Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Surviving a cold wet night

Redmtn, now that's a notable item on a resume. There can't be many people who actually lived at Ocean Falls.

A further thought on synthetic base layers:
Even when the skin does not feel cold, the body is losing heat as the wicking material transfers out water. That's good, except in extreme cold or long exposure to cold. It amounts to burning calories to heat outside air, and sooner or later leads to loss of core body temp. I have felt that coming on while wearing a synthetic base and porous outer layer, and added an outer shell to stop the heat loss. That also stops the moisture loss, even with breathables if you are sweating heavy, but wet and warm is better than cold, wet or dry.

It is a classic trade-off. Keeping skin and inner clothing dry aids in keeping warm by not having insulation spaces fill with water and losing their insulation properties. But inner body heat is what drives this engine, cooking off moisture and heat. As long as you can fuel the body enough to lose heat at that rate without a drop on core temp, it works well. It will work well in most climates, especially for short forays.

John Frazer, your idea of reversing the wool to wear as a base layer and the wicking synthetic outside has intersting possibilities. I will have to try that.

From the military point of view, we like the ability to strip to the skin, whirl the polypro around in a fast circle, and the item is now almost moisture free.

put it back on, put on a wind barrier over that, head out.

synthetic = low maintenance.

Interesting concept. I've missed your posts regarding this as this is the first I've heard of it and have never experienced it. I don't believe I've ever had moisture wicked away TOO fast and usually wish it would go faster than it does.

Body moisture evaporation rates are proportional to the relative humidity. At a high RH like when it's raining, I can get as wet from inside as the outside. It's the wet conditions and being active when I wish for pit zips in garments that don't have it. I love my HH Impertech, but wish the jacket had pit zips. I think that would prevent condensation (or at least reduce it) on the inside of the jacket.

Just received a replacement Patagonia Micro-Burst pant. Going to put on my Ether Shell and these pants, and jump in the shower for a while to see what happens.

I'll wear dark cotton underneath so that I can easily find all leaks once I get out.

Better to find out about this stuff at home!

Prefer you report without pics for this one

Dang!

rb

Plus 1

It's not at all original with me -- a friend who's a serious ultralight backpacker/trail runner/ice climber/SAR team member is a big devotee of wearing an Icebreaker or Smartwool base layer under a softshell jacket and pants. When he stops moving, he puts on a big puffy Primaloft jacket over top of everything.

He's in southwestern Colorado, so he's dealing with cold but dry conditions--at least externally dry. His activities would certainly create the "inner storm"!

Well, I've read with great interest all these posts.

I can't help but remember reading the journals of Lewis and Clark and other explorers of the North country including the native people who lived day in and day out in the kind of 'stuff' written about here. IMO, these men indurred more day to day 'emergencies' than I can begin to imagine and very likely more than many would care to admit here.

Granted, they most often had one thing not mentioned here and that is a horse or some other way of moving around in the wild country. So this is a back packing forum but I have to ask, "Has anyone ever looked into what the men carried before the days of Gortex, and the like"? What was used for boots by Lewis and Clark and their men when they crossed the contintental divide in deep snow? How did the Indians of the plains or anywhere for that matter, survive if caught out like is being talked about here? Sure some of them died but they learned fast or died. They learned from their fathers how to live in the wild every day.

In those days a man without a horse was a dead man for the most part and that's why horse thieves were shot on the spot by the 'white man'. Same holds true for Indians stealing horses from their enemies.

The one item that was indespendsable to these men was an oil skin (or the like) poncho with a hood. Getting soaked to the skin in the winter was avoided if at all possible. They wore oil skin chaps or like on their legs. Two layers of oil skin were on their shoulders in a cape like fashion. When they had to spend the night out in foul weather the poncho was their tent AND sleeping bag. They trapped their body heat inside with the hood. They kept dry to begin with.

How?

They went through the country and didn't sweat by adjusting to the outdoors as they walked.

All this talk about sweating and getting chilled from the moisture means to me that possibly some of us are moving too fast to begin with. I hunt chukars in very steep mountains in the winter and burn a lot of calories all day long. At the first sign of sweating I adjust my clothing and it's not unusual to have only a shirt on in cold weather...even just a long sleeved Capilene tee shirt!!! Yep, and the wind is howling around me but I'm comfortable. I can't even wear a hat most of the time. I don't wear long jons either. But I carry Filson chaps, a poncho that's rain proof and some extra clothing in my fanny pack. I stay dry and if I start to get cold I slip on more clothing.

