Cagoule-and-footsack bivouac
CHIP: With the rise of the 1-pound Gore-Tex bivouac bag, the former range of ingenious cagoules, footsacks, convertible down pants, and other help-me-make-it-through-the-night gear has nearly vanished. Or at least the mountaineering suppliers that used to carry such things for the most part no longer do. The divide here is between climbers and hard-core types who seek out such déshabillé nights and those—most of us really—for whom it represents dire emergency. The kit used by my hard-core friends is a bare-bones bivouac bag, a pack-length Ensolite pad, and an insulated cap, parka, pants, and booties. The usual down-versus-synthetic battles rage, of course. But in either wise, a knowledgeable user can spend a night or two out without serious harm—and maybe even get a few hours of sleep.
COLIN: The knee-length parka, or cagoule (this page), is designed for use as a bivouac—either alone (when you draw your knees up inside it) or with a companion footsack. The idea is presumably to use the combination when nights are really warm, but there are few climates I would trust. As an emergency bivouac the rig sounds ideal. But “emergency bivouac” means sleeping out when you do not expect to—and therefore are unlikely to be carrying equipment for the job. Besides, a modern VBL shirt and pants or half-sac (this page) do the same job better. Still, it’s possible to imagine certain situations in which a cagoule-and-footsack rig might be worth packing along. Anyway, the world would be poorer without it. It’s one of those intriguing items that make catalog browsing the dreamy, time-wasting, utterly delightful pursuit it is.
Note that Wiggy’s still makes a classic nylon oxford cagoule with a drawcorded hood, waist, and just-above-the-knee-length skirt (in four sizes, $140). Campmor’s Backpacker Rain Cagoule, in one size, costs about $40.
Packbag as emergency footsack
See this page.
Years ago I used to stuff my sleeping bag loose into the pack or even tie it unprotected onto the outside. But eventually I became, like most people, a convert to stuff sacks. They’re normally cylindrical affairs with drawcord closures, and they protect your bag—and down clothing and other items too—from unnecessary wear and tear and also from rain. If you’re at all worried about the bag’s getting wet, line or envelop its stuff sack with a large plastic bag filched from almost any other use.
CHIP: Most stuff sacks are made of waterproofed nylon, but some of the new fabrics seen in fly sheets, like coated polyester and ultralight silicone-impregnated nylon, are good for stuffers as well. While the fabric itself may be more or less waterproof, the usual drawstring closure is not. It can actually suck water in when the sleeping bag inside is compressed and then released, which occurs when you set an E-frame pack down in wet foliage—or wade that deeper-than-it-looks creek.
The lightest waterproof sacks are silicone-impregnated nylon parachute cloth. GoLite makes a stow sack called the Pouch, in five sizes (all in cubic inches): 125, 250, 500, 1000, and 2000. Weights range from 0.5 oz. to 2.5 oz., and prices from $12 to $33. The largest size will line the main compartment of a pack. The 1000-cu.-in. size works for most sleeping bags while the 1-oz.-500-cu.-incher happily swallows a lightweight. GoLite improves the usual drawstring-and-flap closure to a drawstring and collar—you stuff the sleeping bag or parka, twist the collar, and then drawstring it in place.
For ruggedness, a good waterproof fabric for stuff sacks is Hydroseal, developed by Outdoor Research (in rain-fresh Seattle). A stout 4-oz. Antron nylon is coated with a special elastomer, making it waterproof to 200 pounds per square inch (psi). Besides waterproofness, the endearing quality of Hydroseal is that the fabric is limp enough to mold itself to the contents of the sack. Hydroseal stuff sacks, sleeping-pad covers, and external pack pockets come in more sizes than I can list here. The Basic model is a drawcord/flap closure with a webbing handle at the base. The Standard adds factory-taped seams and a daisy chain for lashing down. The Advanced model drops the drawcord for a roll closure with Velcro bindings. The Advanced model also works as a compression sack—you stuff your treasure and exhaust the air, whence the limp fabric sucks together, letting you roll and tab the closure for compression as good as that in sacks with straps or laces. I used one to hold a fleece top and pants, strapping it to the front bar of a cataraft for a seven-day river run. If it failed, I figured I could always wring out the fleece and get by. But I didn’t have to: many rapids (and one disgraceful flip) later, the fuzz was still dry. Outdoor Research Hydroseal stuff sacks come in eight sizes, from 300 to 2500 cu. in. The Basic runs $9.50 to $19; the Standard, $12.50 to $22.50; and the Advanced, $16.50 to $28.50. If butt compression’s not enough, they now make a four-strapper bondage bag, hinged and zippered, in five sizes. Nominally, these range from 800 to 2900 cu. in., with the compression system halving that. Cost ranges from $20 to $35 (and yes, they come in black).
