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13 | (continued) If your underpad is a near-perfect thermal insulator, you will notice no melting of the ice beneath your body. But if the pad drains heat from you, however slightly, you may notice a shallow depression being created in the ice surface where you lie. Needless to say, this is to be avoided, since it could cause meltwater leakage into the tent, and increased heat loss, as the interface with the ice increases and the meltwater spreads. Thick, closed-cell pads (impervious to water) beneath the sleeping bag are recommended for such conditions—get them as thick as you can afford, and don’t balk at the price—you’ll never regret the comfort. The snow-covered Shield itself would serve as well as a frozen pond, of course—for solidity—but you may be certain that you will slowly discover its true surface texture, the longer you remain in one place. If there is a thin layer of snow beneath your tent when you first lie down, that snow, however smooth it looks, will slowly compress and reveal to your spine every ancient wrinkle in that rocky bed—the Shield is seldom so flat as to make for a good night’s rest, without abundant mattressing for the weary camper. Ideally, in winter camping, the entire floor of the tent should be covered by a layer of closed-cell foam, such as Ensolite, Evazote or Neoprene, all of which are available in rolls. If you can afford it, they should be laid like wall-to-wall carpet, in addition to the actual sleeping pad. You may conclude from all this that winter camping is a constant struggle to stay warm; this is true, but modern equipment has eased that struggle to the point where it provides more pleasure than stress. It is, however, somewhat more expensive than summer camping. Campers with only summer experience are wondering now just how one stakes down a tent on solid ice or rock. Quite effectively, in fact. On ice one has two choices; on the Shield, practically speaking, only one. On ice, if it’s thick enough, and time is available, and the tools are in your pack, you can actually place climber’s ice-anchors into drilled holes, and clip the tie-downs to those anchors with small carabiners. You can try this with pitons on the Shield as well, of course, but prepare yourself for a long, tedious hunt for ideal cracks—cleverly hidden beneath the snow. And yes, it does help to be familiar with the tools used by rock- and ice-climbers—much of their hardware is very useful in the bush, as are yachting implements. On rock, as on ice, a cruder but faster method is to fill bags with water, drawn with an ordinary pump or bucket, through a hole in a lake or deep pond, tie them up tight, let them freeze solid, and use them as anchors. Emptying the bags in the morning, with minimum difficulty, requires either salting the water beforehand (for which the bags would of course have to be completely waterproof), or cracking the frozen blobs on a soft log or slab of ice—be gentle, and avoid rocks, to keep from puncturing the bags. I’m sorry to say that filling them with snow won’t do you much good—it’s far too light for the purpose, unless the bags are enormous, in which case you’re in for a hell of a lot of work. If you can manage to fill them with sand before you leave home, assuming you’re car-camping, this would of course be perfect, but of course you’ll have to carry them wherever you go, and the sand should by all means be dry, if at all possible. A third method, the most obvious one, and surprisingly effective after a few hours (especially at very low temperatures), requires simply burying an anchor of some kind (small, crossed logs work well) under as much snow as you can pile on it, then stamping down on the pile; within hours, the squashed snow will harden and hold the anchors very firmly. In the morning, they can be a real challenge to remove, so tie them accordingly, with slip knots, then slide the rope out and leave the logs in place. |
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