I don't think that we'll get below zero this particular weekend, but, we do have snow predicted for Friday night, and temps in the teens Saturday night. That's still a good test for most of these younger boys.

It's always fun to watch the first time winter campers as they wake up in the morning and their Nalgene bottles are all frozen. The boys are freezing as soon as they get out of their toasty sleeping bags, desperate for a cup of hot cocoa in the morning, but, can't figure out how to get the block of ice water into the pan of their mess kit to heat it up. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> We kinda let them fiddle with that for a while, it usually results in a fire getting built, which is good practice anyway! The older boys seem to learn to keep one bottle of water under the end of their sleeping bag to keep it from freezing. (It sometimes takes a few cold mornings for them to make the connection, but, they are teens after all.) Some of them even notice the old salts boiling water by the fire before lights out, and realize that those lexan bottles filled with boiling water turn into nice foot warmers for the bottom of the sleeping bag.