Mine was about the middle of May in Gallup, NM. I didn't have a place inside a warm building so I had to just wander around all night. Figured I had best stay far away from the law and noticed that three or four of the locals (not cops) were following me around. I was only nineteen but knew for sure to keep a long distance from them guys but just in case, I found a piece of about two inch pipe about two feet long so it became my constant companion.

Good thing, too, as one of them had ferreted me out but I was able to swing first and then get out of there. I whacked him in the head a few times after he went down and I don't know if he ever got up. Didn't care, either.

I sure was glad when the sun came up and I was able to catch a ride on down the road. That guy and his wife even bought my breakfast.

Strange that the day before that night was just about as hot as it could be. That desert sure cools off when the sun goes down.

When I was in the USArmy we slept on the ground in NJ in December or January about 6 inches of snow. Looking back sometimes I really appreciate things now, at least Im sleeping inside tonight.

We've had -40's here, but at least we had some heat. The house leaked and windows kept falling out, but walls are a good thing.

1964, hitchhiking between Lexington and Louisville KY. Late December, -2F, and a blizzard blowing.
That one almost did me in.

#1
Grizzly bear hunting in Alaska in early April.
17 below zero in a pup tent on the snow, nearly lost a few toes.

#2
Backpacked into the rugged Trinity Alps wilderness of Northern California hunting blacktails with lightweight sleeping bag and clothes because opening morning is "Always Warm" when a fluke snowstorm nearly killed me.

About 12 years ago I was working as a wrangler for a sheep hunting outfit in the Rockies in. A fellow in camp decided to shoot an elk across the Smoky river. Said fellow was not only a major PITA and moron, but also deathly afraid of water. S, it fell to me and another wrangler to go butcher and retrieve the elk.

It was still early enough in the day that we figured to be back before dark. We should have known better. The river is deep and fast, and it took us several hours to find a spot where the horses could cross. Even then, it was a near thing. We backtracked down the other side of the river till we found the elk.
We got to butchering and packing it on the pack horses we brought. It was getting pretty dark as we headed back. Before we got back to the crossing, darkness fell and for once, the horses did not seem to know their way back. We ran into one pile of deadfall after another, and finally had to admit we weren't going to make it that night.

We made camp on a small island in the river, to hopefully avoid the grizzly and wolves. The same numbnuts who shot the elk had sat on the stock of his rifle while accompanying us down to the river and broke it. I loaned him mine to ride back to camp, figuring I'd be back in plenty of time. We built a nice big fire and settled in for the night. At first it wasn't too bad, but it started getting seriously cold after a few hours. I used a horse blanket for cover, which didn't smell great but helped some. Not much sleep was had that night, but I did get to see what was easily the most magnificent display of Northern lights I have ever seen, it was absolutely spectacular.

I was well below freezing I'm sure but how cold it was I couldn't say. I've slept in far colder, but never been colder at night than I was that night. Learned my lesson, for sure.

In 1977 my girl friend (now wife) and I took a a long trip in my 1974 VW bus. Started in October on the Oregon coast and then cut inland to Reno, Denver, Casper and then through Montana on our way back to Oregon. Our last night was in mid November at the rest area near Brothers, Oregon. It was -20 and the old VW bus didn't retain much heat. It did, however, start in the morning, which wasn't the case with a number of other cars. We jumped about four or five. It took about a day for our feet to thaw out as the old bus didn't put out much heat at those temps.

January 1965 spent the night in a friend's log cabin in Northern Vermont. Temperature went to 30 below and we literally slept together on the stone hearth of the fireplace. In spite of the fire we both had some frostbite on the toes which I still suffer from.

Minus 54F. Jan 79. Operation Jack Frost AK. I was on my feet moving most of that night. Bunny boots rock.

I was maybe 18-19, some buddies and I drove an old J-10 Jeep pickup up a logging road to a ridgtop to camp and deer hunt. I slept in the back of the pickup, which had a fiberglass cap on it, on a piece of foam rubber in a crappy K-mart bag. The temps dropped an the wind got way up. I awoke with the whole inside of the shell frosted up. I think I may have had some of those old waffle cotton long johns and nothing else.
We built a fire and huddled around it all day, doing little deer hunting at all.

I just about froze to death.

