Originally Posted By: hikermor
If you avoid bulk and expense for warmth and shelter, you will depend on your fire and your field improvised shelter, which can work just fine.

Be sure you have a good fleece or wool sweater (worn underneath your kayak shell, which i assume you have). See if you can fit in a heetsheets bivy bag and a balaclava helmet or watch cap along with gloves. Since you will be around a fire, wool might work better than fleece, although I personally prefer fleece.


Too much wool on your body when in the water can be dangerous
as it weighs you down. Nearly lost a scoutmaster one winter while canoeing.
He was a big fan of Filson clothes.

Also I've noticed
how much lower in the water others have floated when wearing
wool clothes after falling out of a raft. Makes it harder to
see obstacles downstream and to catch your breath.

Sure, you may get some holes in your fleece from a campfire, but it will dry faster anyway. In a survival situation, the last
thing I would worry about is how snappy my clothes looked.

I like the polypro heavyweight army longjohns for boating
as they are the lightest to carry, the fastest drying, and
add to buoyancy.


Edited by Oware (12/28/09 04:15 PM)
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