Backcountry Camping for Beginners and Winter Camping Courses
The following is the transcript from our podcast episode interview with Camper Christina.
Pamela:
Hello, and good day, eh? Welcome to the Super Good Camping Podcast. I’m Pamela.
Tim:
And I’m Tim
Pamela:
and we’re from supergoodcamping.com We’re here because we are on a mission to inspire other families to enjoy camping adventures such as we have with our kids. And today we wanted to do something just a little bit different. We have our very first-ever non-family guest on our podcast today. We’d like to introduce you to a camping celebrity from around these parts. She’s been exploring and adventuring outdoors since she was a child. She’s an extremely experienced four-season camper, largely backcountry for the last couple of decades. And by four seasons, we mean she winter camps too! She has an amazing YouTube channel. She’s got a website. She’s on Facebook and Instagram. And she camps just about every other weekend and does multi-day trips. We’re very thankful that she could squeeze us into her busy schedule. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Camper Christina.
Christina:
That was so nice. Thank you!
Pamela:
In all her glory.
Tim:
There you go. I want to throw this out there. First question, How awesome was it to be back at the Outdoor Adventure Show and to be presenting? Like seriously, how cool was that?
Christina:
It was so good. It was really good. It was fun. We were chatting before the show. I was talking to Kevin [Callan]. We’re all friends behind the scenes. We were saying that we’ve got these great presentations ready, but we don’t know if anybody’s gonna show up because we really didn’t know what it was going to be like two months before the show. I honestly never thought it would happen. So it was good. It was really, really good to get back out there. Get in front of people and meet people and talk to everyone and just worth every minute. It was great.
Tim:
Yeah, I’m so glad! I saw Kevin running around like a lunatic with a camera. Right. But Teunis was like yeah, Friday was a little quiet, and today is awesome. I thought that was the most succinct quote for the weekend. Right? Everybody’s like “Oh, we’re so glad to be back out here again.”
I want to talk to you today in particular about your Backcountry for Beginners course. A lot of our listeners are new to the sport. I didn’t know that you also had a Winter Camping Course, which I apparently need to sign up for because I haven’t done any winter camping. It’s on my bucket list. How did you get into backcountry camping? And we’re gonna segue that into how did that make you want to design a course for other people that would want to get into backcountry camping?
Christina:
I started out like anybody when I was a little kid. We used to go up north when we were little and that was the Muskokas and Algonquin at the time, and I loved it. I love going out there. We would get up in the morning and go out to look for blueberries to put on our Frosted Flakes cereal, and my parents would go fishing and stuff. I had a leech incident, but when I was a little kid, I loved it. Back then we used to go every summer. Then for some reason, we started going to Florida when I was about 9 or 10’ish. That was cool too, but I always wanted to go back to the north. I always missed it, and I really loved it. So when I started getting old enough to go camping, I went back out there. It was tough. I had a couple of boyfriends here and there that would get interested and we would go for a few years. Then we would break up and then I wouldn’t get to go again. After a while, I started saying you know what? This is dumb. I’m just gonna start going by myself.
Pamela:
Those men!
Christina:
Yeah, well, I mean, it wasn’t a thing, right? There weren’t even solo canoes when I started. I started out kayaking because you couldn’t go in a canoe by yourself. So there was kayaking, and I took a course and I started going. Then in 2015 Woods Canada had a contest to become the Woods Greatest Explorer. They were going to pay somebody $20,000 to explore the Trans Canada Trail. It was because they were going to connect the Trans-Canada Trail for Canada’s 150th anniversary. I applied to the contest, but I didn’t win. It took me about three weeks to get this resume together. I put all these backcountry trips and everything that I had done, and I started really missing it. So I said you know what, this is dumb. I don’t need to win a contest to do this. So I started a blog and that held me accountable. All of a sudden I decided I’m gonna publish something every week and I have done that since 2015. Whether it be a blog post or now a video. I’ve published a YouTube video a minimum of one every single week for over five years now. There are 500 videos on my YouTube channel. It’s a lot of work to be accountable. Once I said I was going to do it I had to, people were waiting.
