Cold weather camping doesn’t need to be a death march into the tundra. This week we explore how to make it tolerable if not enjoyable.
Show Notes:
- Winter Camping and Backpacking Basics (REI)
- 15 Tips for Winter Camping
- 23 Essential Winter Camping Hacks (BuzzFeed)
- Merino Wool Thermal Hiking Socks (Amazon)
- Thermal Set Winter Ski Fleece (Amazon)
Photo by Jan Szwagrzyk on Unsplash
Transcript:
In the northeast if you plan on doing a 12-month camping program you’re going to need to be outside in some cold weather.
The keys to cold weather camping is to maintain your core body warmth.
Whether the boys realize it or not, as the set up tents, haul water, and just simply move around, they are sweating, and one of the best ways to combat this is to change your socks regularly and wear layered clothes.
When a boy comes to me and says he’s cold, or he just looks cold, I ask him if he’s changed his socks, and the answer is always “NO”.
When you think about it, if there is snow on the ground, that means that the ground has to be colder than the air to support the snow. If you don’t have proper footwear (sneakers for instance) that cold gets transferred to your feet. If your feet are wet, you are essentially putting ice in a drink to make it colder, so don’t do it. Change the socks.
Gear in the cold is important.
Similarly to the socks example, when you go to sleep, you are on the same cold ground. If you simply put your sleeping bag on the ground of your tent, it’s going to be harder to stay warm.
In my troop we have the boys purchase space blankets, and suggest they get sleeping mats. By doing this you have multiple layers. We have the ground cloth below the tent, the tent bottom, space blanket and sleep mat before you get to the sleeping bag.
The tents we use in our troop are 3-man tents, and usually we have 2 scouts per tent.
In the cold weather, we try and have a 3rd boy in the tents, especially for the younger scouts. On our latest cold weather camping trip we actually had 5 of the littler guys in one tent. This raises the overall temperature inside the tent.
As Scoutmaster, I am ultimately in charge of their health and safety. So on these trips you want to keep an eye on the boys, especially the younger, less experienced ones. You look for boys that are abnormally lethargic, blueness in the face and fingers.
When things go south you need a plan. First you look at the camp facilities. Most often bathrooms are heated; sometimes dining halls are open as well. As a fallback, cars are nearby, and you can always stick a boy in the car, turn up the heat, and have him change all his clothes.
I also bring extra gear with me. On this past trip I carried along an extra space blanket, 2 sleeping bag inserts. These inserts are good for about 10 degrees of warmth, an extra fleece jacket, trail mix and teabags and hot chocolate packets and black lawn and leaf bags.
In a pinch you can take one of the thicker bags and put it over the bottom of a sleeping bag, this will help hold more heat in the bag. Plus there are always hand warmers you can toss into a bag, and the old trick of putting hot water in a nagelen bottle and tossing it into the bottom of the sleeping bag. But this is what works for us.
Take what you like and leave the rest, and as we say in Woodbadge, feedback is a gift, leave yours below in the comments, with the hope we can all learn together.
I’m Scoutmaster Dave, and this was Cold weather camping.
