re looking forward to hiking and biking some of their longer trails.

I hope this trip report has enough info to get you there too. Let me know in the comments, or share and tag a friend to start planning your next adventure!

What to Bring

We brought a TON of stuff (just over 100 pounds of stuff, not including what we wore in), so we provided a breakdown below to help you think through what you might need.

FYI: After the trip, we opened anything that had gotten damp back up at home. We made sure our sleeping pads, sleeping bags, and tent were totally dry before packing them away.

Gear We Brought

For Traveling:

• MSR Evo Snowshoes
• Hiking Poles
• Pelican Nomad Ice Sled

For Wearing:

• Hiking/Winter Boots
• Base Layers
• 2 x Fleece Sweaters (for day use)
• Mittens
• Buffs
• Wool Hats
• Wool Long Johns
• 2x Fleece Sweaters (for sleeping)
• Extra Socks

For The Dog:

• Leash
• Harness
• Winter Coat
• Yoga Mat
• Dog Bed
• Blanket
• Dog Food
• Water Bowl
• Long Rope/Leash (for camp)
• Large Dry Bag (to carry everything)
• Small Tarp (for moving her bed outside the tent)
• Poop Bags

For Hanging Out:

• 2 x Camp Chairs
• Books
• Playing Cards
• Coleman Rechargeable Lantern
• Headlamps
• Fire Starting Kit (lighter+ matches, paper, tissue paper)
• Coghlan’s Fire Starting Stick

For Eating/Drinking:

• Sandwiches
• Pre-Cooked Quesadillas (wrapped in tin foil)
• 2 x Luna Protein Bars
• Cookies
• Chips
• Peanut M & Ms
• Beers
• Grill
• Tongs (for flipping quesadillas)
• Paper Plates
• 7 Litres of Water
• Coleman 4L Insulated Water Jug
• 3 x 32 Ounce Nalgene Bottles
• Mug
• MSR Windburner Stove
• Instant Coffee
• Quick Oats (with cranberries, almonds, and brown sugar)
• Paper Towels
• 2 x “Sporks”
• Bear Barrel

For Sleeping:

• Eureka! K2 XT Four Season Tent
• Thermarest Sleeping Pads
• Marmot Zero Degree Sleeping Bags
• MEC Backpacking Pillows
• Dry Bags (for boots)
• 2 x Hand and Toe Warmers

For Everything Else:

• Hatchet
• Snow Shovel
• Bungee Cords
• Toiletries (including toilet paper and hand sanitizer)
• Ear Plugs
• 2 x Backpacks
• Rope (used to tie sleeping bag to one of the packs)
• Microfiber Cloth (for wiping off dog before she got in the tent)
• First Aid Kit
• Big Tarp
• Plastic Bags for Garbage

 Gear We Forgot

• Fire Pan (to form a barrier between thawing ground and coals of fire)
• Foam Pad (for extra insulation between the ground and our bodies)