An Anecdotal Cold Weather Commentary

Perhaps it’s the time of year to write about cold weather, having lived in a 3 foot high tent in the 48 contiguous states for about 8 of the last ten years, and before that maybe 15 years in Alaska (not in a tent all the time), the subject of maintaining adequate internal body temperature out of doors is familiar.

This will be a brief sketch of some elemental experiences instead of a definitive portrayal of cold weather effects as perhaps one might find in a U.S. Army survival manual. Army rangers in training have actually experienced hypothermia in Florida while training. It is possible to develop hypothermic body cooling in any combination of conditions that lower the skin and eventually body temperature.

Cold encroaches from the extremities such as the feet and head in many instances. There is, incidentally, probably nothing worse than starving and freezing at the same time. The prisoners of the Gulag Archipelago really had it rough.

Water is 300 times thicker than air and will remove body heat 300 times faster. If one’s sleeping bag and clothing becomes wet, in some case, especially if the temperature subsequently drops to near or below freezing, it may be difficult to avoid hypothermia.

Most Americans have indoor lifestyles complemented by mechanized luxury wheelchairs to flit about the continent, and are essentially clueless or even disdainful of notion about how to conserve body temperature relying upon one’s own resources. Karl Castle of NPR News today spun such a trim-splice onto a report about the plains snowstorms not realize that it is better in tenting to have dry snow over one’s tent than near freezing rain saturating everything including one’s clothing. All those people living indoors anywhere in the north perhaps spend less time depending on their own warmth resources in a lifetime than homeless people may encounter in a year.

There are many ways of experiencing cold weather injuries. Once in Alaska I traveled through streams and deep wet snow before becoming lost, praying, and finding my way to a trail leading to a road. Yet packing one’s feet in water slush for a day caused them two or three days later to swell perhaps double the girth. I purchased some larger, wide tennis sneaker to wear temporarily.

Of course regular frostbite, a different injury though similar perhaps in causing sensation and circulation in the feet and an increased susceptibility to cold weather injury, is simply a consequence of direct dry cold most often with the extremities simply freezing thoroughly. A rogue Soviet Colonel used to freeze dry the arms of captives for interrogation upon the roof of a five story building in Mongolia by outstretching a bare arm and pouring water on it. Then the Colonel, if dissatisfied with captive responses, would just snap off the arm.

The nose is most easily frozen, especially the tip. One should have a fur lined underwear if male in extremely cold weather. If one does not cover the ears, they will freeze very easily, if it’s not too serious the thawing out experience is something like having a firecracker blow up in one’s hand. In Fairbanks I bounced off the walls of a building lobby in which I was looking to rent an apartment when my ears suddenly began thawing out.

Of course staying away from water, and remaining healthy is important in cold weather. Water is fundamentally, death. Regardless of it being the 32 degree waters of a stream through which one may plunge through the ice or offshore in the ocean. Bailing water is cold weather is especially hazardous. Colds, flu and other illnesses may give one chills and ill-feeling is good weather, in cold wet weather it becomes a worse experience.

Something people forget is that starting warm from the indoors, putting on warm clothing and shoes does not remove any body heat initially when outdoors. Putting on freezing boots and clothing, or cold wet boots and clothing, requires the body heat be used for drying out the garments as best they can; a energy investment the body cannot in some circumstances afford.

There were once two hitchhikers just outside the city limits sign of Rock Springs Wyoming that were overcome by a whiteout/blizzard that suddenly blew up. Being unable to find their right sense of direction and return to town they froze to death, the story goes. Many modern clothing articles that have better waterproofing that isn’t harmed by folding and emplacement in a rucksack have been produced in recent years and occasionally make their way to thrift shops and the homeless. The iron filing air combustible personal heat warmers are available at two for 88 cents at Big Lots Stores. They are invaluable in dry cold in burning for more than 7 hours in and inside shirt pocket.

Hands on bicycle grips become a notable difficulty in cold weather. Gloves are very useless, unless they are arctic gloves perhaps as I would guess were worn by a student at U.A.F. once in riding to college all winter (I walked). Mittens are much better, especially gore-tex mittens that resist water a bit. Abandon cotten socks firstly if travelling to a continuous sub-freezing environment, or one that is cold and wet conducive to hypothermia. Repairing flats is much more difficult in cold or wet conditions, imagine the heat indoors at some distant Federal Studio and do the best you can.

The fundamental problem with poverty camping in the U.S.A. is that for safety and other considerations it must be entirely cold camping in which one cannot improve one’s tactical situation at all- no fires, no lean to’s over the tent, no mud brick manufacture to construct arched and vaulted ceiling in the desert. The indoor people have a world and social reality of their own that provides a definite context to the outdoors individual.