Useful cold weather camping tips and tricks

A) The camping spot.

Do pay some attention to where you pitch your tent. Try to get as little exposure as possible. Wind is the most dangerous thing next to getting wet. Building a sort of wall around your tent might help deflect the wind a bit over your tent. It is a very common practice in the mountains. (Your bike makes a good windbreak - just make sure if it falls over it won't land ON you. Ed.)

If you get stuck without a tent you should look for a spot that protects you from the elements as much as possible. Try to remember how you used to build those camps as a little kid and start building one. If you expect rain try anything to stay dry as long and as much as possible. There are several survivalbooks (I would recommend the SAS Survival handbook) where you can find tips and hints about this stuff. Just reading one for the fun of it, and trying it out from time to time in your backyard is great.

B) Nutrition.

If you are expecting a cold night or period you should adapt your food to it. Your body basically burns sugars to create heat for itself. Therefore it is a good idea to add a bit more butter to your menu. Also pasta is a great energy source. These foods are long-term sugars. Your body will stock them in the form of fat and convert them to sugar when needed. Of course you should add short-term sugars too during the day to keep going. This is what I would eat on a day of winter-expeditioning:

Breakfast: hot oatmeal with brown sugar and chunk of butter, and a hot cup of tea.
Noon: crackers with marmalade or some other sugar-holding bread spread.
Evening: Macaroni with cheese and just before going to bed a hot cup of sugar tea.
Snack: a great snack during the day (I carry them in the pockets of my jacket so that I can grab some whenever I feel for it) is a mixture of chocolate M&M's with salty peanuts.

The hot meal in the morning and the hot cup of tea in the evening are key! The hot breakfast will help you to get warm in the morning (often the coldest moment of the day and sadly also the one when you have to leave your cosy sleeping bag). And the hot cup of tea will make sure that you feel warm when you get into the sleeping bag.

C) Clothing?

There are several theories on this. Personally I think it is best to sleep with as little clothing as possible. That way you can heat up the sleeping bag faster and during the night the heat conserved in the sleeping bag will be closer to your body. Also blood circulation will be optimal which is also better for your body heat. For cold feet sometimes a pair of cotton or wool socks might help. One time I also made a giant mitten every night out of a fleece pullover. I would put my feet in the main part of it and then tied the sleeves around my ankles. Had warm feet ever since.

If your sleeping bag doesn't cover your head or neck you can consider sleeping with a hat. Or just throw a fleece over your head, which might feel more comfortable. We lose over 30% of our bodyheat via our head and neck. If we can conserve this it can be used to heat up other parts of your body. (As the saying goes: Cold feet? Put on a hat!)

D) The sleeping bag.

Always make sure that your sleeping bag cannot get wet. Once a sleeping bag is wet when you really need it (rain, cold, high winds…) it is pretty hopeless. It is almost impossible to dry a sleeping bag under these conditions. Therefore put it in a good plastic bag. It should also be the last thing that you unpack. And if conditions are bad you should be sure that you can put it into the safety of the tent right away.

Ok, the sleeping bag is safely in the tent and you are getting ready to get to bed. If you have travelled a whole day in temperatures between 0°C and 5°C it is very unlikely that your sleeping bag will be warmer than 5°C. That's a very cold environment to get into when you are already tired. Therefore remember the hints given under nutrition. What I sometimes do is to undress when I am already inside the sleeping bag. This is such a struggle that I always end up nicely warm, now matter how cold the sleeping bag was.

Also avoid having big pockets of air in-between you and the sleeping bag. You'll also need to heat up all that extra air before your sleeping bag feels warm. It's better to stuff up the extra space with clothing, that way your body heat is used a lot more economically. And in the morning you have warm clothes to put on!

Also remember that anything left outside the sleeping bag will freeze. If I expect a real cold night (open sky, high winds…) I take my water bottles into my sleeping bag (check that they are closed really tight). My hiking shoes or riding boots I put in a stuffsack and then also in my sleeping bag.

E) Company?

Sleeping with several people in one tent has several pros. One sleeping bag next to another insulates the sides of each bag. I have known situations where somebody was cold every night. By just placing that person in-between the problem was solved.

When stuff gets really bad and somebody just keeps cooling down for some reason, don't hesitate. Zip open two or three sleeping bags and get body to body. Preferably one person on each side of the cold person. Hypothermia is no joke and you have to handle it swiftly once somebody is really cooling down. If there is a fourth person he can put up some water to make some hot sugartea.

3. Practice.

I am never going to forget the face of my father when I showed up at his door on a pretty cold evening. The evening news just announced -12°C. "Hey dad, can I sleep in the backyard tonight?"

Once you have your gear together, or you just wonder how far below zero you can go with your sleeping bag then it is time for practice. Experiment with different combinations and materials.

Get out there! If you don't have a garden then ask family or friends. And don't worry about the neighbours when they spill their coffee when you crawl out of your tent the next morning...

An additional tip from Matthew McLaughlin, San Luis Obispo, CA, United States:

Water bottles (good leak-proof ones) can be filled with warm water before being put into the sleeping bag. The water bottle is already going into the bag to keep it from freezing and there is no reason to waste valuable body heat to bring the water up to body temperature. Warm water (not hot enough to hurt if held a long time, but quite warm) not only warms the sleeping bag before you get in, it also warms your feet very quickly.