Imagine you're on an ice sheet in Greenland, a hundred miles of barren snow screaming away to every compass point, only your warm yellow tent protecting you from dangerous mundane exposure. Or heck, let's imagine you're tired of cozy evenings on the couch with a boobtube and pitching that yellow tent in your sub-zero backyard — in Utah, North Dakota, Maine, wherever. The soup in the vestibule kitchen is boiling, almost over. You reach for the cooking pot and ... burner tips, blue flame kissing the tent's overhanging nylon door. In an instant - whoosh!
Disastrous fires of this nature do happen in reality (for explorer types especially, and it's likely to hit stoners who attend bongs, too). But the fact that an accidental Bic-click can burn down your dorm, leaving you with killer stars for company and your prayers for a home—that's not the only reason to camp in the colder season without a tent. Those killer stars, for example: they are really very striking, and the ceiling tends to destroy their twinkle. Weight is another issue: The gear required for a January trip can be oppressive, and forgoing 11 pounds of wadded cloth means a steadier (or slippery) step, plus extra room in the pack for bacon, butter, and whiskey. Also, with melting gaiters and masks, the floored tent turns into a nasty pool.
Tomorrow for microwave pizza and sweatpants. Tonight is the old animal pain of knowing you're alive.
In many scenarios, the bomb shelter is an integral part, so please do not interpret the following list as encouragement to be stupid and ice cube yourself. (When I was working in the Antarctic, years ago, a Finnish single-skier who showed up at the station told me that the difference between life and death "there" was whether you could pitch your tent in a hundred and twenty seconds.) That said, after I'd been there for fifteen winters. Relentlessly playing back and forth, I assure you some outings allow for experimentation. As always, start small: the backyard first, then maybe Greenland.
You went there to explore, right? So do more of it, it will keep you warm. Photo: Michel Kimich/unsplash
Extend your day
By definition, winter is a period of short, compressed days and long, drawn-out nights. In my native Vermont, the solstice sun disappears by four in the afternoon and doesn't rise properly until eight in the morning—and in the northern Cascades or Yellowstone, if a ridge looms over our shoulder, the grip of night narrows even more. (Forget Alaska.) Sixteen hours is an absurd amount of time cooped up in a tent, shivering and playing travel Scrabble.
Well, but you are supposed to be in another country Snowshoe, crank split courses, making snowmen/women, studying wolverine ecology, do one thing or another, right? I suggest taking an extra lap and pooping an extra wolverine - pick up your passion late and start over early. The key to tentless camping is to cut down on "camping out." stay active. Keep the blood pumping. Your toes will enjoy forty-five chiseled minutes of the symmetrical coolness of the night. (Syncing your ride up to the full moon is a great chiseling technique, too.)
Hide from the wind
I read once The last of the mountain men, about a twentieth-century hermit who lived in the Idaho wilderness. A lot of lessons can be found in this guy's experience, but what I'm left with goes like this: The damp wind will drive you licketysplit. Mr. The Hermit had suffered a bit of everything—he had led a deeply rough and rugged life—and yet what he feared most was the damp wind.
Wind. You should consider this when choosing your campsite, even if the day is very quiet. (When you roar in the middle of the night, you'll be sorry.) Examine drifts to determine the prevailing direction of flow. Hide behind a rocky outcrop or hedge of willow bush. If you're in a giant Colorado prairie or a vast frozen Wisconsin lake, build a wall: with blocks of flaky snow, plastic sleds, anything. Get low and stay low.
Snow cave on Mt. hood. Photo: Wikipedia
Dig like a mouse
Do you know the word subnivean? It is an adjective—"to lie or occur under the snow"—usually referring to the area inhabited by mice, mice, and shrews. Often when I'm hypothermic on the frontier, wandering north at dusk or strolling up a local hill to catch a sunrise, I imagine those little butterflies lounging under my boots, warm in their huts and passages: pressed silver crystals for the roof, dry brown weeds for a rug.
