(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article)
Cold Weather Considerations
Colder weather introduces its own unique problems to mobile sleep planning. Besides being really uncomfortable and preventing you from getting a good night’s sleep, it’s possible to get hypothermia in wet or windy conditions in temperatures as high as 60°F, which can result in death. The most obvious solution is to start a fire to keep you warm, but you’ll want to make sure you structure the fire to burn as long as possible so you can get a good night’s sleep. Some options for long-burning fires are:
- A regular fire with some really thick logs added to it
- An upside-down fire, where you have thick logs on the bottom and stack smaller stuff as you move up the pile. You start the fire on the top, and it slowly burns down through the thicker material.
- Two thick logs stacked on top of each other with a smoldering fire burning between them.
- A log torch, which is a thick section of log that’s been split, hollowed-out, then reassembled and lit on the inside.
- A self-feeding fire with ramps on both sides that hold additional logs that roll down as the lower logs burn.
Burning a fire to stay warm while you’re sleeping can be dangerous, so make sure you do some research and practice how to do it safely before you actually need it to survive.
The SOL Escape Bivvy I mentioned earlier is also a good option for colder weather and, in my experience, adds 10°F-20°F of warmth. You can combine that with a lightweight sleeping bag or blanket for a decent cold-weather sleep solution. My personal current mobile colder-weather sleep system is the combination of a 2Go Systems v3 B.O.B. Zip Poncho combined with a Helikon Tex Swagman – you can wear them together as layered ponchos to keep you warm and dry when you’re moving, and zip them up and nest them together for a nice warm sleeping system. I recommend avoiding the use of mylar emergency blankets for sleeping if possible, as they don’t breath and you’ll most likely end up soaked from sweating, which can be deadly in colder weather. However, if that’s all you have available you should ensure there are one or more gaps to allow some air to circulate.Continue reading“To Sleep, Perchance to Dream – Part 3, by J.M.”
