First Winter Overnight Hang Report
The trip was a huge learning experience. First I don’t know how people do anything in the negative Faranheight numbers. Its not when I’m hiking its when I’m stopped the cold just spits in my face, hands, and feet!
First off I brought too many jackets… The shell was unnecessary and the second down jacket also. I could have gotten away with the Monbell Parka (awesome btw) and the fleece which is what I wore the whole trip. I’d say the shell if it is snowing but that’s probably it.
Hiking in general was a lot easier at 25lbs. Definitely happy about that. I wasn’t completely exhausted when I got to West Mountain Shelter as I was with the 40lbs for obvious reasons. Really nice to show up and have a lot more energy to get things done.
Very Icy as expected and the Kahtoola Micro Spikes REALLY made the difference going up trails that were totally iced over. They did add some soreness to my feet due to the pressure of the spikes gripping the terrain but the pros outweigh the cons.
Its funny how some obvious things don’t come to light in your planning until you start executing some of your tasks in the field. Water freezes basically instantly in 15*. Pretty amazed how my Krazy Cooking Kit iced over before my eyes when I packed it up after a hot coa coa break. It made dinner a fiasco when I couldn’t open the kit. A little bang against the shelter floor loosened it up. Also most of the water sources were no longer accessible. I ended up finding a spot where I could hear the water running underneath and I kicked a hole in the ice and scooped up the water. Again funny to see it start to freeze over in my cup before I could bring heat to it.
Ran into a few crazy people like myself getting in a day hike. A group of graduate students showed up around 4pm at the shelter. Nice people but couldn’t make a fire to save their lives. I threw in some helpful hints and sat back and watched the show. I started my fire with char cloth. They had lighters and matches and were in utter embarrassment. They kept blaming their friend Phil… poor guy had nothing to do with it HA. Guess he was the group scape goat. I turned in around 5pm to get out of the cold. The girls in the graduate party quickly jumped to my fire to warm up. I had collected a lot of wood so I told them to use it to keep warm if they were staying after dark.
I got 3 hour sleep increments. 5-8pm; 8-11pm; 11pm-2am; and then it was a free for all after that.
My winter yeti was not working for me at 10* the way I would have liked it. Mostly my fault. My hammock set up was not great. It was not staked out at all and the foot end was much higher than the head end. In the cold I wasn’t fooling around with the set up too much… wish I had. Having the foot end higher made the head end of the yeti bellow out which let cold air in. My back was cool… not cold but cool enough to bother me.
At 2am I decided to take my Gossamer Gear Treklight pad and make it full body length (I folded it for my feet which were toasty in my down booties). It worked for about an hour but I still felt cool at times.
3am I woke up to my tarp slapping my feet and the wind blowing in 11* gusts. That sucked something awful. The ground was solid so I used the rocks at the shelter to tie my guylines out. One got loose in the gusts and I had to deal with it. Having dealt with it and noticing how AWESOME the moon looked as well as the NYC Skyline I decided to fix the foot end of my hammock to get that Yeti flush against the hammock. Well it fixed it but my back was not as warm as I had imagined. Thinking it was the liner I ripped that bad boy off at 4am to just get the Yeti against my hammock… Still the same. Maybe I’m a cold sleeper and that’s my limit at 11*.
The Black Mamba (Winter) Top Quilt was working basically as I imagined it would. Again I must be a cold sleeper because I was not as warm as I am in my -15 degree bag (well DUH). I was warmer in the bag than the temp outside. However when I touched the inside of the bag it was cool to the touch. Outside of the bag was freezing cold as expected. The snap for the head is an annoyance to me. It kept undoing itself when I fussed around. I think I will add tie-outs to it like there is at the foot area. To me that would make more sense. As far as the Top quilt wrapping around you… when the snap is in place OH YEA really good wrap around and conforms in unity with the yeti. And I did get the icing over the top from breathing.
I gave up sleep at 5am. Packed up as quick as I could and ran to the shelter to start a fire. Felt like the graduate students at that point because I couldn’t get the fire started for quite a while. Used 2 large pieces of char cloth and then 2 pieces of dryer lint. Finally got enough coals to get that wood cooking.
Krazy cooking kit was frozen over yet again… pulled out a mountain house beef stroganoff and oat meal to figure what I wanted to eat. I laughed at my oatmeal packet and chowed down on the mountain house meal.
My DIY canteen cozy worked out. However I did heat the water before I went to bed and kept the canteen in the cozy upside down until morning. Still had a lot of water to use for cooking. I heated more water up and put it in the canteen, swished it around to turn the rest of the ice back to water for the hike back to my car.
Gossamer Gear Trek Light poles… awesome. Don’t even feel the weight
Gossamer Gear 1/4 inch wide is TREMENDOUS! Received this box as tall as me and I’m like no way its all that… yeah it was. I cut the width down and used the extra for a little sit pad and the rest I may use for future DIY projects. The pad performed as expected, very well.
Again not a comfortable night sleeping but I did survive to tell the story. Hiking was very enjoyable as long as I was moving and staying active. I’m going to play with the winter yeti a bit more and perfect the set up. I’m still thinking it’s me. The 3 season yeti was mega warm when I tried it on the hammock in 41* in a quick set up with my 1.1 Single. But I had it all staked out and the hammock set up was optimal based on Brandon’s videos.
Here are the videos, Enjoy:
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcxoF99zNtA
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOLmEp5v4xw
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Originally Posted by Marmotnj
