Mmm... burned meat.

So we met up at the Gold Creek Sno Park and started the grueling three quarters of a mile to our destination. The party people that showed up were Jeremy and Shannon, Dan, and Gregg and Elissa. In spite of the well trod "trail" to Gold Creek Pond we donned snowshoes and made quick work of the short trip. (It was an official nightshoe outing after all.)

I had brought a special bag of charcoal that claimed a single match could be used to light the bag and that would set up the perfect bed of cooking coals. HA! Or maybe it just didn't work while sitting in the snow and being doused by snow from the heavens. At long last, with the help of lighters and a special fire-starter stick it caught... sort of.

Yeah, it was too hot to touch, but just barely. If we blew on it really hard it would sort of glow, but we had chicken to cook and that seemed a little bit on the risky side. So we poked it and prodded it and used snowshovels to fan it.

In the end we did manage to get it hot enough not only to cook a couple of chicken breasts, but even melt the cheese on my burger. Yee ha! Heck, we were even able to toast a few marshmellows for 'smores.

After expending so much effort cooking (more than hiking in) we packed up and headed home. On the upside, it was great to get out and not be hardcore snowshoeing the whole time. So many of my trips are more about the 'shoe and less about the night'. We also learned valuable lessons about cooking in the snow. I also learned (courtesy of subsequent investigation) that you shouldn't cook over a Duraflame log, but cooking over a Javalog is no worse than cooking over wood.

You can be next time there will be the sweet odor of old coffee grounds mixed with the sizzling goodness of burgers.

(Total distance was about 1.5 miles and 100 feet of gain.)