View Full Version : drying/washing clothes; clarification please
On the issue of drying clothes, I have read that it is common practice simply to hang them outside to dry (assuming no rain). However, if ALL of your clothes are wet, I read this:
"If I'm hiking in very cold weather, I start out with my socks and foot liners in my sleeping bag, with the rest of my wet/damp clothes underneath me. During the night, each time I wake up I pull another wet item into the bag to dry it out (I sleep too cold to dry out a lot of items at a time, but fortunately I wake up a lot!). This does tend to stink up my sleeping clothes and bag, but that's the way it goes."
In regard to placing damp clothes inside a sleeping bag and underneath the hiker, wouldn't doing so also make the bag damp? I guess that what I'm getting at is that such an approach seems to be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. If so, would it be better just to suffer through and hike the next day in damp clothes rather than making the inside of the bag damp?
Also, if you are carrying only one extra set of clothes and you've been on the trail for a period of days, thus making all of your clothes dirty, and you want to wash them when you reach town, doesn't that mean that you have to wash and dry one set and then the other separately? I'm assuming that most people in towns wouldn't appreciate seeing a naked hiker in their laundromats. Am I correct that two wash/dry loads are standard or am I missing the obvious?
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Youngblood
12-01-2004, 09:52
Dainon,
I think you have it figured out pretty well. What works with wet clothes in one situation may not work in another situation. Probably the worst situation is when it is above freezing and raining during the day with the temperature dropping below freezing at night. You have several options... letting wet shoes or your wet hiking clothes freeze solid usually isn't a good one. Sometimes you try to dry these out while you sleep using your body heat and hope you stay warm enough and don't really screw up by getting your insulation so wet that you can't stay warm. Sometimes you put stuff in plastic bags inside your bag to keep them from freezing. Sometimes you open your shoes very wide outside your bag so that you can get your feet inside them if they freeze up and thaw them out in the morning on your feet. This isn't often a problem for AT thru-hikers and you may not have to worry about it... it is a good idea to open up your footwear when if it is cold enough for them to freeze because sometimes they may be wet enough to be a problem when it hasn't rained.
About the laundry mat issue, you'll figure out something. It depended on what really needed washing and how difficult it was to wash them... sometimes I wore my rainsuit, sometimes I did two loads, etc.
Youngblood
Lone Wolf
12-01-2004, 09:56
Wash your hiking shorts in the shower when in town and wear them dry. Wear your rain jacket or fleece at the laundromat.
baseballswthrt
12-01-2004, 10:11
Recently my husband and I took a trip to Shenandoah National Park. We hiked all day in a steady rain with temps in the upper 40's. Even though we were wearing rain suits, we were soaked from the waist down. This caused water to wick up our shirts to about mid chest. As long as we were hiking, we were warm and wet. When we got to the shelter, the temp was dropping and I was cold for about the last 2 miles. We immediately stripped down, put on dry long johns (top and bottom) and 2 pair of dry socks, put our wet pants back on and got into our sleeping bags. We made hot tea to drink while we cooked dinner. We ate in our bags. I shivered for about 2 hours after we settled down for the night. Eventually, I fell asleep and in the morning, my pants were nice and dry and I was toasty. My bag was also dry from my body heat. It was about 20* outside. My socks from the day before were still wet hanging in the shelter and my shirt was still damp. I should have put it back on too to dry it. It takes a while to dry your clothes with body heat, but it can be done!
If your rain suit is dry, you can put that on in the laundromat while you wash all of your clothes.
Anita
Blue Jay
12-01-2004, 10:40
In regard to placing damp clothes inside a sleeping bag and underneath the hiker, wouldn't doing so also make the bag damp? I guess that what I'm getting at is that such an approach seems to be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. If so, would it be better just to suffer through and hike the next day in damp clothes rather than making the inside of the bag damp?
Yes, IMO it would be better to to pack up, and even throw on freezing soaked clothing, then run down the trail until you're warm, rather than get your dry clothing and/or bag wet.
Alligator
12-01-2004, 10:43
A couple of bandanas and some string should do for the laundromat :jump .
I have tried the method of drying described by Anita and it works well. It definitely helps to get into your bag as soon as you hit camp. I too have found that I need to limit the number of wet items I am attempting to dry. As in the first quote, placing some under the bag will be less of a heat draw. Too many wet items in the bag will suck out too much heat.
When in town, if need be, you may be able to put what you need to wear in with a load of another hiker, then return the favor. I stayed at a hostel once and several of us pitched in to fill the washer.
