Reading the article and the old thread (I won't feed anymore trolls... I promise!) it seems our collective initial estimates were pretty spot on.

No extra insulation (sleeping bag and so on) means you'll freeze to death unless you get that fire going. Which is not a task you should underestimate - the more you need it, the harder it is to make one.

A headlamp is not on the equipment list. Gathering firewood in the dark is close to impossible without a headlamp.

It was real grim to read the detailed description of how he struggled with no snow shoes. Skis would not be an option for him because those take much more practice. The article seems pretty much spot on about how hard it is to make progress in deep snow and what that will do to your clothes. The next opportunity I will test my favorite backup plan for snow shoes (a spruce bough about 3 feet long, lashed to your foot). I'm pretty confident that will work, but untested it is just vapor ware.

Which leads me to the subject of gaiters... the article does not go into that much detail of his clothing. Anyway, gaiters or the lack thereof is just a notch on the misery scale. (It could also be that his pants formed a good seal over his boots so he wouldn't need gaiters - we don't know).


This article was probably one of the best and detailed I've ever seen about such events. Thanks for posting it.