Summer ended and then fall came. And then I thought “Well, what am I going to do?” I can’t be Hiker Christina. So then I started winter camping.
And that’s how I became a year-round camper. And then I created my hot tents because I hate the cold. I like going out and doing stuff in the snow. But at nighttime, I use an electric blanket all year round in my house. Yeah, so then I made a hot tent. Then it was too big and too heavy. So then I made a solo, which is my passion to go solo backcountry camping. I love that. I also made a bigger tent. So now I have the two that I use. And then I camp year-round doing canoe and kayak trips, mostly canoe trips. That’s how I got into backcountry camping in a really long way.
Tim:
Oh, but I think I think we all didn’t just fall into like, just poof, suddenly we’re backcountry campers. I took my first backcountry trip when I was 32 years old.
Christina:
That’s awesome.
Pamela:
How did you prepare for that?
Christina:
Follow my course! Oh, seriously, I planned for six months. I went to the library, and I took out all these books and videos. I didn’t know how to paddle a canoe. So I took out a video. I had those cardboard gift wrap tubes and I was kneeling on the couch and I was like – Okay, this is how you do a J stroke. I got a friend’s dehydrator. I figured out how many calories I needed in a day to give me enough energy to do the portage. I was really serious about it and I learned all this stuff. Then we went out and did a five-day trip. My first trip was a five-day trip, not solo, but my first backcountry trip. It was a five-day trip through Algonquin. Rock Lake to Louisa that killer long portage! It was a two-and-a-half kilometer portage. It was great, I fell in love, and I just wanted to keep going back.
Tim:
That’s excellent. We’re gonna get along just fine. I’m a bit mental like that. I research the crap out of everything.
Christina:
Did we answer the question, how did I get into backcountry camping? And what are the other things?
Tim:
I don’t even remember what was the other thing.
Pamela:
There was also “what made you decide to design a course?”
Christina:
COVID started. Are we allowed to say COVID? Will we get flagged? The “thing” started a couple of years ago and people couldn’t go anywhere. All of a sudden there was this huge spike in camping. Everybody was trying to go camping, and then they would go to the campgrounds and the campgrounds were full. So then they would just go okay, well, we could just rent a canoe and we’ll go in the backcountry. No problem. And there were all these terrible things happening. All of the backcountry, people noticed it. People in our social media circle and on YouTube. We were all kind of like, wow, what is going on? There’s garbage everywhere. I’m not complaining, but people didn’t know what to do. Some people would leave their garbage at the curbside of the campsite by the lake thinking that somebody’s going to come and pick it up. So there were all these things going on. People were going out and there were drownings happening. There were bears having to get rehabilitated or moved because people were leaving food out. Because they didn’t know that there was a bear that might come and eat my food. And then the next person comes in, and he’s gonna try to eat their food because he’s gotten the other person’s food. There were so many things happening. There are so many things to learn. It’s not just about “Hey, let’s jump in a canoe, and it’s just like car camping.” It’s not. There are a lot of things that are different. I wanted to do what I could to help stop bad things from happening or help people to learn and to get educated about how to go out there and do the right things and leave no trace and not leave their garbage and clean up and not attract bears and not get hurt and not drown. So I spent five months creating my course. It’s massive. Tim, you’ve seen it. Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve seen it Pamela but…
Pamela:
I’ve heard it.
Christina:
There are five hours of footage. It’s 112 video lectures. It sounds like a lot but they go by quickly, right? They’re all broken down into sections of food, food storage, clothing, shelter, and sleeping. Hopefully, people are learning from it. There are little quizzes at the end of each chapter, which I love. I made some goofy little jokes just to keep people entertained. Then in November, I created a winter camping course too. So now I have a winter camping course and a backcountry camping course.
Tim:
Great so now I have to buy the winter course. Because for me, unfortunately, I don’t have enough vacation days available to camp as much as I want to. Because I’m a building manager we swap weekends for who is on call so it becomes a bit of a deal to find time to get out but it’s definitely a bucket list thing. I want to do winter camping. I’ve been trying to convince people to do it with me for a couple of years. It’s not happening.