Winter of 1976-77 we went jack rabbit hunting near Fontanelle Dam, WY and were camping in the campground below it. Had a cheap little pup tent for shelter with some kind of ground cloth and a mummy bag rated to 0, but when I climbed in my feet were still cold so I wrapped my down vest around the foot portion.

Zipped it up until just my nose was sticking out. In the morning I remember a big puddle of ice about 6" across on the bag right below my nose where the condensation had pooled. Later we found out that the town right near there had registered -35 that night.

That was the coldest night I lived through.





There was another night we went winter camping where it got to -45, but I died that time.

-35 with a -65 wind chill on the flight line at Offutt AFB, Nebraska. Took me a long time to get warm after I got off that morning.

Sub zero, high humidity, in a non-heated tent, poor site location in the bottom of a draw. Was up most of the night in my -5 bag, liner, wool hat, and my long underwear.

I've camped in -15 and was FAR warmer.

Lot of really cold ones when I was married to my second ex-wife... Much better weather for sleeping now.

A couple of nights in Alaska doing survival training in February.

You were allowed to bring anything you wanted with you, so long as it fit in a quart sized ziplock bag. You jump into the salt water in your Gumby suit and swim to shore. Then you get to spend the next couple of days/nights out there with your survival suit and that ziplock bag.

Good times.

That doesn't sound like much fun at all. Do you remember what you put in your bag, or what you wished you would have brought/left behind?

Mine was in the service too. Beautiful Yakima Firing Center, eastern WA in January.

No idea what the temp was but it as COLD. We got our GP medium set up and stoves going, so we should have been set. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) after dark we had to move. Turns out somebody goofed up, and we were camped on a live fire range!

Packed everything up and made a night drive to bum-freaked Yak, and ended up trying to sleep in a canvas covered deuce&1/2 in a 40 mph wind. I shivered my butt off, even in my fart-sack. Ended up taking the floor covers off so we could get a little heat by idling the engine all night. Not that it helped.

I've been out in colder weather, but that night was the worst by far.
7mm

There ain't a lot you can or wished you put in a quart ziplock that would have mattered. I had a knife, a few Zantac's (no food for a few days and heartburn can be a bitch), lighter and flashlight that I remember.

I wore 3 pair of socks and pulled off two once ashore and kept stashed in warm parts of the body.

Ice fished all night, once...We had a popup ice hut, kept lighting the lantern to keep it defrosted. Our sleeping bags we crusted with ice from the moisture. It was a fun night...caught a lot the next day.

Korea 1989. Zipper on my sleeping bag froze shut.

Elk hunting in Colorado. 17 below in a tent.

Winter of 1977.

Parents were building a house in the country and we had sold our house in town. We were living in an old, uninsulated farmhouse that had only been used as a summer home by the previous owners. We installed a furnace but could only put a very few runs to the downstairs. The bedrooms were upstairs. We had air temps in the low to mid -30's that winter. Don't know for sure just how cold it got in the upstairs. But I do remember my parents putting a thermometer on top of their bedspread the one sunny afternoon and it pegged at 34 degrees.

Two categories:

1. The coldest night for which I was prepared was elk hunting in the late season a couple years ago when it got down to 24 below zero and we were sleeping in an unheated pop-up camper. It was a little painful to breathe but we slept warm enough.

2. The coldest for which I was not well prepared was June of 1975 backpacking in the Gore mountain range. It snowed that night and all I had was a thin sleeping bag and an Army blanket. I was numb from the knees down all night. That's when I decided I'd never be unprepared again.

Hunting camp, Stanley Basin Idaho.

Brothers? That is God forsaken, it is not?

-57 DEG IN fARIBANKS, aK IN 1956. i WAS DELIVERING NEWS PAPERS. i HAD SO MANY CLOTHES ON THAT MY SHRUNKEN PECKER WOULDN'T MAKE IT OUT OF MY PANTS. i DID THE REST OF THE ROUTE STIFF LEGGED.
I didn't know that I hit the button, but shouting is appropriate in this case.

North TX when a college buddy and I went to see my parents between Thanksgiving and Christmas. My folks had an apartment behind the house that had a waterbed but since nobody stayed there, they cut the electricity, so no heat and no warmer on the bed. My buddy and I stayed out late drinking and chasing girls and when we got home the house was locked and my parents had gone to bed. We spent the night in the little apartment on the waterbed (and it was dang cold outside). We thought we were going to freeze and the next morning we were huddled so close together you have thought...........well you know, that we were of "that" way.