BookBurner
12-01-2004, 10:46
The most effective way to dry wet hiking clothes is to hike in them! It's painful to put wet clothes on in the cold morning, but after thirty minutes of hiking, the synthetic materials (except socks trapped inside your shoes) will be dry regardless of the air temperature. A few moments of cold shock in the a.m. seems a far better trade-off than several hours of a damp, muggy sleeping bag.
-BookBurner
www.enlightenedthruhiker.com (http://www.enlightenedthruhiker.com)
HikeLite
12-01-2004, 11:00
Anita,
What raingear were you wearing to be soaked from the waist down?
baseballswthrt
12-01-2004, 18:02
Anita,
What raingear were you wearing to be soaked from the waist down?
Frogg Toggs! My feet were wet and I think the water wicked from socks to my pants under the frogg toggs.
Anita
[QUOTE=Dainon]On the issue of drying clothes, I have read that it is common practice simply to hang them outside to dry (assuming no rain). However, if ALL of your clothes are wet, I read this:
"If I'm hiking in very cold weather, I start out with my socks and foot liners in my sleeping bag, with the rest of my wet/damp clothes underneath me. During the night, each time I wake up I pull another wet item into the bag to dry it out (I sleep too cold to dry out a lot of items at a time, but fortunately I wake up a lot!). This does tend to stink up my sleeping clothes and bag, but that's the way it goes."
QUOTE]
The above quote were my words from another thread. The point is that it is possible to sleep dry and comfortably while you dry out your clothes at night.
Everyone is different as to what they can tolerate. I know some people who are furnaces, and they can dry large amounts of clothing in a short amont of time as they sleep in their bags. Unfortunately, I sleep very cold; so I have to be very careful to pick and choose the items I attempt to dry out.
My first priority in a hard freeze is to make sure my boots don't become a block of ice. I usually wrap them in plastic and then tuck them inside my pack for the night. My socks, liners and boot insoles are not large, so they go in the bag with me and my dry long johns that I'm wearing. As my bag heats up, I can usually tolerate adding one item at a time. This allows me to change into clothing that is "less wet" in the morning.
I have a synthetic bag, so putting the clothes underneath and along the side to "wait their turn" in the bag doesn't seem to zap too much warmth from me. If, however, it is too uncomfortable...I try to protect them from becoming blocks of ice by wrapping them in plastic and tucking them away like I do my boots.
Because I work at a wilderness camp where I don't always get to control when I get to get moving down the trail, I find I'm much more comfortable trying to get my "standing around and waiting on the group" clothes as dry as possible. Makes for a much more enjoyable morning :) I've done a lot of wet winter camping, and this is simply a system that seems to work pretty well for me.
minnesotasmith
12-06-2004, 05:05
This only works if the air temperature goes below freezing:
Leave the clothes outside, then shake the resulting ice crystals out of them. I suspect this would work better for clothes that would not turn into rigid hard "boards". That is, socks and thin fleece turtlenecks would likely IMO work out better to be dried this way than, say, towels.
if ALL your clothes are wet....hang 'em out to dry...........................if this is NOT AN OPTION.........sleep with clothes on get in sleeping bag....your body heat will dry the clothes while you snooze! :D
i know this works from personal experience ("Model T crew" hike-spring 2004 Clingmans Dome, TN to Hot Springs, NC)
orangebug
12-06-2004, 08:30
If your clothes are wet, first get out of them and then get into the sleeping bag. Once you are warm, then you can bring a bit at a time into your sleeping bag and allow your 98.6F furnace to help dry them, or at least to prevent freezing. If you have the room and a plastic bag, get your boots/shoes into the toe of your bag to keep them from freezing.
If you bring too much water into your bag, you risk getting it wet and losing your most valuable means of preventing/treating hypothermia. Expect a great deal of frozen condensation inside your tent/tarp.
This only works if the air temperature goes below freezing:
Leave the clothes outside, then shake the resulting ice crystals out of them. I suspect this would work better for clothes that would not turn into rigid hard "boards". That is, socks and thin fleece turtlenecks would likely IMO work out better to be dried this way than, say, towels.
I have to say that I've never seen anyone be able to shake the ice out of clothes that were truly wet and then were frozen solid.
Did you actually see this work? Was it a technique taught for less humid environments than the Southern Appalachians, or maybe for certain fabrics...like wind shells, rain gear, etc.?
I don't let my students leave their wet clothing out in freezing weather because it's a real safety concern to allow them to remain wet in those conditions. If you plan on remaining out in the woods, I would really recommend taking the time to dry out what you can, little by little, inside your sleeping bag. It doesn't work perfectly, but it's the most effective technique that I've used or seen used.
When I was a kid, I'd have to hang out wet clothes in below frezing weather. They'd dry stiff. Towels would be stiff as a board. But when you brought them inside in the warm at the end of the day, they would be dry. Towels would be rough, but dry.
