A Cheat Sheet for Keeping Warm on a Winter Camping Trip

I woke up looking this good.

Winter camping can be an amazing experience.  You get to be out all night in silence, have the hills to yourself, enjoy a lazy sunrise bringing a little warmth to the land.  However, the cold temperatures mean you are at a great risk for hypothermia.  You need the right equipment and the right attitude and know-how to make this work!  While most people will give the mere thought of sleeping outside in winter a pass, a few brave souls will embrace the challenge and have a much more memorable experience than a weekend on the sofa on a Netflix binge.  It’s all about challenging yourself and living an adventurous life.  

Having grown up in a very cold place and spending a lot of time outdoors, I am pretty good at keeping warm.   Plus, this winter’s heating cost has got my thermostat right around 12c.  Sometimes the heat doesn’t switch on for days and I found that I’m absolutely fine with it (although a little bulky with all the layers).  Plus it keeps visitors away 🙂 

 

I’ve done camping expeditions in winter in Maine, in the arctic, the Himalayas and the Alps along with some truly wild nights out in Dartmoor, Wales and Scotland.  Oddly enough, the coldest I ever felt was camping on Gran Canaria at 1900m.  I was not prepared to feel that cold in the near-tropics!  Over the years I’ve acquired quite a bit of know-how that I do my best to share with others.   

Some “hot” tips for sleeping (and being) warm-

• Do not wear too much in your sleeping bag.  Sleeping bags are designed to reflect heat back to you.  If you are wearing oodles of layers and a down jacket, your sleeping bag will not be effective.  Strip down to thermals and you’ll be better off.  I’ve met loads of people who strip down to their skivvies and swear by it.  

• Empty your bladder!  Your body wastes lots of energy heating excess liquid.  It’s painful to have to leave your tent and hike to the loos, but you’ll feel much warmer afterwards.  Which leads to:

• Watch your alcohol and caffeine intake.  Diuretics will make you have to pee more, as anyone who has been on diamox can attest. You won't get a good night's sleep if you have to get up and pee every couple hours.  While alcohol can make you feel warm, it ultimately will leave you cold. It dilates the blood vessels close to your skin (which is why I turn beet red after a drink) and takes warmth from your core.  Drinking herbal tea before bed is a much better idea. 

• Warm yourself before getting into your sleeping bag.  Do star jumps for a minute.  The warmer you are getting into your bag, the more heat will be trapped inside the bag.

• Make sure your sleeping bag has the appropriate “comfort” rating for the temperature you are sleeping in.  “Extreme” means you will probably be too cold to sleep but will ward off hypothermia for a few hours in an emergency

• Use a sleeping bag liner.  These can be cotton or silk or synthetic.  Not only do they keep your sleeping bag clean, they add a few degrees of warmth.  I find them nicer on the skin than polyester sleeping bag so I sleep better with one.  

• Store your sleeping bag properly.  If you compress down for too long, it will stay smooshed down and will lose its warmth.  The compression bag that it comes with should only be used for short periods when you are porting the bag.  The rest of the time you should store it so it has as much expansion space as possible.  When you are ready to set up camp, fluff it up and shake it out as much as you can to get the down distributed in the baffles.  

• Huddle.  Sharing a tent increases warmth.  On high Himalayan expeditions, no one is in their own tent for a reason.  

• Make sure you are getting a hot meal laden with calories.  Please don’t be like the one guy who only brought a bag of apples on a camping trip where it snowed.  Apples will not keep you warm.

• Stay hydrated.  In winter, your thirst response diminishes by up to 40%.  You can be dehydrated and not even know it.  Carry a flask of tea and make sure you are forcing yourself to drink.  I know some find it repulsive, but drink warm water as it won’t feel like a glacier hitting your guts.  Before a hike, I drink a liter of water before we even get started just to make sure I’m hydrated before I put demands on my body.

• Layer up.  Layers will keep you warmer than just a single giant puffy coat.  Merino base layers are the best, synthetic is pretty good, and cotton anything is an absolute no-no.  Jeans do not keep you warm.  Mittens keep your fingers warmer than gloves, but you lose mobility.  Those flip top mittens are a good compromise. 

• Store your clothes at the bottom of your sleeping bag and get dressed in your sleeping bag in the morning.  This is a real life skill.  If everything I’ve got on is inside out and backwards, chances are I got dressed in my sleeping bag.

• Keep your phone somewhere in your sleeping bag overnight.  Cold drains batteries.

• Keep dry.  There’s no better way to get hypothermia than having wet or sweaty kit on a cold night.  Make sure you know your tent seals are in good order and that you use a ground sheet.  Learn to pitch up fast if it is raining to minimize your tent getting rained in.  Carry a J cloth to wipe out your tent if you do get water or condensation.  You can use your ground sheet as a tarp to keep your kit out of the mud and cover it while you set up camp.  Your waterproofs need to be dependable.  

• Sleep away from the tent walls to keep condensation from running onto your sleeping bag.

• Avoid breathing/tucking your face into your sleeping bag.  You will create condensation that will cool the air in the sleeping bag.  Use a buff/neck gaiter instead.  

• If you wake up cold during the night, do a few situps or run in place.  Your tent mate will hate you but you’ll get back to sleep faster if you are warm.

• Sleep on a thermal mat.  The cold from the ground is what gets most people.  If you don’t have a thermal mat, you can put a yoga sort of mat below your regular summer mat.

• If you have a metal water bottle, you can put boiling water in it and use it as a hot water bottle.  If you have a water bladder like a platypus or a camel back, you can put hot (not boiling) water in it, but only if you have confidence that it won’t leak!  Bonus you get a little warm hydration in the morn.  

• Bring spare wool socks.  Your feet tend to sweat a lot (up to a pint a day apparently) and changing your socks to a dry pair will keep them toasty.

Another day, another adventure 

Signs of Hypothermia progression: Shivering, slow weak pulse, slurred speech, slowed breathing, lack of coordination, irritability and confusion.  Most people who our outdoorsy in the UK have experience with mild hypothermia if you’ve been caught out without the right kit or forgot to bring a hat or did a polar bear swim on New Year’s Day.  If you do not get out of the situation or do anything proactive to get warm, mild hypothermia can quickly lead to severe hypothermia and this can lead to death as your organs start to fail.  We’d like to avoid this.  If you are feeling freezing cold and suddenly you are boiling hot, this is not a good sign.  Your body will dilate blood vessels in a last-ditch attempt to save your limbs.  Many a hypothermia victim have been found with very little clothes on.  Stay dry and warm and seek help if you are not able to warm up.  

Frostbite is also a concern if the temps drop below 0.  This is when your skin freezes and ice crystals will damage your tissues.  It mostly happens on your nose, fingers and toes, but you can get it anywhere.  It can range from mild (tingling and stinging) to severe (tissue blackened, blistered and amputation needed)  Avoid by keeping skin completely covered in sub zero temps.  Wind chill will make the temps feel far worse.