A night with my x wife...if she uncrossed her legs the furnace would start.................. seriously the coldest temp
I have experienced was -50� F static air temp here. Wasn't at night though but just before sunrise. Spent last Oct 4-5 in a cargo trailer in a blizzard...that was fun even with a heater.

Butler Pennsylvania Feb. 2002.

Gunner

February no tent, just a bag on the snow, got down to -30 or so, didn't sleep much


spring bear hunt with a super duper new thin lt. wt. bag that was supposed to be good to 23 F believe it got down in the teens, and I've had bags rated for 40 above that were warmer than thin pos

after that I test bags before I take them in the field.

have had to siwash with no bag and it got down to around zero, I slept pretty decent by the big fire I built, but man the sparks played hell on that fleece jacket!

Outdoors?

Long story short... was winter 2004/5.

If a buddy and his visiting "river guide/backpacking guide" friend consistently outvote you on a backcountry trip, there are two possibilities: 1.) your backcounty sensibilities aren't as savvy you thought, or 2.) your buddies are full of [bleep] and could get you killed.

The forecast "chance of snow" hadn't fallen by our arrival at the trailhead, so we left the ski's behind and hiked in.

Actual temps that night were unknowable - the briskly moving river rapids we rock-hopped across that first night was frozen over solid by the next AM. Camp was pitched, against my objection, in oxbow of said river. Conifer'd, sheltered leeward side of the ridge above us was just too far.... Later, TV news said low of -7F in nearest town that night, so God only knows what it was in that river bottom, wind and about 6in of fine driven snow (yeah, it showed up), but we damn-near had to go "Lee24" to survive the night. F! that was a cold night and a bitch of an AM start with numbed-dead feet.

man those cold nights sure make you appreciate a nice warm comfortable bed don't they

bonus when there's a lady's shaved legs in there too!

Don't remember the temp or lack thereof 2L2Q but, that damn Lake Erie wind cut through me like a chainsaw, brutal sombitch it was.

Gunner

1985,my brother and I put our stuff on a tobaggan,put on our snowshoes and went out in the 'Dacks for a winter camping/small game hunting trip. Daytime -15.nighttime -37* No real problems 'cept the fire melted down another 2 feet from where we dug down 3' for our tentsite..

Not extreme low temps, probably below freezing sitting on a concrete ramp wearing a field jacket without the liner, no long underwear, no hat, no gloves pulling panels with armor plating off to get oil samples from 2 A-7s with the wind gusting above 15 mph. The wind sure added to the fun of getting the panels back on.

Winter, 1974.

Pop up Tents,.....and propane heaters that were a joke,.....cuz' the propane was frozen solid.

Well below -40* (at that point it don't matter how much more)
the mild "Ground drift" wasn't worthy of the term "Wind",....nonetheless, turning one's face into it FROZE exposed facial appurtenances in a matter of seconds.




Lougheed Island is one of the uninhabited islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in the Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut. It measures 1,312 km2 (507 sq mi) in size. It is relatively isolated compared to other Canadian Arctic islands, and is located in the Arctic Ocean, halfway between Ellef Ringnes Island to the northeast and Melville Island to the southwest. It is part of the Findlay Group.

I have a BIL who lived for a while about twenty miles outside the thriving metropolis of Brothers. A lot of good coyote and sage rat hunting but it can get a bit chilly come winter. Calving season when you are expecting over a thousand head can make for long cold nights.

My worst was the winter of 72-73. USS Grand Canyon was in the Tod yards in Brooklyn. No steam lines so no heat. I was in charge of fire watch division. 27 of us lived that winter without heat or running water while the rest of the crew liver on a floating barracks and had heat and showers. High volume desmoking fans sucking outside air through our berthing compartment 24 hours a day because they were burning out old torpedo magazines below us. That was the worst and it lasted months.

Spent a night in a pickup truck on the Arctic Ocean in a storm....had enough gas to keep some heat in the truck.

September 11, 1991 was the storm of the century during moose season when temperatures dropped to -20F with 60 mph winds...way early for that kind of weather.