Most suppliers of stuff sacks have some sort of compression model, with a set of lengthwise straps, encircling straps, horizontal laces, or even a double drawstring, that lets you reduce the volume of squashables by up to half.
Another remarkable stuff sack, for quite different reasons, is the Gregory Contour, a 420-denier ripstop in three sizes (3–4 oz., $20 each), sewn in a gently rectilinear shape to fit the sleeping-bag compartments of Gregory’s (and many other) packs.
Coated-nylon stuff sacks and ditty bags are simple to sew—for a pattern, look at your favorite. This makes them ideal, says Colin, “for feeling your way into the do-it-yourself field.”
The small-stuff-sack fallacy
COLIN: Manufacturers tend to make stuff sacks for sleeping bags and other items as small as possible, if not smaller. Apart from saving material and a scrittage of weight, and convincing customers that the stuffed product is small and neat and probably light, the only advantage I can discern is a possible increase in waterproofness due to skintightness when packed. That may be a gain for those who carry sleeping bags outside their packs. For others it’s offset with acres to spare by two weighty debits.
First, you do not, as might be imagined, save space. A tightly packed stuff sack tends to sit stalwartly and nonconformingly in its corner of a pack; unless you have soft, yielding articles to stuff around it you leave wasted space at its peripheries.
Second, and more important, there’s the stuffing difficulty. A bag of such a size that you can just about cram in your sleeping bag or down jacket or whatever with no more than a minor struggle in store or living room at a windless 70°F, when you’re fresh and fed, may seem beguilingly efficient. In a gale, at 20°, when you’re hungry and weary and in a hurry, it transmutes into a monster.
I always try to buy a stuff sack big enough to take its load with room to spare, leaving it soft, malleable, odd-corner-fitting—and easily stuffable.
See this page.
CHIP: Since washing seems to break down insulation fast, especially synthetics, liners are regaining popularity, in materials that are both warmer and lighter than cotton. Fleece mummy liners with side zippers and drawstring hoods are eminently washable and add about 10°F of comfort to a compatible sleeping bag. I’ve also talked with ultralighters who use them in summer, with a slim bivy sack and gossamer tarp (this page). While somewhat heavier and bulkier than an ultralight down bag, they cost half as much and aren’t vulnerable to moisture. A wholesaler, Liberty Mountain Adventure, stocks Fleece Mummy Liners in midweight Polartec 200—order through your local shop (regular: 2 lbs., $88; long: 2 lbs. 6 oz., $96). Since they’re one thickness throughout, the primary kvetch seems to be cold feet.
Light cotton liners are still around but seem to be used more for dude-ranch/rental situations than backpacking. No synthetic fabric seems to have emerged as the perfect lightweight sleeping-bag liner. But an ancient one, silk, is incredibly light and compressible, fast-drying, and a comfort to the skin.
I’ve used a silk envelope with a Velcro-tabbed side opening and pillow sleeve called a Dreamsack (6 oz., $59), as a sleeping-bag liner. It’s midnight blue—dreamy indeed, though I do get tangled up in it; a few points of attachment would help. But I find I use it more outside my sleeping bag than in. On hot-country trips my former custom was to pack an old bedsheet, fold it once lengthwise, and taco in—cheap and quite comfortable on breathless nights. But a cotton sheet weighs a pound and a half, gains water weight fast, and is slow to dry. The Dreamsack weighs next to nothing, dries in a few minutes of early sun, and stuffs into an insulated mug (or the teeny sack supplied). Westwind Trading Company imports Dreamsacks in singles, doubles, and various lengths (5–12 oz., $45–$110). For the tender-cheeked they have a silk pillowcase that stuffs to the size of a mouse, weighs less, and costs $7.
Another tiptoe in the general direction of Babylon are liners and sleeping-pad covers from Design Salt (whose ads drape them around Euro-vixens in abandoned poses). They come in sizes from child to affinity group, in silk, cotton, and blends thereof, with wild colors and patterns. A durable, washable, nonwoven nylon liner is also available.
All of which makes my old percale burrito system look like…sheet.
