BRAINARD LAKE — As I inchworm my sleeping bag farther into the snow cave, I’m struck by how warm it is. Relatively speaking, anyway. Outside, it’s below zero, and icy gusts are blowing off the Continental Divide and through the scrubby trees where we’re camped. It’s the type of harsh, wintry weather you’d expect at 10,500 feet above sea level in February.
But inside the shelter, the wind’s sting and noise are gone, and the 2-foot-thick walls trap our body heat and breath. This was two years ago, when I had the opportunity to go on the annual middle-school overnight to Brainard Lake National Recreation Area. The trip is the culmination of a six-week practical skills course on winter camping for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders; it is a part of the outdoor education curriculum at Shining Mountain Waldorf School, an independent K-12 school in Boulder.
“It’s a radical thing to do,” says Craig Rubens, the movement teacher at Shining Mountain and director of the school’s physical and outdoor education program, about asking teenagers to sleep outside in the dead of winter. Rubens has been teaching this class and leading the trip to Brainard for nearly a decade.
I was unable to go this year, but when Rubens and his group of teens returned from the mountain last week, I pounced on them in the school parking lot to welcome them home and see everyone’s post-adventure glows.
The experience is so powerful, he says, because there are immediate, significant consequences if students don’t do what they’ve learned. “They see what needs to be done, and they see, well, yeah, if I want to be warm, I better put on my hat; if I want to stay dry, I better take care of my layers, drink enough water, eat enough food.”
Brainard Lake, he says, is the perfect spot. “There are good drifts up there.” That’s important. Depending on the quality of snow, the school group builds igloos, snow quinzees — simple snow shelters — or caves dug out of deep drifts, as they did this year. Each method requires preparation, often including one or more day-trips to the site beforehand, to pile, prep and pack the snow.
When I agreed to sleep in a frozen shelter at altitude, I didn’t quite know what I was getting into, and neither do most of the teens who choose to go on this trip. Which is the point. That sense of the unknown —and the fear that goes with it — is critical to the whole experience.
I turned to four of the seventh-graders who went on this year’s trip (and survived). They told me their excited stories at once. Then I asked, “Would you do it again?”
“Definitely!” they responded, immediately and unanimously.
So would I, I thought. For that, I can either wait for another invitation next winter — or I can head up on my own, before the snow melts.
Joshua Berman is a Spanish teacher and occasional outdoor educator at Shining Mountain Waldorf School in Boulder; he is also a travel writer. JoshuaBerman.net and @tranquilotravel.
If you go
During winter months at Brainard Lake Recreation Area, there is no fee and camping is allowed. Park at Brainard Gateway Trailhead; from Colorado 72 at Ward, turn west onto Brainard Lake Road. If you’d rather not camp, book a night at Colorado Mountain Club’s Brainard Cabin ($20/night, sleeps up to 12, www.cmcboulder.org).
The Colorado Mountain Club also offers courses on winter camping. Check the listing of classes at
