Another reason to always have your survival kit on your person and not in your pack.

http://nina00.trailstories.com/#Day%203

Yes...Where are the spare glasses?

"He wasn't reported missing until Sunday, a week later, because he hadn't told anyone when he expected to return, and almost everyone who knew him was out of town, O'Brien "


Ooops.

What I found interesting is the effect that small amounts of food seem to have had in helping her to ward off hypothermia.

Regards, Vince

I live in Alabama and have hiked the Pinhoti fairly extensively, including the location where her incident happened. Though we generally don't have "extreme" weather here, humidity, even in Winter, is usually high - hypothermia is a real possibilty. Furthermore, her camp site was a bad choice. I never go into the woods, even with full pack, without the basics on my body, safe, and water tight. I bothers me when I see people hiking, even if only a few miles, with no provisions. <img src="/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

I will add that this woman went on to finish her hike and has since thru hiked the Appalachian Trail. She overcame her adversity on the Pinhoti and went on to do more good things. She obviously learned from her mistakes, which is admirable.

As I briefly browsed through the story I noticed two mistakes:

1. Kept wearing soaked clothes. - everything should be taken off. Depending on the material you can lose body heat up to 300x faster when clothes are wet.

2. Fought the body's will to shiver. This natural reaction is an attempt to produce heat.

Well done for staying alive though.

Depends on the clothes. Cotton, get it off for sure! But polar fleece and wool retain some insulation when wet, and I think she mentions she was wearing fleece.

It is true fleece and wool will provide some insulation when wet. However, unless you provide a vapor/wind barrier, you will still lose significant amounts of body heat. If at all possible, it would be beneficial to remove the wet clothing and wring out as much of the moisture as possible. After redonning the clothing, wrapping yourself or packaging the victim up in a wool blanket and then a plastic tarp/bag or survival blanket, should reduce heat loss via convection/evaporation. If available, heat packs can be added within the blanket arrangement. The heat packs will not generally be enough to reheat the body's core (which can be dangerous in the field), but will reduce heat loss.

Pete