A Hole Where You'll Freeze to Death - The Geography of Extreme Microclimates

Yea, good stuff many people have no clue about this matter, glad you shared. Half a lifetime in winter climates has imparted some wisdoms. Like layering, thin under garments underneath, water resistant and breathable shells on top Gortex if you can afford it is tits.

If you are not prepared and are in any of the situations laid out in this video and become wet because you are wrapped up in non- breathable fibers either by sweat, or the elements melting through your gear you are as good as dead if you cannot get dry period!

I have never been in a super super cold hole like this, but I have been in many places that have COLD characteristics... One was a valley, or a slope coming from a wide long hill crest, which was about 2 K wide and it funneled down into a creek - a narrow shallow valley, and as the cold air came down from the night sky, it all collected in the valley and ran down hill at a fairly strong pace, for a breeze in a cold, clear, windless night...

The cold sinking air, coming down, pushed the cold sinking air, on the ground in front of it, and the colder it got, the more it concentrated in the valley, and the stiffer the breeze got.....

Really cold actually.

Kind of like flood water coming down the hills, concetrating in the creeks and the valleys and the rivers...

Same thing.

Wind Breaks and shelter is terribly important - like polymer tarpaulins, are wind breaks, but they are SHIT insulators...

So you need them to keep the wind off you and to stop the wind going through your clothes and carrying your body heat away, and you need insulation to separate yourself from the wind break...

And with the ICY cold, valley floors etc... make the effort o get above them and out of them...

Minus 10*C or 0*C - this is a HUGE difference in survival / camping / comfort... and the need for WARM clothing and bedding starts to become very apparent - if your freezing to death and you haven't got it - your fucked...

And if you can get OUT of the wind, OUT of the really most extreme cold, and you can load up on the minimal bed space, like a cocoon, or a tunnel, of leaves and twigs and composting materials, and grasses etc.. and dry dirt over the top....

One of the things I discovered, is that when the wino's and homeless guys said "If your stuck out at night, sleep under some news papers.." - well I got stranded one night, way out in the middle of nowhere and that was all I had to make bedding from.

2 layers of large news papers were as warm as a really good bed.....

Seriously.

On motorcycles.. spreading a newspaper, under the front of your leather jacket, around your chest and belly, is a HUGE help in slowing the heat loss.....

AND

Spinning off the newspaper sheets, is putting your bed sheet ON TOP OF your blankets.. to keep the warmpth in...

It makes a huge difference - so ONE sheet, and one blanket - that's your bedding - IF your put the blanket over yourself and your sheet on top - your like 2 x as warm....

Best to get either a tight weave cotton sheet OR a softer thicker winter type sheet....