Everyone is familiar with an igloo, but conditions must be ideal for such a structure to be stable. Better to dig, to create negative space with an avalanche shovel (better than pawing with gloves). Ice caves can be excavated into a bank or slope. Quinzhees involve snow piling and then drilling. (If you've been piling around a bunch of backpacks, get it out later—voila, you're halfway into a void.) Place-hating worm tunnels are self-explanatory. Because of the insulating properties of ice, a single tea candle becomes a wood stove. These shelters are not flammable!
Make a big fire
On a two-week ski trip through the Ponderosa Pines in Arizona's Kaibab Plateau, I made every breakfast and dinner over a fire, which saved a lot of fuel (MSR canisters are noisy, expensive, and heavy) and provided joyful, relaxing entertainment during the aforementioned. Homogeneous from the cold at night. Drying poles and sticks were used as racks for drying wet socks and wet thermal underwear. Crappy mitts were a gripper for pulling the sooty cauldron of cooked beans off its bottom into the embers.
And speaking of beds: Laying out by the fire, cowboy-style, might sound inviting, but half of you will freeze, and every hour you have to get up and toss another pair of logs. However, if you line up the tarp like a lean-to (picture a 45-degree angle), with the hole facing the fire (duh), you can trap enough energy going out to sleep. Likewise, it's smart to light a fire facing a footstool, rock, or ledge that reflects warmth your way.
feathers of your nest
Padding, padding, padding. The thicker foam pad should always separate — repeat, always — from the heat-absorbing ground (air pads are questionable: bang!). Plus, your simple tarp can double as a ground cover, catching sneaky snow that wants to creep into your nooks and crannies. Empty stuff bags, stinky boxers, and even a Ziploc of litter can be incorporated into the elaborate nest. Padding is padding.
Oh, but it's all very obvious. What wasn't obvious to me, a decade ago, was coniferous boughs: You're a fool for not forming a mattress... Nature provides! So exclaims an enthusiastic Vermont friend, an old-school woodcraft lover. He taught me to cut down twenty or thirty branches of hemlock (the woods have plenty to spare) and lay them as if they were shingles—overlapping, in the same direction. A botanist's mnemonic can aid in the selection process: Fir is flat and friendly, and Fir is prickly (and offensive). Six inches of greenery as a luxurious base.
Learning how to make ice blocks for shelter is not the worst idea. Photo: Wikipedia
Give the sleeping bag a hot foot (water bottle)
Anyone who has seen a documentary about Everest knows that while physical fitness, technical skill, and heroic determination are at hand, a cup of black tea is best. Water equals warm of course, as well as sugar (applying it generously), as well as water brought to two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit and poured into the cup. Henry David Thoreau describes the primary challenge of life in Walden: "To keep the vital heat in us." The tent is nothing more than a thermos, a device designed to retain vital heat. Why not cut to the chase and just keep the body humming with cup after cup of steaming, spine-tingling brew?
It's not just the mountaineer who gets thirsty, though, sleeping bags do too! One classic trick is to boil more water, fill a bottle of Nalgene, and kick it up toward the foot of the bag. But check the leads. If they drop out, you will enter the Fifth Circle of Hell. (A friend uses a dog instead of a Nalgene—the dog wraps around her wet toes, farts and snorts. Be warned: dogs leak, too, hell.)
Snuggle up in a blanket from the cold (read: acceptance)
Warmth is the holy grail, without a doubt. Beauty ensues, the brain space dedicated to survival liberated to roam and enjoy—a chickadee song, a leafless aspen skeleton, and a peachy albenglow at the far summit. But come here, let me whisper a secret in your pale, waxy, frost-tipped ear: You can't be warm while camping in winter! With a tent, without a tent, either way...you're screwed!
And so we come to the final piece of equipment, the ultimate hack—your mind. Managing expectations, for example, realize that if comfort is the goal, it'll be on the couch with a boobtube, poaching in a hotel hot tub, or vacationing in Hawaii. The goal is not comfort. The goal is the season, the place, and the pure encounter with the elemental truth. It's those killer stars—close enough to feel their tingling, but no closer. Tomorrow for microwave pizza and sweatpants. Tonight is the old animal pain of knowing you're alive.
Top photo: Andrea Davis
Source link
0 Comments