Snow Camping

So the scouts went snow camping. Needless to say, I had never done this before. We slept in tents on a couple feet of snow. At the last minute, I brought an extra blanket to sleep on. It was Miriam's and she was pretty mad. If it was between having her old blanket one night or her dad freezing, she wanted her blanket. It is not a special blanket, just something I salvaged from the trash. Anyway, with a sleeping pad and quilt underneath me and both summer-weight down bags, I was very warm all night, although it got down to -15 C, or about 5 F. All day though my toes and fingers alternated being frozen. So we got there late Friday, played in the snow all day, and came home Saturday afternoon. It's funny how relaxed the other scout leaders were. The flag ceremony ended up coinciding with breakfast, and no one even budged. While the other troops were doing the activities, ours was having smack down in the snow and throwing snowballs. We did enter the snow sculpture contest and won, I think, although we didn't stick around for the judging. The snow was too powdery for building anything so we made a tall mountain, with a shrine gate on top, with steps leading up, and twig trees lining the path. Someone suggested leaving early to go an onsen and maybe yakiniku, and everyone immediately agreed. We did leave early, but somehow the onsen plan dissipated. The camp was by Fuji so we had nice views of the mountain through the trees.