COLIN: Any sleeping bag should be aired after use. Just open the bag and leave it spread out, preferably up off the ground. With nylon-shell bags, which tend to pick up body odors, two or three days isn’t too long. Outdoor airing, especially in sunshine, seems best. Purists will warn you that sunlight is nylon’s archenemy. Technically, they may be right. But life is too bloody short.
It’s best not to store a bag for long periods compressed in its stuff sack: if you do, the fill—especially synthetics but also resilient down—will tend to retain its cramped conformation and will therefore lose at least some of its insulating power. So lay the bag out flat, hang in a closet, or roll loosely.
Normally, cleaning should amount to no more than sponging the shell, inside and out, with a mild soap (not detergent) and tepid water. Rinse, then dry thoroughly. If a bag becomes so soiled that it demands more stringent measures, that presents no problem if it has synthetic fill: you simply wash it. (Do not dry-clean it.) But take care with the drying: Polarguard, for example, suffers irreversible damage at 140°F. (Note that car trunks and interiors can easily reach 140°.)
Down demands greater cleaning care. You can take the bag to reputable launderers, accustomed to down clothing, and have them wash it in soap or mild detergent and then tumble dry; but you can save a lot of money by doing the job yourself. There are now several soaps made especially for the job, including Nikwax Down Wash (10-oz. plastic bottle, $10) and Down Suds (4-oz. plastic bottle, $3; 8-oz., $5). With such soaps you can do a good job in a bathtub with tepid water. But don’t use too much soap. Make sure any Velcro tabs are firmly tabbed: when open, they can damage the shell and liner fabrics. And rinse carefully. Do not manhandle the bag: soaked, wet down is so heavy that it can tear the internal baffles. Be prepared for a tedious drying job. One manufacturer recommends letting the bag drip dry for a couple of hours (in a chaise longue, say, or a hammock) or even spindrying it in the largest possible front-loading dryer at a Laundromat “for several hours (when it feels dry, give it another hour).” Set dryer to FLUFF or SYNTHETIC cycle; otherwise, you can melt nylon and fuse zippers. Don’t let a bag lie in a dryer once it has stopped. Some experts recommend throwing a pair of sneakers in with the bag: “they will help pound clogged down apart, and the rubber/nylon combination generates the static electricity needed to loft the down fully.” Counter-experts judge the sneakers to do more harm than good, and warn that they’re especially likely to damage old bags.
A few people—even some soap makers—say that with the right soaps you can safely use tumble washers (but not top-loaders).
An alternative (for down bags, not synthetics) is dry cleaning. The experts’ advice on dry-cleaning or not dry-cleaning your bag seems to change about as often as skirt lengths. So I shall stick with my first-edition advice (though there does seem to be a tendency for more and more makers to recommend dry cleaning at reputable cleaners).
Ever since one favorite old bag of mine lost a great deal of its virtue after two or three widely spaced visits to the cleaners I’ve tended to avoid commercial cleaning. But so that I shouldn’t pass on pure hunch I made careful inquiries—only to find that “expert” opinions on acceptable dry-cleaning methods run the gamut, A through Z. As for specific trustworthy cleaners of any kind, they seem to come and go. Best bet: inquire at a good mountain shop; the staff should know which local cleaners do a restrained but effective job on sleeping bags.*20
One reason it’s sometimes advisable to have a bag cleaned is that in time the down begins to mat. Clumps of it coagulate, and large areas in each baffle tube are left empty. Dry cleaning certainly seems to redistribute the down effectively. But the plant manager I’ve quoted (and he can hardly be accused of commercial bias in this opinion) maintained that the redistribution was purely the result of mechanical tumbling in the dryer. In other words, the way to redistribute the down in your bag, especially if it has been soaked, is to put it in the tumble dryer at low heat—back home or at a Laundromat.
Warning: almost any kind of patch that’s taped or glued on will come off a bag during dry cleaning, and fill will escape. So if your bag has been patched, try to avoid having it cleaned unless (or until) the patches are sewn on.
Like it or not, small cuts and burns happen. Adhesive repair tape (this page) is the remedy. It used to be that the adhesive was enough on its own, but this no longer seems to be so. Certainly not for permanent patches. My opinion, based on many years’ patching of one ancient cotton-covered bag, is apparently not purely attributable to crabbed age: I recently forced one experienced salesman to admit that, owing to the slipperiness of the new materials, the stuff really doesn’t adhere the way it used to. The solution: sew permanent patches around all their edges.