But I stay dry to begin with. I'm 64 now and spent a fair amount of time in the steep country of Idaho in all seasons which included hunting elk with a framed back pack for a week usually. But I ALWAYS KNEW WHERE I WAS AND HOW TO GET TO A TRAIL should the weather turn ugly. I packed out enough elk to know what work it is and now with screwed up back from this I have to hunt with a fanny pack or get a horse.

This inner storm that's mentioned I've experienced from relying on a new Gortex down filled coat that almost got me killed. It'd started to snow way up in the high country and I'd just shot a deer that had to be gutted out before going back to camp. I was in my tee shirt from all the work and when finished put the jacket on and started back to camp. In no time at all the jacket was like tissue paper thin and I made it back OK long after dark (like 4 hours of hiking down a creek trail). I threw the jacket in the trash and went back to my poncho and carrying warm clothes in a big fanny pack.

I don't like these 'breathable' suits because they don't breathe enough for me. I sweat too easily and a poncho allows the heat to escape AND if my pants are kept dry with chaps I'm fine.

Just my 2 cents.

you've got a point, I try to start off on the cool to cold side if I'm going to be hiking.

wool base layers are fairly new gear to me.

have always just worn my synthetics and if needed my rain gear over them.

I'm cold starting out, get chilled as I wait for the evaporative effect to take place when I stop, but then have dry gear to put on in my pack.

was always one of lifes mysteries to me, guys starting out hiking
like they were all geared up to sit and glass.

I'd rather spend a few uncomfortable moments at the beginning of my travel and the end than all day misery when out in the field.

I understand Patagonia has made, and maybe still does make, base layer stuff that does not dry out as fast as Capliene. That was to promote the cooling effect by slowing the evaporation rate off of the base layer. I don't use Capliene in really hot weather simply because it's too warm. A light, loose fitting nylon or cotton shirt, that stays wet, works much better.
I have no agrument with those that say as the moisture evaporates off of the body, it takes heat with it. My position is that the longer and the wetter the base layer garment gets, the worse this gets. Therefore, it is vital that it dry as fast as possible. Nobody uses cotton, for instance, as a base layer in cold weather. Stays wet too long and absorbs watter too much.
Patagonia has lab tests which show the relative merits of each of it's base layers. The Merino Wool base layer stuff dries about 40% as fast as Capliene. But it is also much warmer.
My thought in buying it is that I'd get both in one garmet. It didn't work out that way. Some of it might have to do with the area where I was - SW Montana on the east side of the Rockys. However, if it were going to dry out any where near as fast as Capliene, I would think that it would there.
Might be that I couldn't get Capliene to dry out enough or fast enough if I spent days in very wet weather. However, I've used it for day long working in hard rain. Gets and stays dry if used it with a pit zip garment. Better than anything else I've used. That also depends on how warmly you are dressed overall. If too warm, anything will get wet quickly when exercising hard.
So, maybe that's the important difference. Really wet, day after day wet weather. Where nothing can dry out might give the warmth edge to wool. I don't know. I do have some doubts. E

E, nothing works well in day after day deep dampness if you can't throw it in a dryer each night. That's why the big majority of hunters who live anywhere near the wet coast go east of the mountains to hunt!

Idahochukar, What did the old timers like Lewis and Clark wear? Heavy stuff. The men who climbed Everest (or tried) 50-75 years ago wore horribly heavy clothes compared to what we have now.

As to wet, read the account of Lewis and Clark. They weren't in rain forest, just the northern Oregon coast. The elk hide clothes they wore rotted on their bodies. They had planned to stay in their winter camp much longer to let snow melt in the passes for their return, but they couldn't stand the wet conditions anymore and bugged out for Idaho early. Survive? Yes. Comfortable? No.

I like Capilene and wear it quite a bit. Nothing is perfect but we have some fabulous gear options compared to the previous few thousand years. And though I'm generally a conservative dinosaur about clothes and gear, I'm expecting us to develop a film or energy field that controls climate next to skin and would allow a man to climb Everst in a T-shirt and shorts, on one set of high energy batteries.