But those are mere child's play compared to a winter moose hunt up the Little Delta River......the temperature was dropping fast as we snowmobiled 60 miles in.....we quickly set up the wall tent and stove.....bucked up a pile of firewood....fluffed up our sleeping bags and dug a bottle of Crown for a drink before dinner.....The damned Crown Royal wouldn't pour out of the bottle!

Now that is a genuine wilderness emergency!

The coldest I ever had to stay out all night, was 28 Below Zero. I managed but it was tough. The worst was 20 to 30 below days flying out of Bethel. I could never stay warm in the airplane, we stop flying when it got down to 35 below, airplanes cold soak to much. I learned that some hand warmers in various places on your person helps a lot. and Good loose layers of clothing and above all stay dry.

When I was a teen we used to camp for weeks at a time in the Homoochitto National Forest. The closest I ever came to dying from hypothermia was in weather only about 20 degrees. All our gear got wet right after dark when the pop up trailer we were in tipped up on end when all of us but two guys in the back bunk got out. After it tipped up it rolled down a big hill in and into a little backed up creek. The camper was pretty much totaled so we loaded everything salvageable into my toyota and tried to leave. But we got my truck stuck within 100 yards of leaving camp and were effectively stranded with nothing but wet sleeping bags and clothes. We tried for hours to get unstuck but only managed to get the truck sitting down on both axles. There was no way to get a fire going even using gasoline. We sat in the truck with the heater running in shifts then huddled around a coleman stove when it was our turn to get out of the truck. I still shiver thinking about it. I thought my teeth were going to chip from chattering.

ETA: i wrote this before i read most of the threads. now i feel like a sissy for even writing this.

not my coldest night, but it was my worst.

motorcycle trip from Houston to Memphis. i was expecting 35* and i was dressed for it. however it was 15*, with 35-55mph wind from the north. add the 60mph of the motorcycle and you have a wind chill around -18*. normally a 10hr trip, but i had 3 flats on the rear wheel. (most likely, poor patch jobs by myself) trip took 21 hrs and ended at 7am, so the bulk of the trip was at night.

ked

-20 the night out elk hunting in Colorado, not counting the wind chill. Only time I ever hunted in a down jacket. Got an elk that day and it froze solid overnight like a block of concrete.

Ha, ha. TFF. Glad to see you back Eh. You do make it mo better.

Eastern slope of the Rockies, 30 miles from the Canadian border.

2 1/2 days - the heater in the house never shut off. temperature was -55 and windchill tacked on another -40.

Several nights when the wife was really pizzed at me. I still shiver with fear that it'll happen again.

i was living in rhode island back in the 80's. went to providence with some characters and ended up getting ditched there. mid january, temps in the teens or lower. i had on my M52 field jacket which ain't much. jeans, no hat, definitely not dressed for the outdoors. all the bars closed and i couldn't get anyone on the phone to come get me. i lived in newport which is a haul. i tried to hang out in the lobby of a hotel with some scumbags and the cops came and tossed us out and told me i had to move along or i'd get thrown in jail. hard to believe but there was nowhere open to get inside and get warm. i walked the streets all night, hanging in doorways and it was friggen bitter cold and whipping wind. finally sometime after daylight i got somebody on the phone to come get me. i know that ain't no alaskan grizzly bear hunt story but that was far and away the coldest damn night of my life. i was completely unprepared and could have easily died from a combo of booze, cold and street scum.

One I remember was when I was like fourteen in the boy scouts. Believing the hype, I was relying on a new "space blanket", basically a plastic tarp shiny on the inside. It was April in New York State. And flat amazing how folks let kids screw up like that back then, today if I were the adult group leader I'd be all over the kids beforehand checking their gear.

Closer to the present... my wife and I and our two heelers were in a Saturn station wagon coming back from New York between Christmas and New Years, that year we detoured through western Pa.

It was after dark when we hit Morgantown West Virginia and we were surprised to see maybe four inches of new snow, as none had been forecast. Then we headed south on the Interstate towards Charleston (??).

We were a little ways south when it began to snow, flurries at first. Then quite suddenly it got heavy, real quick I couldn't see the road surface as it was covered in snow and the reflector posts off to the side were few and far between and partly or totally plastered with snow. No reference points at all. My wife said the snow rushing against the windscreen looked like lumps of styrofoam.