CHIP: Reformulated stickum helps a lot and so does rounding the corners of the patch. I patched a crampon hole in my packcloth gaiters with Kenyon ripstop repair tape. Despite lots of step kicking and postholing, the patch still held after five years, when I gave the gaiters to a buffalo-defending youngster in West Yellowstone, Montana.
Pensioning off
COLIN: There comes a time—no matter how much cleaning or tumble drying or self-deceiving you do—when a patched and trusted old bag is no longer sure to give you a warm sleep within its temperature range. There’s only one remedy. But it’s always a sad moment when another old friend bites the Goodwill.
There are few simpler ways of ensuring a bad night’s sleep than choosing a bed that slopes. If the slope is sideways you spend the night in a thinly conscious hassle with gravity; and you wake, tired and aching, to find yourself still pressing fiercely on the downslope with arms and knees and a battery of assistant muscles. If the slope runs from feet to head you don’t go to sleep at all. No matter how gentle the incline (and it’s sure to be gentle, or you would never have overlooked it) you discover the horrible truth the moment you lie down. The feeling that all the blood is going to rush to your head is so disturbing that after a few feeble attempts at telling yourself that it’s all imagination, you gruntle up and switch head and feet.*21
If you can’t possibly avoid a sloping bed you should sleep with your feet downhill. That way, if the slope isn’t too severe, you spend a passably comfortable night: you may come half awake occasionally to find yourself a yard and a half downhill from pillow and groundsheet, and have to do an undignified wriggle back uphill; but you wake with nothing worse than mildly aching leg muscles.
Do everything you can, then, to organize a level bed. I routinely check by lying full length on the bare ground (or on a groundsheet if it’s wet), adjusting to the most comfortable position, and then lying still long enough to make sure my head isn’t too blood-collecting low. If you have to camp on generally sloping ground then try to do so on a trail or just above a tree or in some other place where there’s a ready-made level platform. Or go to considerable pains to make a platform. Often you can find a place with soil loose enough to kick away with your heels. You can always do so on talus. But in heavily used country you must these days accept a bedsite that needs leveling only if the construction work will do no damage to the ground and can be completely repaired before you leave. Sand, talus, and a deep leaf carpet qualify. Grass like hell does not: leveling it means removing the roots and therefore killing it. And unless you sleep in a bureaucratically consecrated campsite where the ground is likely to be scraped or worn bare you should try to leave no sign—beyond a rectangle of crushed vegetation if you have to crush any—that you slept there. Leave, that is, no more trace than a bear, or even a deer.
When I lie down to check the levelness of a bedsite I naturally discover any bumps, rocks, and other body prodders. I quickly banish the worst offenders. And if I’m sleeping on a thin, closed-cell foam pad (which nowadays is rarely) I may work with bare hands or a stick or even my toilet trowel (this page) until the place is reasonably smooth. With a thick foam pad, a Therm-a-Rest, or an air mattress, I need take far less care.
But, provided the country and the under-bed material permit, it often makes sense to contour a bedsite to fit your form—certainly if there’ll be no cushion between bag and ground; probably with a closed-cell pad; possibly even with a more voluptuous mattress. The idea is to emulate a waterbed by digging or merely boot-scratching a shallow depression for your shoulders and a rather deeper one for your butt/hips. Excavated material builds a pillow, or raises the legs a trifle. Determine your needs by trowel and error.
Choice of under-bed material
Grass is one of the poorer choices for a bedsite. Except when very long, it cushions you precious little; and even aside from the unacceptable scarring (see facing page), it is difficult to contour to fit your form. An air mattress or thick foam pad takes the sting out of loose gravel or talus, and they are far easier to contour. Bare earth is often as easy, and appreciably softer. Sand rates higher still. A deep carpet of leaves, and especially of pine needles, offers the ultimate luxury in warmth and comfort—and sometimes a monumental fire hazard. Leaves should never be chosen if you intend to light a fire. Even with a stove you must clear a hearth to bare soil—and still exercise meticulous care.*22
The level-bed business is so important that when I camp at nightfall and expect to move on again first thing in the morning it’s often the only campsite feature I worry about. In fair weather, that is. But when the wind rises to gale force or feels like a disembodied iceberg then shelter from wind supplants level ground as the one thing you absolutely must have.
