Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting New to mountain hunting with questions

MOUNTAIN WISDOM – LESSONS LEARNED

If you are considering a big game hunt in the mountains then here are some tips that might increase your enjoyment of the trip.

MOUNTAIN AIR: Mountain air is very different than what you may be used to. It is thin and dry. There is simply less air to breathe than you may be accustomed to and the relative humidity is low. The low humidity has several negative effects that your body may not be accustomed to. The dry air creates some extreme temperature variations. It’s common for night time lows to be in the teens and daytime highs to be in the 60s. This means that you can be hypothermic in the morning and experience heat exhaustion in the afternoon of the same day. Short afternoon storms are common and these often drop the temperature by 30 degrees. When combined with some wind and some sweaty clothes, that can be deadly if you don’t react properly.

DEHYDRATION: With every breath, you humidify the air that you breathe. So you are constantly losing body moisture and you don’t realize it and dehydration is a very real concern. Also your perspiration evaporates so rapidly that you often don’t realize that you are sweating. One more thing to consider is that when it's cold you often don't think of drinking when you should. All of these factors can lead to dehydration, which can cause a host of medical problems and it's often a contributor to altitude sickness. Drink at least two quarts of water every day.

LAYERING: Experienced mountain hikers dress in many thin layers and don’t use one big coat, so they can adapt their clothing to a changing environment. When you sit down to rest, put on a jacket or sweater right away. Don’t wait to get cold. It’s too hard to warm up again. Try to avoid cotton clothing. It's deadly in cold wet weather because it soaks up water like a sponge and encourages hypothermia. Wool and wool/synthetic blends, polypropylene and polyester fleece are best because they keep you warm even when wet. I wear a set of polypropylene long johns, wool trousers, a long-sleeved synthetic shirt, a ball cap, gloves, wool socks, gaiters and good boots. I also have in my pack a bandanna (the only cotton that I carry), a fleece hoodie, a knitted watch cap, vest with synthetic insulation and a Gortex/Nylon parka with a hood, extra gloves and extra socks. Your parka should have a layer of Gortex or one of the knockoffs, that actually work like Gortex is supposed to work.

HEAT EXHAUSTION: Heat exhaustion (hyperthermia) results in headache, dizziness, weakness and fainting. It can also progress to coma and death (heat stroke). It’s more common in high humidity environments but it happens in the mountains too. If you start feeling like you are going to faint, then sit down in the shade, drink some water, rub a wet bandanna on your neck and head. Dunk your head in a stream if one’s convenient. Rest for a while and you most likely will recover quickly. Then don’t over exert yourself until it’s cooler.

HYPOTHERMIA: Hypothermia use to be called exposure or freezing to death. Essentially any time that your core temperature drops too low, your body automatically reacts to try to keep the core warm by redirecting blood and the warmth that comes with it, from your limbs and brain, to the core. So your body starts robbing your brain of oxygen. Seventy-five percent of your blood goes to your brain through your neck. If your toes get cold, put on a hat and something to keep your neck warm. This retains warmth that can be shared with all body parts. The first signs of hypothermia are uncontrollable shivering. Then it progresses to slurred speech, cold fingers and toes, weakness, dizziness and eventually coma a death. It can occur at relatively warm temperatures when you are sweating, and weather conditions conspire to drop the air temperature rapidly. Being prepared with the proper layering system of clothing and using the extra layers when necessary, is the best way to avoid hypothermia.

FROST BITE: Frost bite occurs when body parts freeze. The lymph and blood freeze first but eventually body tissues also freeze. This causes damage that may never heal properly and cannot be regenerated. Frost bite will occur first in extremities; toes, fingers, ears, nose, and cheeks. The best way to prevent frost bite is to keep those areas warm and dry and protected from the wind. I carry extra socks, an extra pair of gloves, a fleece hoodie, and a bandanna. I use to carry a balaclava and that works great but a bandanna has so many other uses that even if I carry a balaclava, I still carry a bandanna. I use the bandanna to keep the wind off of my face and I cover my ears with a knitted watch cap and hood.

ALTITUDE SICKNESS: The two most serious types of altitude sickness are HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema) and HACE (High Altitude Cerebral Edema). HAPE is fluid in the lungs and you can self-diagnose it when you feel gurgling in your lungs or pain in the chest. If your breath is condensing and your friends aren't condensing, then you may have fluid in your lungs. HACE is fluid on the brain. You can self-diagnose it when you get dizzy and stay dizzy for more than a minute or so. If one of your hunting partners goes unconscious or doesn't wake up in the morning, you need to transport him to lower elevation immediately to save his life. The only effective field remedy for HAPE and HACE requires an item called a Gamow Bag and you won't have one. So DESCEND! DESCEND! DESCEND! Get to lower elevation immediately if you want to live. Fortunately HAPE and HACE are both rare (but not unheard of) below 10,000' elevation.