Basically we were in zero-visibility whiteout conditions with no clear idea where the highway was as it wound through the mountains. Stopping was out of the question as we would likely get hit from behind.

In a bit I see the lights of a truck passing us above us on the right hand side.... I had driven clear off of the road surface Carefully I inched back over and got behind the barely visible taillights of the semi. I was really shaken on that occasion, see, I had my wife and dogs in the car with me, and all it would have taken would be a tree or drainage culvert.

Most all the traffic was pulling off at the next exit into a large parking lot, we did the same. Pulled out the wool blankets, shut off the motor and slept in place. Between the blankets and all of us in there I can't say it was cold inside the car. It was like a snow cave, on account of all the windows were soon covered up in snow. Turn on the dome light and all there was was white.

Nine degrees outside at first light, minor league around here but pretty cold by South Texas standards. Turns out we were at Flat Rock West Virginia, or at least the exit for the same. Warmed up pretty quick the next day, enough for travel, in the meantime lots of us just hung out in a nearby McDonald's, waiting for it to clear.

Birdwatcher

45 below zero, 90 below with wind chill. 1992, train in town got loose, crashed into a power relay station, no power to the people at 45 below

winter in 1988. Trying to get home to see my GF, had a little VW and the outside temp was around -6 which isn't too bad compared to some of the other stories, but I had a flat tire and just had a light coat on , jeans, sneakers - I was the only car out on West Kentucky Parkway. I turned the heat on high, and would alternate between changing the tire and getting back into the car, but I was shaking uncontrollably by the time I had the tire changed. I drove to the next exit, found a Jerry's restaurant and just sat in a booth shaking for I can't remember how long. The waitress came over and offered me coffee. I initially told her no but she felt so bad for me she brought me some anyways and then gave me a free breakfast.

I was in bad shape there for awhile. Bout kilt myself over trying to get some pussy.

Since then when winter comes I keep a heavy coat, gloves, hat, boots, candles and blanket in the car

I've spent a night or three in my 4 Runner, traveling across North Dakota and Montana, at about 45 below...

but a little common sense, combined with training in cold weather survival in the Boy Scouts and the Army.... layered several sleeping bags, on a foam mattress out of an old VW camper...and a wool hat on where my head is out of the sleeping bag...

windows cracked to ventilate my breathing, so I didn't catch pneumonia...

start the engine every 2 hours or so and let it idle for 15 minutes, to keep the Mobil ONE thin enough to start in a couple of hours...

wind chill outside was off the charters per usual...

it was cold outside, but I was warm inside...

Flat Rock WVa.. my grandmother's family was from there...

anyone who lives there and has the last name of Lilly, I am probably related to them...

Camping with the scouts in ne Ohio. Heavy snow, I don't know how cold it got. I had a new lightweight tent. All zipped up tight. I awoke during the night, gasping for air. The tent had frosted tight inside. I spent the rest of the night with my head stuck outside, shivering!

Thia is quite a collection of some serious happenings that we have somehow managed to survive. The night I spent wandering around in Gallup sure wasn't as cold as I have ever seen but the bad part was that I had lived in Los Angeles for about eight months and didn't own a cost of any kind and very few long sleeved shirts. Being at least half way prepared is the key to surviving, I think. And then the situation that Steelhead related to us has to depend on mental preparedness. If you don't have that, you are done.

coldest temp I have ever been in was in Chicoutimi Quebec in about 1974 or so.. was in college...was colder than 60 below..
just filled up my gas tank and let the car idle all night, while I stayed in the motel...had to put cardboard in front of the radiator for the temp gauge to even move, while it idled...

next night came back thru New Hampshire, and spent the night in Franconia Notch.. that night up on Mt Washington, they ended up setting some sort of record for low temp...and also wind chill up there on the weather station...

in those days, I use to think it was pretty exciting surviving in rough conditions like that... ahhhhhh the stupidity of youth...

Prepared for outside, not that cold... -12 IIRC. No big deal in a tent.

Not prepared for one night in CO elk season was MOST MISERABLE night of my life.

We thought by the map, we could go in and out to scout and area.... we could not. Had a bit of a tarp and ground cover, thats it.

We were in elk and with bowhunters near, I decided we'd do the nice thing and quietly cold camp. DUMB.