Christina:
You’ll be warm, trust me, I guarantee you you’ll be warm. I know easy tricks that you can just go to a car campground use the gear that you already have, bring a space heater, just don’t go when it’s minus 40. There are easy ways to get out there in the winter that you don’t have to spend a lot of money, see if you like it first. Maybe spend time in a yurt and take it from there.
Tim:
I’m pretty sure I’ll like it. If it’s camping, it doesn’t matter, I’ll like it.
Christina:
You’re outside and you do stuff all day and then you get to be warm inside at night if you have a hot tent. Cold camping that’s a whole different story, but I cover that as well.
Tim:
Cool. We do a fall camp trip, sorry, that’s me and the two boys. We do a fall camp trip and we hit a really crappy weekend. It poured all weekend. Temperatures dropped we were freezing so we made do. I bought way better sleeping bags and what a difference that made to spend that kind of money on the bags. I can’t imagine that we will ever regret that. So yeah, we could be headed toward winter camping.
Christina:
Yeah, get one of those nice red rubbery hot water bottles. $7.99 at Home Hardware. Stick it in your sleeping bag, and go to sleep, it’s lovely.
Tim:
You, Home Hardware, and Dollarama. Seriously. Alright, but I need to shop with you.
Christina:
There are lots of tips like that in my course.
Tim:
I’ve spent so much money on stuff. I could have spent half that money, man, if I’d taken your course sooner. So thinking about backcountry things, give me a couple of mistakes that you think that people would make, newer backcountry campers, and especially entry-level people. Tell me about the mistakes that they might make – food at the edge of the site, thinking people might come through and clean that up for them. Your course could give them some insight into the fact that that’s not the way to go about it.
Christina:
Food Storage is huge. That’s right at the top of the list. Because if you’re attracting animals, it’s not only bad for you, it’s also bad for the animals. And then it’s bad for every person that comes to use that campsite after you. Because most animals are habitual. If they go in and they find the jackpot, they don’t want to come and hurt you or anything, animals just want your food. They’re hungry. You give them these sugary snacks, marshmallows, and all these delicious things and so every time a person comes, they’re like “people = food” and they come and they look for the food. They do anything they can to get it because those marshmallows are tasty, right?
Tim:
Sugar cubes for your coffee.
Christina:
Citronella candles, I’ve had a very nice citronella candle before. So yeah, they like that. It’s bad for everybody. It’s not just oh, darn, I don’t have any food, I’m gonna paddle out hungry. You’ve got to think about what that means for all of the other people that go there and for the animals. Because if the animals start to become a nuisance, they might have to get put down or taken out or put somewhere else, or relocated. So it affects everybody and everything. It’s really important to do the right things, not just for your own protection, but for a lot of other people’s. I’m very passionate about it. Sorry.
Tim:
Oh, no, no, no, I get it.
Christina:
I did the course because I want people to do the right thing so that all these things can work in harmony. I can go out there and you can go out there and nobody has problems.
Tim:
Absolutely agreed. My eldest, my much taller eldest, he’s my backcountry camping partner, and the two of us have been looking around saying, “Oh, my God, what’s going on?” This is not what we’re used to seeing. And it’s a lack of education. I mean, I’m absolutely certain that there are some people that just don’t care. But we’ve had those all along. So that’s not a new thing, right? We watched people last year, going through a portage carrying a cooler on wheels. I just stopped and thought, I can’t believe I’m seeing this.
Christina:
I was at McCrae Lake a couple of years ago and there were those huge Flamingo-like floaties. There were people on that going out camping in the backcountry with all their stuff on this big swan. You know what, whatever you need to do to get out there.
Tim:
I agree, that’s definitely true as well.
Christina:
With a cooler, I don’t know how you keep an animal from getting into it, and that’s the concern. Ideally, do whatever you want to do, and be respectful but you know you’ve got to protect everybody at the same time, right? If he had a bear vault it would have been okay.
