Originally Posted by
digibud
there is so much poor to bad advice in this thread it boggles the mind. I don't want to get into flame wars so I'm not going to drone on correcting the huge variety of mistaken advice I've read, instead I'll sum up my thoughts with the idea that anyone planning on any form of winter camping is wise to ask for advice, but their entry into winter camping should never be an actual multi-day trip.
By the time you are planning on going out for several days on your own you should no longer need advice.
You should know your bag works at any possible temperature range you're going to encounter. You should already have experienced any storm conditions you're likely -or unlikely- to encounter. You should already know your batteries and backups are sufficient and your clothing works 100%. You should already have repaired a flat tire in the coldest temps you'll be riding in and done it while it's snowing and blowing at 30mph. You should have done all this and more, preferably with an experienced companion or in a series of baby steps on your own. If you don't do all that...if you just take off on your own with the intention of doing a week of winter camping based on forum advice I don't expect you'll die, but the odds of having a fun, relaxing experience are on some asymptotic curve approaching zero.
I do wish you the best of luck regardless of whether you head out with adequate personal experience or not because you may be exception to the rule. Best of luck and hope you have a blast regardless of my concerns. Congrats on the attempt !
+1
This is the sort of thing I've been saying.
It's one thing to go out for a week in the middle of summer without much experience ... but it is a whole different story to go out in the middle of winter.
In the middle of winter, when there can be ice, snow, blizzards, even just a strong wind and drifting snow, 30-40 km can seem like a very, very long distance, and it can be very difficult to cover that sort of distance.
I've done winter rides where I was off my bicycle and pushing it through drifts every 100 metres or so. Over 30-40 km that can get old very quickly.
I've done a ride at the end of winter where the prediction was for a relatively nice sunny day but instead a weather system moved in and the temperature dropped, the wind picked up, and my bottles froze solid, and I suddenly found myself in a situation where, if anything went wrong with the bicycle, I'd be in trouble. I did that once. Never again. And when I got into that situation I was "only" about 30 km from where I'd parked the car ... but it took a long time to get back there, and I was quite miserable by the time I did. Thank goodness there was no precipitation (snow, freezing rain) ...
I've done a lot of winter cycling, but I'd want to do a whole lot more experimentation with the touring side of things (carrying panniers, camping, etc.) from the comfort of being quite close to home in case anything went wrong.
And batteries for a camera would be the least of my worries.