I have never looked a Ptarmigan but have killed elk. ?
Shoot one and eat it if you can, it's a very nice meat.
Really well done. “Details, details, details”... always good advice. I spent a decade in Timmins ON, and saw -40 many a winter morning... (tires square up).
Those temperatures are savage, and there are so many materials and tools that just change properties when it get's that cold. It's not that it's overly difficult to thrive, but paying attention to very basic routines (like brushing the backpack and not melting the snow against your back) makes it a lot less unpleasant.
[...] navigation in flat light, no tree line... challenging or did you ave GPS;
It's not really that difficult, it's just a matter of "details, details, detail" and having a gameplan before I'm in the shit. The flat light is more a safety hazard than a navigation issue, you lose the contours in front of you and skiing becomes difficult which again causes you to fall a lot more. I have ski goggles with contrast lenses and that really helps, but if the wind picks up you also drift that wipes away the ground ancles down eventhough you see the horizon just fine. At this stage I'm not really skiing anymore, but walking with skis or making short runs from safe point to safe point. When it gets really bad it's two steps at a time and drop the skipole in front to check the lay of the land (I've only had this twice). This stuff doesn't show up on a weather forecast, and flat light is just a matter of cloudcover, so you just have to deal with it.
I had a Geronimo moment on this trip, skiing in flat light from safepoint to safepoint. I was descending the mountain, zigzagging down and steering towards a soft puff of snow to catch me and slow me down. Only the "soft puff" was frozen solid and put my airborne for what felt like a world record skijump. Looking back, the absence of skitracks showed me it was less than 2 yards, but it goes to show how fast thing can change. From merrily skiing home to being pounded into the ground in a fraction of a second.
Severe weather shows up on the forecast and there's no point going out in that weather - you're not going to see anything and the winds/ snow will knock you over again and again. But a whiteout (or darkness if your descent is delayed) is just a matter of navigating towards a predetermined catchline (usually valley floor, river or lake) and following that back to a more solid navigation point. I have a compass, my required heading is predetermined in the morning and my map has my catchlines highlighted. So whereever I go, I am "boxed in" by catchlines and we (we are usually 4 people or more in basecamp) all fall back to the same catchlines. We all have headtorches so it's easy to spot a light coming down the mountain in darkness. I use small ones with AAA batteries, not much light is required to see the immediate area in front of you and be seen from a good distance. I think mine are 100-250 lumen strenght, I find that bigger lamps blinds you with reflections and makes navigation that much harder.
ruff grouse is white breast meat, spruce hens were dark/gamey... what was ptarmigan like? Thanks for sharing ?
The video posted farther up was very good in describing ptarmigan. I find it very gamey and portion it like a "dessert meat", meaning too much meat will ruin the meal.
