Are you currently planning a winter camping trip? If so, you’re in for a fun experience, but you also need to be aware of vital tips you can use to keep yourself comfortable and—most importantly—alive.
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In this video, Enlightened Equipment discusses ten winter camping tips to ensure that you don’t freeze:
1. Err On The Side Of Warmth
Accept the fact that your winter survival kit is going to be significantly heavier than your summer survival kit. Invest in heavy quilts, blankets, and sleeping bags that are designed for at least ten degrees colder than you are expecting.
2. Know Yourself And Your Gear
If you have not been winter camping before, you need to change that so you can get used to the experience and familiarize yourself with your equipment. You don’t want a true survival situation to be the first time you have to camp out in the woods during the winter.
3. Proper Layering Is Critical
Plan on having at least three layers of clothes on you at once, and add or subtract layers as you see fit. Loose-fitting clothing is preferable to tight-fitting clothing, and avoid cotton at all costs.
4. Hide From The Wind
Always face away from the wind rather than in front of it, and ensure your shelter is designed to shield you from the wind as well.
5. Do Not Hold Your Urine
Before hitting the hay, be sure to urinate. Otherwise, your body will expend energy while you sleep to heat up your urine.
6. Keep Your Water And Electronics From Getting Frozen
If you heat up a water bottle before you go to bed and put it at the bottom of your quilt, it will heat up your feet and prevent them from getting frozen. The same goes for your electronics. Keep them in your sleeping bag and quilt so they stay warm.
7. Eat And Move Before You Hit The Hay
If you go to sleep cold, you most likely will stay cold throughout the nice. Eat and do exercises such as pushups and jumping jacks before you climb under your blanket and sleeping bag.
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8. A Proper Sleeping Pad Is A Must
Do not use your summer sleeping pad. Ensure there is a solid barrier between yourself and the cold ground. The R-value of your winter sleeping pad should be much higher than your summer pad.
9. Fill Up The Space In Your Tent
This includes your pack, gear, boots, and anything else you have with you. This reduces the amount of space that your body heat needs to warm.
10. Check The Weather Conditions Before You Head Out
If there’s a snowstorm on the horizon, you’ll need to delay your camping trip.
For more information, be sure to check out this video by Enlightened Equipment below:
On the sleeping bag advice, don’t you mean 10 degrees colder than you’re expecting?
On the sleeping bag advice, don’t you mean 10 degrees colder than you’re expecting?
Are there any sort of “safe” heaters or similar items you could use inside a tent during winter to keep warm?
It seems it could be risky for obvious reasons but maybe there’s some sort of device I’m overlooking that would work.
It would be better/safer to build a reflector fire outside the tent that will burn all night and reflect heat towards the tent. Any type of heater inside the tent would burn precious oxygen you’ll need!
Instead of building a fire which you would get a little cold relief and only if you tend it all night. How about doing as they did in the old days. They had a bed pan that they filled with heated rocks which you would do as you cook or just sitting around the fire at night. Then just before hitting the sack place the bed pan with the heated rocks in your sleeping bag wrapped with a towel. The heat is longer lasting in the insulated enclosure with you in it.
NO oxygen use, and not kept up tending a fire!
There is another trick I have used in clod climates. There are hand warmers that use lighter fluid. They last for hours and use very little oxygen. Put those in the bottom of your sleeping bag. It is the ones that have a flannel bag to hold it.
Yes, a medium to large Dog.
Ours has the nickname of “heatilator” because he produces so much heat.
Dogs love to cuddle up with their people and they produce a lot of body heat as well being good companions and a good security alarm and usually a good wake up clock.
Of course you will find they like to “hog the covers”. when it is really cold. but many people sleep with their dogs.