We needed a fire and should have cut lots of limbs for ground cover. That was a LONG night. Probably didn't dip below 15 but the ground sucked heat all night long out of me...and the wife. We managed to do ok.

I'll never ever settle in for a cool night outside without doing it all right. And have since changed what I carry in a pack during the day just in case. Not so much carrying more gear, but better gear more adapted.

And next time, sorry, elk or none bowhunters or none, I'll have a nice fire going.

Mountain Warfare Training (USMC) in Bridgeport, CA. July 4th, 2004, we got about 4" of snow at the 9898' marker. Instructors told us to only pack our warm weather sleeping bag to save room for socks and extra mres, and to lighten the load for the 6 mile or so hump in. Got about 1 hour of sleep. The sleeping bag did its job as advertised for those of us that took our clothes off (the news kept theirs on and shivered all night) and put them at the bottom of our bag next to our feet. After finally dozing off for about an hour I had I serve my time on watch. Couldn't fall back to sleep in the next two hours. Miserable!!

2nd coldest night I remember was early august 2003 on the Iraq/Iran border. Daytime temps had been in the upper 130s and a cool front moved in dropping night time lows into the upper 70s. My teeth chattered that whole vehicle patrol in the early am hours. Funny thing when the body detects that the temp has dropped 50+ degrees that it "senses" cold and begins the shiver response even when the temp is what we would normally consider warm.

First week of Oct., 1980 4 of us were hunting in Wyoming. We got caught in an early blizzard and got trapped on the road in a van. For 30 hours 4 of us were trapped there.

We couldn't even get out to urinate because the wind was coming from four directions. Went in a can and poured it out a small opening in the door. Obviously we could not get out to do anything else either. After a day and a half it was pretty rank in there!

Don't know how cold it got but I don't think I have ever been so miserable.

About 10 years later on a trip to Colorado two of my partners on a bad night put their cots and sleeping bags in the cook tent, one on each side of the wood stove. They were able to feed the fire through the night. In the morning a pot of water on top of the stove was frozen solid.

Isn't every one happy we have so much fun on our trips.

Jim

Probably the night my ex-girlfriend went to work at the same place as my wife.

During the Christmas break of 1968 I was at an invitation-only Winter Camp in the Canadian Rockies, run by the Rocky Mountain YMCA (who I worked for for the next 6 summers). Alberta was in the midst of a record cold snap... the mercury stayed below zero for 35 days in a row, IIRC, and average daily temperatures in the city were in the -30's.

It was colder in the mountains. We never saw the temperature get above -40, and the mercury thermometer was frozen the whole week. The alcohol thermometer read -68 on the 3rd night of the 6-night Winter Camp.

We were sleeping in small lightly insulated cabins with cheap woodstoves for heat. We kept the stoves blazing to the point that the chimneys were glowing red, but our breath was still condensing on the walls of the cabin. I had one of the better sleeping bags, my dad's Woods Arctic 3-star down bag, most of the other guys weren't so well-equipped and many of them doubled up their bags and slept together for the shared warmth. Everybody slept fully clothed. I took my down parka and boots off, that was it.

On the -68 night, our stovepipe started the attic insulation on fire (sawdust insulation, duh!!). Fortunately one of the adult supervisors saw the fire before it got too bad, but all we had to put the fire out was snow... we managed, but in the process our stove was destroyed and we had to sleep the rest of the night with no heat, so it was -68 degrees inside the cabin. We piled all the mattresses in one corner, then rolled into our sleeping bags and lay on each other like a litter of puppies. Nobody slept.

It amazes me, looking back, that the adult supervisors didn't cut the winter camp short... it's a miracle nobody got frostbite or died from the extreme cold. I guess that's a testament to the preparedness of the group, we were all experienced outdoorsmen (even though we were all 15 or 16 years old), had good winter clothing and boots, etc. Also, that was back in the day when we all walked to school every day, even if it was -40... we were just more acclimatized to cold, I believe.

Probably the coldest night I have ever had was at Basic Noncomissioned Officer's Course at San Antonio in February of about '93. It wasn't but about 30 degrees that night but I thought I would sleep in my BDU's inside of my fart sack. Froze my ass off. I had deep- bone chilling cold. One of the ex-infantry guys said to take my clothes off the next night and I wouldn't be as cold. I did and it was much warmer.

