Coldest Overnight Outing

[Ramble~On]

During arctic warfare exercises in Norway (while I was a young Marine) we encountered temps close to -30 F on a few occasions......... I think the lowest was in the -40's, but the coldest was a frightfully windy night at -22 - with howling winds that gave an estimated wind chill of -80.....................

Mountain Warfare Training Center in California. 9000ft+ and wind I didn't have a thermometer though. I almost forgot. They'd take a layer away from us each day! No wonder I love winter backpacking.. I have good lightweight gear now and no "plan of the day" !

Semper Fi.

[Toolshed]

Routinley it goes below zero there when winter camping in the Adirondacks.
However, the lowest recorded that I have with a tent was on a winter climbing trips -25 using a good min register thermometer on a 3 night trip in Feb-97.
The lowest recorded camping in a cabin was -42 in the Dacks in 2002 New Years. We had planned a weekend of camping and snowshoeing, but when we got the latest weather report, we were able to rent an old cabin. Problem is when it gets that cold, everything squeaks, vehicles tend to break down a bit more. and all anybody talks about is how cold it is

[nitewalker]

when i 1st got my -20 bag i stayed out and it got down to -16 that nite. i slept out tuesday the 20th and it was a warm 1*. real enjoyable that evening. here is my setup on the 20th. tadpole with only the rain fly and footprint. i also used a regular tarp under the footprint.

[kanga]

-4. i was young stupid and unprepared for a storm. (my body could take that stuff back then) i woke up with my dog, that hated being under blankets, in the bottom of my sleeping bag. water bottles were in the bag too but they froze anyway. i object to those sort of feelings now.

[Tipi Walter]

Coldest night out uh,. One of my new years trips i guess. Camped on Grandfathers Mtn. around twenty years ago. It got down to minus 6 with blowing snow.Dont know what the wind chill was but it was alot. When i got up my breathe froze to my beard and when i went to knock some of it off it took my beard with it. Made me want to rethink my camping out on New years. Thankfully the next year was alot warmer.

Old Grandfather gets pretty cold and windy in the winter. I could actually see the profile of Grandfather Mt from my tipi ridge in Sugar Grove, NC. The fotog shows the view from my ridge looking off towards Boone, Grandfather would be way over to the right of the picture, lookings towards Foscoe.

I wish I had kept a better winter record of all my nights out in the single digit midgets. I remember the winter of '81 when I was using only a tent fly as shelter, basically a tarp, as I sent in the tent body earlier for repair. North Face took 10 long weeks to return it, so for those 10 weeks I had nothing in Jan and Feb but a tarp. For one week I got hit with a -10 degree blizzard(that's minus ten) and woke up every morning with my body and bag covered in windblown snow. I heard a rumor that you stay warmer if you sleep naked, so during this time I tried it out and when I had to go outside in my naked form to pee, my pee stream froze to the ground and I had to chop myself free with a hatchet HA HA HA just kiddng but the stupid advice is dead wrong. Don't do it!

Then there was the January 1985 southeastern cold snap that hit -28 degrees below with Knoxville getting -18. I was camping out in the Conehead Preserve during the time and slowly made my way back into Boone to find a church building I could sleep inside. Threw my thermarest under a pew and slept like a baby.

Then there were the long cold nights up in Lost Valley where the only trail was a frozen creek as the low rhododendron was just too hard to get thru. I had to stash a pair of rubber high top boots under a rock just to wade the creek and reach camp.

An especially cold camp was up on Lake Michigan during Feb in my old NF Westwind tent. It never got above zero the whole time, but I was on a hitchhiking trip to the Sierra Nevadas and so left the cold north. It was warmer in California but it never stopped raining. Six days straight and I think I got walking pneumonia . .

I wish I could remember all the bedroll camps in zero or below, just threw down a ground cloth and a thermarest and crashed in my bag. Often I had to carry two bags to get thru the night. These frigid winter bedroll camps were everywhere, on decks, in the yards of friend's houses, in town cemetaries for stealth, out in the open by churches(I learned a down bag does not work when exposed to a high winter wind w/o a tent).

At the Tipi I still used my down bag and a thermarest but I had the benefit of a woodstove so I laughed at the single digit deep belows. The worst at the lodge was -14 below, and many nights in the subzero range, the worst aspect of cold weather camping is the wind. A high wind can turn zero degrees into something much worse.

The Blizzard of '93 caught me up at the tipi but the lowest it got was 6 degrees, balmy actually. It was the high winds and the deep snow that paralyzed the area. I stayed put in my tipi for several days and during the worst of the storm had to dig out my door all thru the night to keep from getting sealed in. Later I learned the old timers from Alaska had cabin doors that opened inward, my tipi door swung out. Oops.

In the last 8 years I've traipsed the Citico/Slickrock wilderness in the Cherokee/Nantahala and have to say the days of the tough Boone winters are over, unless I go to 5000 feet in the surrounding mountains. There I can find what it was like in the old days. Just recently I got back from a butt cold trip at -10 below, nothing special, but a wake-up call nonetheless. I dread the coming of Spring.

