KEEPING WARM
    Perhaps the most common misconception people have about winter camping is that you spend most of your time standing around a fire, rubbing your hands together to stay warm.  Another is that you spend your nights inside a tent with a nine-billion BTU heater to warm your old bones.  Not so.  In fact, you don't rely on any external heat source for warmth.
    If you picture your own warm-blooded body as a glowing furnace, and the food you eat as fuel for that furnace, you start to get the idea.  This can be applied to almost any extended outdoor winter activity:  You rely, almost exclusively, on the internal heat-producing metabolism of your body to provide your warmth.
   The type of food you use to fuel the furnace is also important.   To continue the analogy, consider simple carbohydrates (like sugar) as kindling; complex carbohydrates (like nuts and cereal grains) as large sticks; and fats (like butter) and proteins (like meats) as big logs.  For quick energy, hot fruit drinks, cocoa, or candy will certainly do the trick, but they burn up rapidly.  A good whole-grain trail mix, macaroni and cheese, or fatty sausage will go a lot farther in keeping your furnace aglow with warmth.
    Plan your foods so that the majority of your fuel comes from the larger end of the tree.
    And don't worry about calories, either.  In fact, you can eat as much as you want.  You need to actually double—sometimes even triple—your daily intake of calories during cold-weather activity to stay warm.  That means you SHOULD eat an extra sausage or two, or add a whole yummy stick of butter to your mac 'n' cheese—just think of it!
    Also, eat BEFORE you get hungry so that you always keep a fire going in your furnace.  If you don't let it burn down to a bed of coals, you should always have sufficient warmth.
    Now, picture your clothing as insulation around that glowing furnace and the idea is nearly complete.  (Remember, your clothing itself does not actually provide warmth; it merely holds it in.)  Because, through the occasional exertion of skiing, wood gathering, or recreational activity, you are essentially opening the draft on your furnace, you can expect your fire to get roaring pretty good at times.  For this reason, you need a sort of safety release valve to expel excess heat.  By dressing in removable layers rather than covering your entire furnace with a thick single blanket of insulation, you can readily ventilate excess heat away from your body.
    Why not conserve it?  Because you will sweat.  And sweat leads to damp clothing, which leads to a nearly astronomical drop in its insulating value, which can lead to such a tremendous influx of cold from the outside that it puts the fire out.
    And I mean completely out—as in death.  Death from extreme hypothermia.
    Without question, there are preferred fabrics and materials for wilderness winter wear—based primarily on two things:  1) how well they insulate; 2) how well they resist dampness.
   Cotton should be avoided at all costs. This especially pertains to longjohns and jeans.  It is, by far, the most frequent culprit in winter-weather maladies involving cold, chills, and hypothermia.  That's because it retains moisture to the point where you are literally insulating in reverse, losing heat.   Zip.  Negative value.  It happens almost inevitably.  Get rid of cotton!
    As a general rule, the new synthetics—like Polypropylene, Thermax and Capilene—make the best long underwear and sock liners because they insulate well and effectively wick moisture away from the body.  A good alternative might be wool longjohns with a silk underwear liner.
    Wool makes excellent winter wear for pants, shirts, sweaters, jackets, socks, hats, baclavas, scarves and mitt liners; unlike many fabrics, it retains its insulating value even when wet.  Polar Plus is also gaining popularity for delivering the same performance as wool but is lighter in weight and dries faster.
    Down still holds its own as one of the best insulators, but it loses much of its value when damp or compressed.  So synthetics like Quallofil, Hollowfil and Thinsulate—for battings in pants, booties, vests and parkas—generally make superior materials.
    For an outer wind shell, BREATHABLE nylon, such as Supplex, or Gortex rain gear is desirable (winter weather can sometimes bring rain, too).  But good old 60/40 is respectable.  That is, 60% polyester/40% cotton, or some variation of it—the only exception to the rule against cotton I can think of.
    I stand by the mukluk for footwear.  Mukluks wear like moccasins and, unlike rubber pac boots, transfer moisture away from your feet.  They stay incredibly warm.
    Just one more factor for maintaining warmth, not yet mentioned, is the consumption of water.  Dehydration, believe it or not, is often a greater concern in winter than in summer.  Your body depends on a continuous equilibrium of water in its system to properly metabolize food/fuel into heat.  Therefore, just as with calorie intake, drink BEFORE you get thirsty.  You really have to stay on top of it.  (I have suffered a couple of dandy headaches as a result of dehydration, on outings where I didn't.)  It's okay to take water in the form of hot beverages.  However, caffeine is discouraged because it is diuretic—leads to expulsion of fluids from the body—and alcohol is a no-no because it leads to significant heat loss through excessive dilation of the blood vessels.
    Incidentally, it's really worth toting an ice auger along to obtain wilderness water.  Melting snow is much slower, and it consumes a bit more fuel.

GETTING THERE
    If you are planning your first winter camping trip, you might prefer to keep your destination within an hour or two (three to five miles) of your immediate take-off point.  Travel to just about any destination in the Boundary Waters during winter requires skis or snowshoes.  Because occasional slush conditions or bad weather often make lake travel extremely difficult, the shorter distance from the roadhead will make it less of a task to return.
    The ALAHC Winter Wilderness Trek program has traditionally used backpacks for carrying gear.  The pack sled (or pulk) extends your carrying capacity and is far easier to tote.  The only real drawback is that you must do double-duty on the sled bottom if you run into slush.
    An inexpensive homemade rig can be made from a plastic kiddy-toboggan.   (A six-foot sled tracks better than a four-foot one.)  For lake travel and maybe one or two moderately level portages, a rope tied around your waist or shoulders is all you really need to pull your loaded sled.  But if you anticipate going down any kind of steep grade, you might want to consider making some sort of a pole harness to keep the sled from slamming into you from the rear while going downhill.  Commercially made pulks are usually equipped with them.
    Wrapping items in plastic is a very good idea in winter.   Excessive snowmelt, slush or (shudder!) a thin-ice episode, can turn your pack sled into a miniature swimming pool.  Also, lay a plastic tarp over your sled before you pack it, then wrap it around everything before sewing it up, criss-cross fashion, like a big Tom turkey.  The plastic handles on your homemade sled make good tiedown points.   This will secure everything while extending your waterproofing considerably.
    The ease of transporting a pack sled allows you to bring the greater amount of food you need; it also lets you bring frozen foods in lieu of freeze-dried.   (Hint: Musher Lloyd Gilbertson reports feeding his wilderness camping groups pre-cooked HOMEMADE foods—frozen in Seal-a-Meal pouches—all from a no-mess, single cauldron of boiling water!)  Also, the pack sled often represents the tie-breaker between whether or not you should bring such items as a gas lantern, which is sometimes nice to have after a five-o'clock winter sunset.
    The type of camp hardware you bring should not differ much from a summer canoe trip, but there are a few exceptions:  If you bring a cooking stove, make sure it's a pump-up gas type (bring a small board to set it on).  The pressure inside the tank of a propane unit tends to be weakened by cold.  Apart from your actual cooking utensils, plastic is recommended for eating to avoid contact frostbite from metal items.  A plastic dairy-whip tub works well as an eating dish; spoons and forks made of lexan will not easily break in the cold.  No cleanup—other than a good wiping out with snow—is necessary, since decay bacteria are inert in winter, so you can leave the dish soap at home, as well.