Yes, perhaps he was a bit hard on Athabaskans in that book. However, in his later book "Make Prayers to the Raven" he became totally enamored with the Athabaskan view of the world. Nelson also has a radio series on our local NPR called "Encounters" which I really enjoy. I'm not sure how widely that show is heard outside of Alaska?

In high wind, sub freezing, with ice and snow sandblasting or with rime forming, the neoprene face masks with goggles work (used with hoods and hats). Haven't tried them at -40 tho.

+10 in agreement. I have a good balaclava CTR Mistral Balaclava but a scarf is great because you can adapt it to your face the way you want it, including creating a good breathing hole by the nose. I use wraparound sunglasses and for the most part they don't foul up.

Good question and a lot of great answers. My two cents:

In Siberia, natives used to apply a generous amount of animal fat to their exposed skin (face) to proactively protect it from a frostbite.

Being kids we were preventing a frostbite by often and intensively massaging the skin on the face, ears, palms with wool (we usually wore wool mittens and scarves). If the skin feels numb, or looks whitish start massaging immediately until it burns and looks pink.

Also, while living in Siberia, we had our bodies proactively preparing for the winter, as it approaches each year, by making the skin noticeably warmer, compared to the summer season (in fact that's something about surface capillary system expansion). Even after 14 years of living in California I can still observe that effect on thermografic camera screens at the local Exploratorium exhibit (San Francisco).



It was a shock to see for the first time how grey faces of locals on those screens differs from ours - playing in all colors of warmth during our first visit there, which we made about this time of January in 2003. And that's not really genetic. Our son's face have the same grey color as of "native" Californians around the year (just checked for that recently in the past December).

Don't forget a lot of men grow beards for a reason. I was in Alaska for a month in school (only time I grew a beard). After about 2 weeks there was a noticeable difference in how fast my face got cold, and I'm far from a furry-face guy (chest and legs, sure, but not the face for some reason).

Cold weather is probably the reason we have the ability to grow beards in the first place....

As the frostbite is about body liquids circulation - anything what promotes it is helpful, and what restricts it is dangerous.

E.g. the shoes and clothing should not sit on you too tight. Most cold-inexperienced people overlooks that when using the too well known multilayer principle to quickly improve the clothing insulation. If you add too much thickness under your regular outer shell clothing or manage to fit your leg with 3 socks on into your regular footwear - you might severely restrict the free circulation of blood, thus welcoming a frostbite.

The body extremities are most vulnerable to a frostbite. But in most of the cases, all you need to prevent it is to promote the circulation periodically. Just move your legs and arms wide and fast when possible! It's even worth the effort to take off your shoes and socks (even when it's -20 outside but no wind) and massage them with your bare hands intensively.

However! If you have got an obviously visible frostbite already, don't try any massaging, as you can severely damage tissues further with ice crystals formed in the cells. It's better to "defrost" it first by getting affected foot/hand/nose as undisturbed as possible in contact with cold water, and then warm it up very slowly (add hot water a bit after a bit).

Your point about watching out for constrictions on extremeties is excellent, but are you sure about the rewarming ptotocol you mention? i understand that rapid rewarming in a bath maintained (that is critical) between 99 and 102F. Advice on this therapy changes rather frequently, so I may be out of date myself...Any comments by those working with FB?

Iam not too concerned at the moment. We are looking at temps in the low 80s today. That means red flag warnings for fire danger. You just can't win

Similar spring temps here in NCal!

Surely, it would be great to hear the most recent advancements in emergency rewarming protocols from a SAR Pro, as I can't recall where I have read out about the benefits of a cold water (~50F) starting temps for that (I believe - somewhere here). But even from a basic physics: if you apply too high temp gradient to the tissue - it will start expanding immediately, but ice crystals will expand slower and less evenly, what might cause more damage to tissues on the cellular level. That's why current cryoanabiosys techniques require injection of special cryoprotectant into the blood system prior to freezing in order to avoid problems with fast unfreezing.

Rapid rewarming is contraindicated as treatment for hypothermia as well.