Tim:
But not necessarily all the places have bear vaults, and that cooler on wheels wasn’t going up in a tree. As much as I spend far too much I don’t go to Dollarama, I go to a Mountain Equipment Co-op, and I also refuse to spend the money on a bear barrel. I have a Home Depot five-gallon pail that we bought a special lid for that screws on and off and we hike that puppy up into the trees. How do people get access to your courses? Or maybe we should talk a bit more about the winter camping course because we’ve done some decent stuff for the backcountry one. So let’s talk a bit about the winter camping course and then we’ll talk about access.
Christina:
Sure cool. Okay.
Pamela:
When you say a hot tent, what exactly do you mean by a hot tent?
Christina:
The winter camping course is generally separated into the same categories. A hot tent is generally a tent that is made out of canvas, they’re not all, but most of them are made out of canvas. Some are made out of nylon or ripstop but they have a woodstove in them or a source of heat. In the winter camping course, I separated it into hot camping, hot tenting, and cold camping. Hot camping is when you’re using a heat source of any kind in a tent like a space heater, or a Mr. Buddy tent heater. I don’t recommend those but people do use them and you have to have a lot of ventilation. There are a lot of accidents that happen with that so I don’t promote it but like I said, however, you want to get out if it’s safe for you. That’s fine. Hot tenting is using a canvas tent with a woodstove inside or some of them are made out of different materials. Mine are canvas, they’re actually made out of painter’s drop cloth from Home Depot.
Tim:
There you go. It’s yeah, a new version of Dollarama cool.
Christina:
Yeah.
Pamela:
When I hear a heat source in a tent, I just think of fire. Something’s gonna catch fire.
Christina:
There’s a fire inside the woodstove, like in people’s homes. I was interviewed by Gill Deacon, she’s with the CBC here now. She was very skeptical about this whole hot tent thing. If you want to get out in the winter, you can just go to a car campground, there are a lot of them open. Mew Lake is a popular one out in Algonquin and you get one of the electrical sites. Silent Lake has hydro as well. And just bring a tent, a three-season or summer tent, put a space heater in there and put a tarp over it and it’s nice and warm. It gets toasty warm in there. Think of that little space with the space heater in it. Even though it’s cold outside. It’s still good enough to make you warm in the surrounding area. I can sit in there with a tank top and be totally fine in the middle of winter. It all depends on how brave you are. Maybe it scares people. She was sure that the space heater was gonna tip over. And I said well, they have the little safety switches. I know this because I was camping in minus 42 degrees Celsius. It was one of the coldest weekends ever. It was the coldest place on the planet for 10 minutes. The park ranger actually printed off a sheet about that for us all. I was in my summer tent with a space heater in it. I had my space heater sitting on a brownie pan, one of those foil pans. I flipped it over. I didn’t want to put it directly on the tent because it’s nylon for extra safety. The little button kept, tapping, tapping and finally dented the foil so it tipped over and it shut itself off. So I woke up at 3:30 a.m. My Nalgene water bottle is sitting right beside my head. It’s frozen solid. I’m like: Oh My God! I had an air mattress, it popped from the cold. I thought Oh My God it’s 3:30 in the morning! What am I going to do? I’m freezing to death here! So I get up and look and I’m wondering “why is the heater out?” Earlier we had problems with the breakers going, so I’m thinking I’m in trouble. So I’m checking the space heater, I pick it up and it starts going. I put it down wondering what was going on. I didn’t know there was a safety switch. This is, I think, a recent thing since the last time that I bought a space heater it didn’t have one. As soon as I figured that out I just put it beside me and I was like okay, I’ll be fine and eventually it warmed up. After that camping in minus 20 degrees Celsius, is no problem.
Pamela:
Where was this where it was minus 40 Celsius?
Christina:
Algonquin Provincial Park was minus 42 Celsius at Mew Lake. I have a video and a blog post on it or I think it actually might just be blog posts only.
Tim:
Well it’s a nice rhyme minus 42 at Mew, right?