[shelterbuilder]

My coldest trip was on the upper end of the Horseshoe Trail in Pa. (near Hershey, Pa.), sometime in the early '80's. At that time, it ran through a section of Fort Indiantown Gap Military Reservation (don't know if it still does - they keep re-routing it up there) and I remember pitching near a military latrine so that I could at least sit down (out of the direct wind) to "answer the call". Temperature dropped to around -10* that night - my sleeping bag was only rated for +10*, but I had a liner, and I slept in some of my clothes, too. Thank God for tents: they really do mitigate the temperature! My boots were frozen the next morning, but at least I had a good night's sleep.

[boarstone]

Hopefully I won't experience any that go below the rating of my bag and if I do and survive, hope to live to post the results here....

[Mags]

The night my girlfriend and I got into an argument on a trip.

Some damn cold camping...

[Tipi Walter]

The night my girlfriend and I got into an argument on a trip.

Some damn cold camping...

I've had several of those. Conversation goes something like, "Hey, you can walk me out and I'll be back in 5 days to pick you up!" Grand plans dashed.

Or the inevitable breakdowns, near-misses(no pun), throbbing headaches, debilitating layed-out-on-the ground headaches, sour worldviews, etc, etc. But it all works out.

[sasquatch2014]

You don't spend winters in Northern Wyoming with out seeing a bunch of really cold nights not to mention a few days too.

[Kanati]

This is a system made up of three bags that fit into one another. A light weight summer bag that fit into an intermediate weight fall/winter bag and a gortex shell that fit over the other two bags. This coupled with the army issue cold weather polypro long under wear kept me warm. I am honestly not sure of the weight. But with the compression bag I could get the entire system smaller than the oldler style "down bag".

Harry

The coldest night of my life was somewhere in the mountains of West Germany in January 1967. We stopped the convoy for the night and I layed, not slept, under a deuce and a half (2 1/2 ton truck) in a feather filled sleeping bag on an air mattress on frozen ground. The temp wasn't really cold, only about zero F, but the Army's "sleep system" was inferior at best back then. I shook so hard I actually hurt and had cramps. I was sore for a couple of days afterwards.

[Lyle]

Series of below 0 nights with daytime temps in single digits for about a week straight. Lowest was -14*. I was using an OLD 15* synthetic bag with lots of extra clothes. First couple of nights I froze and got little sleep, then I got a second closed cell pad and slept reasonably well. That stretch taught me well the importance of bottom insulation. Many other similar nights since then.

[Deadeye]

Oops, I voted wrong... I thought it was 33 to 45 below zero that I was hitting. I should have hit the colder than -20 button. I guess I froze some brain cells on that 35 below weekend.

[Mocs123]

4* in Linville Gorge

[Slo-go'en]

minus 36, but there was a cabin with wood stove near by to thaw out in. Just wanted to see if I could live through the night at those temps. Apparently I did, but will never try it again!

[Tipi Walter]

minus 36, but there was a cabin with wood stove near by to thaw out in. Just wanted to see if I could live through the night at those temps. Apparently I did, but will never try it again!

Minus 36 is danged cold, but a woodstove changes everything. For this reason the Kifaru tipi-tents are used by cold weather campers--wood heat can turn a butt-cold backpacking trip into a downright homey, cozy lovefest. But who wants to carry the 10 plus pounds of shelter with stove included?

[John B]

I always thought that Sgt Rock's comments on taking advice from Tipi regarding where to camp are some of the funniest I've read; to paraphrase, 'taking advice on where to set up from a guy who likes camping in snow is risky business...'

[Tipi Walter]

I always thought that Sgt Rock's comments on taking advice from Tipi regarding where to camp are some of the funniest I've read; to paraphrase, 'taking advice on where to set up from a guy who likes camping in snow is risky business...'

Ah, I remember Young Rock atop a 5000 foot meadow in January, '08 with howling winds in a cold fog. He spent enough time with me to cook up lunch and then he was off on his northward journey. He ended up in a high gap with more howling winds and I figured he'd either get crushed by falling trees near Snow Camp or set up his hammock down off the ridge and away from the worst of it. Looking back, I probably recommended that exposed site to him--or told him to go even higher on a blue blaze where the gusty gap becomes an even higher windier open bald.

There's something about winter camping that feeds the soul, but let's be realistic, my winter backpacking in no real way approaches true winter camping with crampons, snowshoes or ice axes. I like the wind and the snow and the occasional subzero temps as much as anyone, but the true winter freaks are the guys who build snow caves and snow walls for their tents, who go out in -30 degrees regularly, and who trudge thru deep snow daily. Even if I go out all the time in the winter, and even see some snow and single digits, I'm still doing it all in the southeast--it ain't Maine or Michigan or Minnesota or the Rockies--and while we do get walloped here now and then, and I get to scurry about as one of the frozen chosen in the freezin' season, winters here are only partly serious.

[Ewker]

the coldest I have camped in was -5°F. The coldest temp I have been out in for a very short day hike was -43°F

[SteveJ]

~10 below, on Shining Rock in January 2006(5?). An unusual event for me....we expected temps of about +10, and I shivered in my 15 deg Big Agnes bag....