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Just exactly what does one wear on a cold winter’s night in a sleeping bag, inside a double-walled tent? Let’s suppose the outside temperature is slightly below freezing, and the wind is moderate, about 10 km per hour. This is a fairly typical evening, and presents no serious problems, if you happen to have a winter sleeping bag, and a full-length foam pad, as listed above. Those and a double-walled tent would allow you to get away with little but a balaclava for your head and face. This assumes that you’re in good physical condition (young or not), have eaten well, consumed a polite amount of alcohol (which must never be allowed to reach a sub-zero temperature in its bottle, lest it cause frostbite in your throat), and the tent and bag have no leaks. The tent must breathe, but should never admit a draft—the bag likewise. The rest is up to your own metabolism, always your most dependable source of warmth. If such a combination proves comfortable, and you are truly tired, you will sleep well. It’s when conditions change that trouble starts. Nearly always, the ambient temperature will drop as the hours pass. If the wind dies completely, as it frequently does late at night, you may never notice the increasing cold outside. But if a northern air mass (cold front) is on the move, and the wind rises, so that you can hear it in the trees, it’s likely that you’ll feel the chill and wake up—the sound of the wind alone may cause this anyway; it can seem eerie if you’re not accustomed to it. At this point, you’re going to want to relieve yourself and put some more clothes on. As explained above, men can do these things in that order. Women, however, will have to dress fully and go out. On this whole matter, however, it is my duty to remind you that there is an alternative available for both sexes, though unavoidably expensive: the all-weather suit, or its more modest version, what I call the “sleeping suit”—a wearable equivalent of a sleeping bag. I’m sure everyone by now has seen photographs or films of Everest expeditions on which the members going up to the highest altitudes were provided with custom-fitted suits having a loft (thickness) equal to that of a winter sleeping bag. Normally, in mountaineering, these suits are worn with heavy boots fitted with crampons, and frequently wrapped with equipment belts, ropes, oxygen bottles and the rest. But it’s obvious that an unencumbered suit, of appropriate loft, would ease the lot of winter campers everywhere. Even considering their cost, I remain surprised that I have never seen such items offered for sale in any camping equipment store or catalogue. Some people will naturally be thinking of snowmobile suits, and wondering how they compare with the kind of suit I’m talking about. They’re similar, but snowmobile suits are primarily windproof—they are seldom thickly insulated; by themselves, they are far too thin to serve as anything but full-length windbreakers, which is what they’re designed to be. If you were to obtain an oversized snowmobile suit, and try to use it for sleeping outdoors in the winter, you would first have to supply the necessary insulation for yourself, in a wearable form—not an effortless project in the case of polyester batting, which is sold by the yard. You could of course make such a suit, given the proper materials, lining and all, but even an experienced tailor would tend to back away from such a job—or charge a price that would severely discourage you. And I am certainly not the person to provide the guidance. However, if you do have the time, skill, equipment, inclination and experience, I’m sure you’d have no trouble finding a market for such garments, if you live in a place where the winters are long and merciless, and you’re willing to custom-fit your clients. Naturally, if a snowmobile suit is all you have as an outer garment, it can be turned into a very comfortable covering if it is big enough to accommodate a suit or two of quilted longjohns beneath it. Properly made and properly fitted, such a combination will be almost equivalent to a summer sleeping bag in itself—when the temperature takes a dive, you can cover yourself with a light sleeping bag, unzipped, and be toasty all night long. (Don’t forget a small pillow, just for the sake of your neck and upper spine.) |
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