Nice post. Man, I'm glad I don't have to deal with weather like that anymore!

-Blast

Great post, very informative. I hope i could get out there and tryout some of my gear sometime soon. Nice Blog too...

In my experience, the less cloths you wear in a sleepingbag the better. I'll sleep in my skivies in my bag and be perfectly warm while my wife sleeps in "warm" PJs abd shivers all night. You have to let your body heat up the air in the sleepingbag and create a layer of warm air around you.

I have used the Grabber warmers, and had reasonably good success if they were fairly new, sometimes the ones in the discount stores have been around for a while. I have used the small hand warmers for inside gloves, and the adhesive toe warmers inside my boots, and also when sleeping. I find that if I put a thin liner sock on, and stick a toe warmer on each foot, then put a second heavy wool sock over that, my feet stay comfortable all night. (You have to have everything else covered with a decent layer too. Your feet and hands will start to chill if your body starts getting cold anywhere.)

Two weeks ago when I was camping I was using a -10 degree bag, and a full length inflatable Thermarest Prolite 4. I used the toe warmer/dual sock method both nights. Temps were in the high single digits, winds ranged from 10-25mph, so it was cold, below zero wind chill all weekend. I slept like a baby, except for the ice/frost that would form near my nose and mouth on the balaclava I was wearing. I would sometimes wake up with cold crusty stuff against my face when I would roll over.

I have not tried these yet, but, Grabber also makes larger warmers called "sleeping bag warmers". Here's a link:
http://www.warmers.com/ItemDetails.aspx?itemid=SBWP

Does anyone have experience with those? I like the toe warmers inside two layers of socks, because they follow my feet when I move around.

Speaking from personal experiance:
In arctic conditions, which is what you are dealing with, carry your water in a couple of 1 to 2 litre steel thermos flask's. Increase the flask's insulation by wrapping a section of foam mat around it.

An axe might have been a usefull addition as well. You could chop through the ice in a couple of minutes. Cover the hole with pine bough's and snow (if available) to stop it refreezing.

You need to keep the tent walls away from you. Try using long poles in an x shaped configuation.

I just did a similar 'test' last night. Though not nearly as thorough. And, not a Successful ending. And, I was drunk.

Got home last night and relaxed a while along with some scotch. Around 10:30 it started raining pretty good. so I thought "Hey! It'd be a great night to sleep outside!" I wanted to set up a tarp/hiking pole shelter, but couldn't find my camping tarp. Decided to try just setting up my tent fly with poles but no body. That turned out incredibly cool, hadn't done that before with this tent (MSR Hubba hubba, which is AWESOME.)

Threw in a 15* bag on an Thermarest full length, stripped to skivies, and crashed.

The rain was coming down hard and sounded really cool on the tent fly. However, the car traffic down my residential street and folks coming home from bars kept waking me up. And, I was NEVER quite warm enough. I'm usually a warm sleeper, but with just underwear on my skin and alcohol in my blood I never cozied up.

Finally, with my head and throat bugging me (I'm still getting over a cold) I thought this was ridiculous. Got up, threw the gear in my garage, and went to bed. I figured it was 2am or so. Nope. 6:30am. Man, I'm tired today.

Tonight we're doing the same thing but out in the woods where it's quite. And, we'll be better geared up for it and put up the full tent. Still have to drink some wine, though. Just a tradition in the woods to bring uncle carlos when car camping...

Jason

No surprise you couldn't find your tarp with all that Blood in your Alcohol! Drunkard!

Uncle Carlo is a mean wine. Give us a report when you get back, and... watch out for Bigfoot!!!

m

great post, I always wanted to do something like that, you have given me some ideas to try.