I suspect most people old enough to remember the 50's who lived in the north remember this.
And no, we didn't have a washboard. We had a nifty wringer-washer.
Thanks a lot for the posts. I learned a lot from this thread. Some great ideas I had not thought about.
APPLE in AUSTIN
minnesotasmith
12-06-2004, 20:34
It was mentioned in a Boy Scout manual (not sure if it was the Handbook or Fieldbook) I read back in the mid-1970s. It only mentioned doing this for socks.
Like Frosty, at home I've hung clothes out to dry in the freezing cold, too (even now in the 21st century!!!). It works fine at home, but then again, I'm not trying to put the shirt on in the morning.
When we get cold enough temps here, I might try the "shake it out" method at home to see if I can get it to work... :)
Youngblood
12-07-2004, 10:06
I just looked in the BSA Field Book. They mention it for camping on top of snow, where you first lay down a 4-mil plastic sheet, then a nylon deicing cloth, open cell foam pad, etc., and then fold the remainer of the plastic sheet over all of your insulation and tuck it in. They say in the morning to shake the ice off of the plastic and deicing cloth. ... They also say: "If you aren't traveling and the sun is shining, spread out your sleeping gear and let it dry, though the system will keep you warm even if the foam bag becomes very wet." They had previous described how to make a sleeping bag out of a sheet of open cell foam and nylon fabric.
I believe that you could shake a very thin sheet of ice off of a sheet of 4 mil plastic, I've done that on a silnylon tarp, but I don't know about the nylon deicing cloth if the ice was thick enough to encase the nylon fibers. I don't know about doing it with socks or other clothing either. LOL
Youngblood
Like Frosty, at home I've hung clothes out to dry in the freezing cold, too (even now in the 21st century!!!). It works fine at home, but then again, I'm not trying to put the shirt on in the morning.Good point! :)
I was very leery of the suggestion to "shake...the ice crystals" out of frozen clothes. It does work on my tarp, but that's a very different kind of material. In the interest of my own curiosity and in keeping an open mind, I dedided that I would attempt this technique (while at home) as soon as it got cold enough.
Well, it was below 20 degrees here last night, cold enough to try the grand experiment...
I wet my hiking shirt (a Terramar EC2) wrang it out very well and then left it outside all night. As I suspected, my shirt was as stiff as a board this morning and "shaking it out" was totally useless, except that shaking it did make the shirt pliable enough to put on. But then I was just wearing a frozen shirt! My body heat did quickly melt the ice, giving me......a totally wet shirt.
I think my earlier suggestions of trying to dry the shirt out in your sleeping bag will get you much closer to a dry shirt...and will be much more comfortable in the morning!
p.s. "The dry out your clothes in your sleeping bag" technique was taught to me in the GIRL Scouts (26 years ago). It's been tested many times and it does work... :banana
Cehoffpauir
12-21-2004, 03:17
I just hiked the next day in damp clothes. If it wasn't raining, I dried out once I built up heat. If it was raining, then my situation didn't get worse. It was kind of a drag though, but the very worst was wet socks, and I had two spare pair.
For laundering--I carried one set of clothes in summer and two in winter (fleece pants and fleece jacket, and long johns, which made laundering more convenient). In summer, I managed well enough, and didn't seem to offend anybody anywhere, sitting in hostels in towels after my shower, while my clothes were finishing. It worked for me, though in retrospect I could have borne the 6 oz of extra clothes. Weight really isn't that big of a deal once you're out there.
[QUOTE=Dainon]
In regard to placing damp clothes inside a sleeping bag and underneath the hiker, wouldn't doing so also make the bag damp? I guess that what I'm getting at is that such an approach seems to be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. If so, would it be better just to suffer through and hike the next day in damp clothes rather than making the inside of the bag damp?
Am I correct that two wash/dry loads are standard or am I missing the obvious?
QUOTE]
Most people I encountered on the trail, including me, would wash virtually all their clothes at once and wear their rain gear or fleece in the laundromat.
On shaking ice crystals out of frozen clothing, that is usually ineffective with modern garmets. If you are using a caribou sleeping bag or parka in the arctic, the idea has a lot more merit. I HAVE dried sleeping bags and the like in subzero temps by hanging them outside in the wind. Moisture sublimates and it will dry, slowly.
It is possible to dry clothing in a sleeping bag, but you have to go easy. (If you are near a campfire, careful drying is obviously preferable.)
Every bit of moisture possible should first be whipped/wrung/sponged out of clothing. Bring just enough damp clothing into your bag so you can sleep comfortably. Your body heat can do a surprising amount of drying during the night, but I definitely believe that it is better to sleep warmly and then dry my clothes while I walk the next morning, if necessary.