The most common type and the least severe is AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness). It's often associated with dehydration. Its' symptoms are similar to those of influenza and they may include mild headache, nausea, vomiting, lassitude, loss of appetite, and periodic breathing (waking up gasping for air). Common Aspirin and Tums can help because they coincidentally contains the just the kind of ingredients that your body needs and it is a mild astringent that reduces the effects of dehydration. Diamox is the brand name of a prescription drug (acetazolamide) that works for some people. Start taking it a couple of days before you begin to ascend. But it doesn't work for everyone and there are some potentially miserable side effects. In most cases, if you rest for a couple of days, drink lots of liquids, and take Aspirin and Tums, AMS will subside and you can start enjoying yourself.

The best way to avoid altitude sickness is to ascend slowly, at the rate of 1,000' per day. But often you don't have that much time. So get in good shape now. Good shape means strong heart and lungs. Good exercises include running stairs, swimming, bicycling, or any other kind of exercise that works the heart and lungs. However sometimes even the best athletes can get altitude sickness, so don't count on that being the cure all. Get to high elevation a few days early and just lounge around for a few days before you start exerting yourself. Stay hydrated, avoid alcohol and coffee or any other kind of diuretic. Take one Aspirin and one Tums each day. Be alert to the symptoms mentioned and react appropriately if they occur.

Also try to develop a technique called pressure breathing. Essentially you consciously make your lungs inhale and exhale before you feel the need to breather heavy. If you wait until you need the air then it’s too late and you are always out of breath. A logical extension of pressure breathing is a technique called the rest step. You generate a rhythm between your body effort and your lungs so that you move slower using less energy, and so you have air before you need it; step-breathe-pause-breathe, step-breathe-pause-breathe, repeat, etc.

MOUNTAIN COMFORT - SLEEPING WARM: There’s an art to keeping warm when sleeping in temperatures below zero. Start by insulating yourself from the frozen ground and then use a really good sleeping bag. I suggest that you use both a closed cell foam sleeping pad and an insulated pad like a Thermarest “Camprest” or “NeoAir” or Big Agnes “Insulated Air Core”. You need a mummy style sleeping bag rated at 0° or colder.



A good 4-season backpack tent with a vestibule will make a big difference. It's important to keep the inside of the tent dry and free of snow. So leave your boots in the vestibule. Store your boots with the laces pulled wide open so you can get your boots on in the morning when they're frozen. One big advantage of sleeping directly on the snow is that there won't be any rocks, sticks or bumps under you and the snow will eventually conform to your body contours. If you setup your tent on the snow then first put a light waterproof tarp on the inside of the floor. Any moisture will run under the tarp and freeze between the tarp and the tent floor.

Put everything in stuff sacks, one sack for each type of stuff and use those stuff sacks to build a nest inside the tent. This keeps you from rolling off the sleeping pads onto the frozen floor of the tent. Wear only clean dry clothing to bed. Wet clothes, even those wet with only perspiration, will take several hours to dry. Wear your knitted hat to bed as a nightcap. Also sleep 2 to a tent and the extra body heat will make a difference. Bring a wide mouth pee bottle so that you can urinate in the middle of the night without leaving the tent.



If your feet get cold, zip up your coat and slip it over the bottom of your sleeping bag. Or you can put a couple of hand warmer packs in the bottom of your sleeping bag. If your chest is cold, put your coat or vest on inside the sleeping bag.

Bring a good thermos with an insulator. I couldn't find an insulator big enough to take a thermos, so I built my own using foam rubber and duct tape. At night first temper the thermos and then fill it with boiling water and put it inside the insulator and then inside your backpack. In the morning you have hot water for instant cocoa and oatmeal without getting out of your bag.

Leave your water bladder at home because the hose will freeze solid. Take a metal water bottle and store it upside down at night so the lid won’t freeze shut. You can thaw the main body of the bottle over your camp stove.

Don’t let your water filter freeze. If it freezes you can’t use it and it might crack the ceramic filter. First purge the filter the best that you can, then put it in a ZipLok bag inside your sleeping bag.

When car camping in a bigger tent, I take a small propane space heater and I place it close to my sleeping bag so, in the morning, I can reach over and start it running without getting out of my sleeping bag. I also take an extra foam pad and lay it next to my sleeping bag so I can stand on it instead of the frozen floor.

MAPS: Buy and use a good map and compass. A GPS unit is not a subnstitute for a map and compass. It is an augmentation.