Defeating the Off Season Blues

Part of loving the great outdoors in central Canada is figuring out a way to deal with winter. Since we primarily do hiking, backpacking, and canoeing, winter is definitely our adventuring off season. Winter in Manitoba has a lot of days that are -35C to -45C with the windchill. Going outside for long periods of time when it is that cold has a lot of risks involved, especially if your start sweating or get injured. Because of this, we generally don't go out much other than a couple of cross country skiing trips, and maybe to do some snowboarding.

Not going out often leads to what Roslyn calls the Off Season Blues, and it seems to happen to everyone that normally hikes but can't get out for long periods of time. We've worked out a few ways to help keep the Off Season Blues away.

Take a Vacation

This one is a bit of a cheat, but one of our strategies is to travel. You don't need to go very far, and the vacation might even just be to a cabin or a weekend to snow shoe or go skiing. But having something to look forward to will help keep your mind off of the wait for warmer weather to get outside again. If you can afford to, getting out to do a trip somewhere's warm will help a lot.

Plan Your Next Trip

We spend at least 2-3 nights every week reviewing places to go on long weekends, or to take a longer vacation on. Once we get a couple possible trips that we like figured out we plan out the cost, itinerary, and logistics of getting us and our gear to the trail, hiking the trail, and getting back. We probably review 2 or 3 potential trips for every long weekend and our couple weeks worth of vacation. Planning all the trips helps us learn more about what options we have for adventures, we keep our minds occupied with what is coming, and we get to look up a bunch of new information about the places we can potentially go.

Research New Gear and Techniques

There's a lot going on with backpacking, canoeing, and other adventuring equipment. Lots of new materials, small companies trying out new designs to find better, lighter equipment. We like looking for new gear to try out as our stuff wears out or needs replacing. We also watch a lot of video and read blogs on other people's adventuring experience. Watching other people let's us learn from their mistakes, learn new to us techniques and skills, as well as scratching that itch to experience the outdoors.

Try Out Winter Activities

Even though winter is harsh, trying out winter activities helps since it gets you outside! We try to get out to do some short hikes, and are starting to get into cross country skiing more. Exploring the outdoors in the winter is leading to some new and exciting experiences and hopefully we will enjoy it enough to turn winter into the On Season!

All in all we are looking forward to the 2020 adventure season while trying to make the best of Winter. Let us know what you do to occupy yourselves during your activities off season.