Here are some strategies I use for getting through a cold night.
- Cover my head. I always bring a fleece hood/balaclava. It can be worn many different ways and it doesn’t fall off my head at night.
- Hot water bottle. I carry a canister stove. I reach out of my tent, turn it on and have a hot water bottle ready in under 2 minutes. When I carried a bigger pot, I
carried the bigger liter size Nalgene bottle. Placed between my legs, it would keep me warm all night. Now with the smaller pot, I carry the smaller 1/2 liter bottle and it will only keep me warm for about 3 hours. Of course, I’m careful to screw the lid on tight. I have slept with a Nalgene bottle in my sleeping bag for hundreds of nights and have never had one fail me. Sometimes the soft milk white bottles get a little soft and a bit distorted but they always pop back out later. - Eat something.
- Zip up. I usually don’t zip my bag up; I just stick my feet in it and throw it over me. However, if it gets really cold I zip it up and stick my head in the hood.
- Exercise is a good way to get warm again. Do some crunches.
- Use a vapor barrier, a vapor barrier works like a sauna. It keeps a warm moist layer of air around you. I used to carry a bag that had cold spots and if it dropped to
near freezing, I would be cold. I sometimes carried a hot sac vapor barrier as a pack liner, then, and when I would climb in it, it would offer up instant warmth. If you aren’t really cold, a vapor barrier will make you sweat a lot and soak your clothes. A garbage bag pack liner could be used the same way, although it will only cover some of you. You might want to try sleeping in your rain gear, if it’s dry, and using that as a vapor barrier. I have heard of people sticking their feet into their pack. - Empty your bladder. Outward Bound told me that your body has to use a lot of energy keeping your urine warm. I don’t know it its true. However, it might be so… I do it. I do think when you are really cold and you don’t want to get out of your bag to pee, that it’s always a good idea to brave the cold for a bit and do it, because you are just that much more comfortable and moving around could help warm you up, and for those reasons I will probably keep doing it.
- An effective way of dealing with discomfort, for me, is to remember the Buddhist phrase: “The path is easy for those with no preferences.� I realize that it’s my attachment to comfort that is making me suffer; I give it up and go to sleep.
I heard that bladder thing a lot too, but during a wilderness first responder course the good folks at Wilderness Medical Association told us it was a bunch of BS…. Although it you are really desperate, you may want to pee into you nalgene and keep it inside your sleeping bag with you – just so you don’t throw away all the heat. 🙂
Well, in any case, it makes it less likely that you’ll have to leave the warmth and comfort of your sleeping bag in the middle of the night to go empty it..