Christina:
Yeah, minus 42 at Mew.
Tim:
Very cool, not to be that cold.
Christina:
It was very cool, and it was a good time.
Tim:
When I watch everybody on YouTube that’s probably my favorite thing is when they tell a story that was so awesome for them whether it was a bad experience, but then it played out well because they’re now sitting there telling us the story. So it worked out well.
Christina:
A lot of people don’t do that and it’s something that I get a lot of compliments on. One weekend I went out and we pushed so hard through this blizzard to get to this campsite and I literally threw up when I got there. There was just so much adrenaline and being freaked out about walking across a lake in a blizzard. It was freezing, I was totally exhausted, and my body was like ugh. I didn’t show myself throwing up, but I told everybody about it. Because people need to know all the good stuff and the bad stuff because the bad stuff makes the good stuff better and it makes you learn things. I also hope to have other people learn things from my failures so that they don’t go out and have to do the same thing and also go through that.
Tim:
I agree. You can edit your video to make it all positive and wonderful, and then people get out there and go “Yeah, no, this is nothing like that video.” That’s not going to make them go out the second time. I think we’re in agreement that getting people out into the backcountry, especially informed is an amazing thing. I don’t care if it’s front country or backcountry. I’m a fan of the backcountry. I’m also happy to go and plunk my butt down in the front country at Presqu’ile for three days and just chill and listen to all the wonderful birds. I could sit here all night and just talk. I’ve got issues. I don’t want to tie it up. We’re starting to head toward the last few minutes.
Christina:
I want to say one thing, a good suggestion for people who are new is to test out your stuff at home first. It’s a really important point. If you don’t take a course, I highly recommend courses, training, or education, they give you confidence. They teach you so many things. I didn’t start taking courses until the last few years and I was doing so many things that I could have been doing a better way or an easier way. But testing things at home is really important. You’ve got a tarp, learn how to hang it, make sure you have enough rope, figure out how to tie it, and do it five times in the backyard. Set up your tent, and make sure it doesn’t leak. Make sure that when you go out there and you’ve got your equipment with you that it’s all going to work and you know how to use it. You can set it up, take it down and everything goes nicely. It’ll help you have a better time.
Tim:
I agree. I have a notebook here. This is me going through your course and I have some experience. I was making notes. I’ll give away one hint. It makes me sad to show up at a campsite in the backcountry, Algonquin in particular, although we found them in Killarney as well, where they’ve left all the grates.
Christina:
Right. 75 grills, Oh My God.
Tim:
We have found grills. We’ve found frying pans. If you took it in, take it out with you. Anyhow, that’s a personal thing.
Christina:
I go to Temagami.
Tim:
Oh My God! Your idea of taking the nice little light bit of foil and wrapping one of those beaters instead of taking one with you, oh! I’ve been lugging ours with us! How did I miss that thought before?
Christina:
Foil is golden and it does so many things. The campfire in the rain thing. That one that I’ve seen in a lot of my videos. I always put a little bit of foil in, always bring a couple of nice big sheets of foil. They take up very little room. And if it’s raining, and you can’t get your fire going, they have those grates in most of the parks or if you have one of those grills covered up, put it up high and it’s like a little campfire umbrella.
Tim:
That’s it. That’s all the secrets we’re going to give away because we want people to take the course. Seriously, I really do. I thoroughly enjoyed the five hours, it didn’t feel long. It did when I looked at it, but it went faster than I imagined.
Christina:
I wrote the whole course myself. I just sat down and started going category by category and wrote it all out and then I recorded it all. Then I had to go through all of my 20 years of camping history and pull little video clips and pictures to match everything that I was talking about. It was insane, but I’m really really pleased with it, and I only got one bad comment. It’s actually funny because I think you’ll get a kick out of it. It was somebody that was saying that I was storytelling. You’ve taken the course so you know I talk about certain things and then I back it up with my experience or some reason or evidence of how this worked or why it worked. For some reason, this person thought it was storytelling and I kind of got offended at first. And then I said, “you know what, I think it’s a compliment.” Because if somebody says, don’t do this, even a mother to a child, you want to know why right? Why shouldn’t I do that? Well, if you do this, then this is gonna happen and this is going to happen and the bears are going to come to the next people because you didn’t put your food away. There’s always a reason for everything and I think sometimes when people have a reason, it makes them want to do it more. But that’s just me, this guy obviously didn’t agree and that’s okay. I still have a 4.9 or 4.87 star rating out of five.