Very life threatening, I'm sure.

-62 with a wind speed of 35mph almost every winter. The arctic is not such a nice place.

Standing cold? -58

Good thing your head was up your azz, so your ears didn't freeze.

Well, I lived in interior Alaska for some time, so the question should be qualified. Guys that have lived there know what I mean. The coldest night I've seen was in 1999 and it was -62 according to the Fairbanks Fred Meyer. No phoney wind chill there, just bitter cold.

One of the coldest nights of my life spent camping was when my wife and I joined another pal and his wife for a snowmachine trip up into the White Mountains north of Fairbanks.
It was about -44 when we got to the remote, rugged cabin; the little wood stove there helped, but the real lifesaver was the bottle of Yukon Jack and deck of cards someone left there.
That -44 warmed right up when the gals decided that bourbon and strip poker was the 'warm up' trick. They were right.

Sleeping in trench in the snow at 40 below an a 30-40 mile an hour wind on an island in the arctic. P.S. the igloo we built was much warmer. Cheers NC

I went to all survival schools in the USAF back in 1955 the worse and coldest was at Fairbanks Alaska for 7 days in February we survived with what we carried on our aircraft it was -20 below the whole week c rations and what we could forage for im still cold. oh and waist deep in snow.

I spent a night trying to sleep in the back of my GMC Jimmy. Was up north of the Brooks hunting Caribou around the 3rd of October and it got freaking colder than I thought it would.

Tried sleeping inside my GMC Jimmy, curled up in a Slumber Jack bag and about froze my arse off. Truck wouldn't hold the heat and I had to get up and start it about every hour. I left for home the next morning.

Yeah, I remember hearing a story about a soldier that was based out of Greely near Delta...
He was doing the week-long winter survival deal with the rest of his company and he left a bottle of whiskey outside his tent to swig on.
Well, it hit 80 below zero (in what was some of the coldest recorded temps of the modern record-keeping era) and when he drank from the bottle it supposedly killed him. Froze his insides immediately.

The story is supposed to be true, maybe someone here can validate...

December 1976 "Operation Jack Frost" in a tent near Nenana, AK. -62 with 20 knot wind. Defending the pipeline from Ivan. Not much snow but pretty darned chilly.

I earned the "Zero Hero" badge in the Boy Scouts. You had to remain outside for 48 hours in below zero weather when I earned it in the 80's. It had to stay below zero the whole time, and the low the weekend I did it was -30-something without wind-chill.

I think now you just have to sleep outside in below zero weather overnight.

Doubt it. 84 proof liquor freezes at -30F, so at -80 it wouldn't be drinkable. Might be chewable, though! "grin"

The methanol in thermometers doesn't freeze until -137F.

Yup,....something's just COLDER about the "numbers" up there.

It's some TOUGH and durable fellows that shrug about the Arctic.

.....certainly a different kind of "islands",...eh ?

GTC

Unexpected overnight on Fourth of July creek (or crick, as they say up there) off the Salmon River in Idaho....followed the elk too far from our camp to get back. It wasn't that cold....just above zero...but the wind was blowing like a bitch and my day pack was light on what I wished I had. It was a long night, most of it spent getting more wood. Amazing how fast that chit burns up.

Egad man! Must have been a woman waiting in Memphis.

During my motorcycle years I thought 25 was Arctic, and learned from experience that 27 is the magic number; below that it ices. One time both ends of the bike started to hunt ever so slightly.... I was riding on ice Pulled in the clutch, didn't touch anything, rolled as straight as possible until I came to a stop at the side of the road.

Put a foot down and immediately went down hard Rode the rest of the way into work through the grass alongside the highway.

'nother time stands out in memory was 600 miles to El Paso around Christmas on a 750 Ninja; 40 degrees and light rain most of the way. Weren't all that bad riding, but when I stopped in Fort Stockton for gas nothing worked. My hands wouldn't undo my helmet and my mouth wouldn't work to tell the teller what I wanted

Birdwatcher

To get to college I road a CM400T 20 miles down I-40 into St Louis five days a week for two years. Snow, ice, rain, and 100+ heat. Those were some hard years.

Winner. You'd have to spend the night on Mars to find it any colder.