Having lived at Ocean Falls and worked in the bush all over the BC coast and Vancouver Island, plus in the "Wet Kootenays", I can say with certitude that virgin merino wool, under waterproof shells will out-perform ANYTHING now available in long-term, daily use.

I won't wear Gore-Tex in such conditions, waxed cotton and coated nylon are heavy and stiff, thus impeding pack fit, a serious issue for we who tote heavy packs. Nothing will work as well as eVent shells over m-wool or I would use it, I have no interest in using anything less than the most functional.

Now, working in heavy rain, is that like six weeks of 10-12 hour days planting trees in BC coastal March rain or how about an open 14 ft. boat on Georgia Strait in December-January alone on the open ocean? Maybe hiking in February in the Bella Coola-Ocean Falls area in continual rain and winds off the ocean?

Wet, yeah, in BC we KNOW about WET!!!

Climbing, BC is mostly either straight up or straight down and an ice axe, crampons and even ropes are a part of our alpine hunting. I am about to buy a lighter axe, my fourth and alloy crampons for Mule Deer and Bighorn hunting as these keep me safer from falls at my advanced age, I don't hunt on private ranches and close to cities with restaurants to eat in and almost never stay in cabins as the BCFS burnt almost all the old-time ones in the '70s to prevent use by draftdodgers growing dope.

I just had yet another thought, which is dangerous. Native people didn't wear much clothes when the weather permitted, so didn't have much to get wet nor to dry out. Skin dries easily and quickly because it has an inner heat source.

A lot of my days hunting early seasons I could do fine with boots and a jock strap. Leggings would be the only addition I'd want till it got cold, for brush and rock protection of lower legs.

Hmmm....

Aboriginal peoples on the BC Coast and into the interior wore and prized "Chilcat Blankets", made of, you guessed it, WOOL from Rocky Mtn. Goats. Later, they made shawls and sweaters from lanolin retaining virgin wool and I wore these for years working in the worst weather of the coast....they work extremely well doen to minus 40 with a shell to cut the wind.

They also used waterproof capes or ponchos of finely woven Cedar rootlets to stay dry and these passed moisture out as vapour while keeping rain off their clothing/skin. Check the BC Museum or UBC Anthropology to see this.

Much of the Everest clothing of Merkel, Mallory and the other Everest greats was BETTER than most of what is now popular and this has recently been verified by use on an expedition. I have had two Ventile parkas and over merino wool and really fine down, they will out-perform ANY other shells in sub-zero cold and high winds.

Synthetics sell because they are cheap and do work quite well, but, if you live in real wilderness and are there for extended periods, you soon find what is best; it simply requires an open mind, independent use and actual experience in such conditions.

What about BUGS when tripping along au natural??? Worst damm sunburn I ever got was doing this on Bulldog Lookout one fine July Sunday in 1974.....ah, the good old days.....

I thought I read the original Everest explorers used a lot of egyption cotton in their layering, as well. Can't remember the book I read that explained that though.

Ventile IS the best grade of Egyptian cotton, very tightly woven and it ROCKS when made into a mountain parka. I have a Synergy Works Ventile Parka that I bought in 1977 and wore continuously until the late '80s, it is worn, but, STILL works although it is a bit tight as I am a bit "larger"than I used to be....time and the crabs and the sweethearting crib...as Dylan Thomas wrote....

NO high-tech parka I have had will compare in utility or versatility of temperature/conditions with this and I have had about every highend one available, I now will only wear eVent shells or a Ventile, if I could get another.

This stuff is mostly out of my area. I do use a lot of Filson Waxed cotton to work in the outdoors and it works well beyond the normal notions of cotton.

Filson is wonderful gear, but, waxed cotton is too heavy and too stiff in severe cold for my taste. I want one of their jackets for just walking my new and old Rottweiler, though, but, gotta wait until next year as I must buy a 4x4 this year and the new pup costs big coin.

With regard to first aid kits, you should take aspirin and nitro glycerin. Even though you may not have heart disease its a proven fact that a good percentage of the people who die each year from a heart attack do not have heart disease but rather die from a heart attack caused by a blood clot that came from somewhere else in the body. Aspirin will thin your blood and possibly help with the clot, and Nitro will help with the pain while you are making your way out, if you are still alive.