Tim:
That’s 164 more people that are going to be well-educated to go and do things. Okay, so tell us how they can get access to your courses.
Christina:
The best way to get access – please don’t Google it, because Udemy likes to trick people. And if you go to Google or Udemy, and you get the course they get something like 90% of the money. It’s much better for me if you go through my website. I have links there or on any of my social media pages. I am Camper Christina on Facebook, Camper Christina on Instagram, Twitter, or any of those places, but if you go to my website, CamperChristina.com. Just go to the Courses page. It’s Backcountry Camping for Beginners and Winter Camping for Beginners. Just click one and it’ll give you a description. There’s a little video, and the link is there. If you click it and go through my website, then Udemy gets 3% of the money and I get the rest, which I think I deserve because I made the course.
Tim:
Absolutely.
Christina:
Right now it’s on sale because it’s backcountry season and the lowest price I could make it was $27.99. It’s gonna sit there for a little while. It’s not for me to make a fortune. I go camping year-round like you said every other weekend. I far outspend what I make from anything on YouTube or courses. But I want people to learn. It’s nice to have a little bit of extra money to go towards my trips, but I want people to learn this stuff. So that all of us, you guys, me, and everybody that goes out there in the future will have a great time. That’s my goal, and so that people don’t die, or kill animals.
Tim:
Dying is bad. Killing trees is bad.
Christina:
Yeah, don’t cut live trees.
Tim:
No, that makes me so sad. “Oh, that’s green. That’s why it didn’t burn.” That’s why it’s beside the fire now.
Christina:
But the courses are to educate people so that they know the right way to do things.
Tim:
Absolutely. And they are so educational. Like I said I made a pile of notes going through it. I can’t believe I never thought of that or never looked at it quite that way before. The Backcountry for Beginners Course that I’ve taken now is a fantastic course. I have to take the other one, The Winter Camping for Beginners one. I’m gonna wrap this up. Thank you so much for coming. I’ve been a fan for a very long time. I’ve quite enjoyed watching your videos. I can’t believe you shoot it on an iPhone for the record.
Christina:
I know I just upgraded it too. It’s been an iPhone 7 up until the fall, now I’ve got the 13 Pro. It’s a lot nicer, but there won’t be any 4k just so people know. I’ve already got three external drives, totaling 20 terabytes right now and that’s five years’ worth. There are only so many places where you can juggle these things.
Tim:
I know it’s a bit crazy.
Christina:
It’s overwhelming.
Tim:
I’m going to try to do more videos myself this year. I don’t want to talk beyond a terabyte just because I can’t. My brain can’t handle it. Thank you so much for coming out.
Christina:
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And hopefully, I’ll get another invite sometime.
Tim:
You absolutely will. This has been a real treat. I’m glad you had an awesome time at the show last weekend. I’m going to go look for more videos because I want to see your presentation.
Christina:
Actually next week it’ll be on my YouTube channel, which is the week of May 11. You can check it out. Ultimate campsite. It’s pretty interesting, I think it was a good one.
Pamela:
Thank you have a great night. Bye. That’s it for us for today. We hope you really enjoyed our very first-ever guest interview with Camper Christina. Tune in for more such interviews in the future as we’re recording this just before the May 2-4 long weekend. Don’t forget that Ontario Provincial Parks do not allow alcoholic beverage consumption over this long weekend. Please follow the park rules and reach out to us anytime we are at hi@supergoodcamping.com. We’re on all the social media Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. And we have our public Facebook group called The Campfire. We’ll talk to you again soon. Bye!
Tim:
Bye!