Unless you have both a tent and confidence that you can erect it in the teeth of the gale, go to great pains to find natural shelter. I tend to do so anyway. It’s much simpler, and often warmer. A clump of trees or bushes will deflect the full fury of any wind. And even in exposed places, quite minor irregularities, if themselves total windbreaks, make remarkably good refuges. I’ve spent comfortable nights, well sheltered from icy gales, in the troughs of shallow gullies, behind low walls, even tucked in close to a cattle trough. But the best hideout of all is an overhanging rockledge. (A full-fledged cave protects you better, of course; but caves tend to be both rare and unappetizing.) Even a very shallow ledge, provided it’s on the lee side of a hill or rockpile, can be a snug place. The rock retains much of its daytime warmth, and after one comfortable night in such a sanctuary you understand why cold-blooded rattlesnakes like to live among rocks. The floor of the ledge is rarely as level as you’d like it to be, but there are often small rocks lying around for a rough construction job. Such construction can rarely be justified in heavily used country. Even less can the still-general practice of camping in an unprotected place and then collecting boulders and building a wall or, sometimes, an embryo cabin.*23
Remember, by the way, that winds often die at dusk, then revive from a different quarter. Desert winds fairly consistently blow up canyons by day, down them (and cold) at night. The night downwind is also common on mountains in generally calm weather.
Shelter from rain
Rockledges make good shelters from rain too—and caves are even better. But beware of shallow caves in thunderstorms (this page). Hollow tree trunks are traditional wilderness shelters but, to be honest, I’ve never tried one. In rain I just tend to put up whatever roof I’ve brought along. Naturally, I choose the most sheltered site I can find.
Shelter from snow
CHIP: An obvious refuge is under a tree—I’ve bivouacked often in hollows under big conifers and hung my stove from a branch, with globs of pitch making me occasionally sorry. If there’s wind driving the snow, small openings in the forest are good shelter, as are brushy hollows or encircling rocks. The base of an overhanging cliff can be safe, if it overhangs enough. Otherwise, look out not just for unpredictable sloughs of snow but also for frost-wedged rocks and falling icicles.
At all events, try to avoid spots where the wind is either scouring snow away or depositing it. Scour zones have particularly strong gusts. Deposition zones, in the lee of a ridge or cliff, are calmer. But drifting snow might bury your tent as you sleep.
High winds create avalanche risk, even if it’s not snowing heavily at the moment. Avoid camping under steep, treeless slopes or gullies, especially those topped with a cornice (the overhanging snow crest formed by the wind). If the weather’s too thick for good visibility, study your topo map for hazardous terrain. As Colin advised in Walker III: “Before you venture out into any depth of snow in any country that’s not flat or close to it, make damned sure you ascertain from a genuine avalanche authority that it’s safe to do so. If not, stay at home.”
There are also several good books on the subject: this page.
For finding shelter in the snow itself, consider snow caves, quinzhees, and trenches—this page.
Meadows, especially when cradled in hollows, often collect cold, damp air. They’re delightful places to camp, though, and—provided human usage is light—should not necessarily be avoided. A hillock or rockslab a few feet above the meadow itself is often enough to ward off the worst of the cold, improve the view—and spare the fragile grass.
Riverbanks also tend to be damp and therefore cold places. On a 1989 to 1990 raft journey down the Colorado, source to sea, when I had to sleep close to raft and river, I encountered in December, in desert just above the Mexican border, microclimatic riverside temperatures as low as 11°F. Still, even on nonraft backpacking trips, riverbanks can provide richly rewarding campsites. But remember that the authorities often, and with good reason, adjure you to camp not less than 30 feet from the water. And for sanitation warnings, see this page.
It can occasionally be important that your bed should catch the first rays of morning sunshine. Sometimes only the sun’s warmth will make a bitter world habitable. (That’s what happened, very quickly, at those frigid December-desert campsites beside the Colorado—because I took care to camp on the west bank.) Sometimes you go to sleep without a roof—because you’re tired or lazy or just because you like it that way—expecting heavy dew during the night but knowing that morning sunshine will quickly dry it off and save you packing along pounds of water. Or it may be that a tent needs drying. And on days on which you’re planning not to move camp, or to move late, it’s always more pleasant to start the day in sunshine. At least, almost always. In deserts, in summer, you’ll want to avoid the sun. And some people prefer to avoid it, especially if they want to sleep late, in all but icebergial weather.
Anyway, whatever your reason for wanting to know where the sun will rise, the solution is simple: on the first day of the trip—or before you start, if you can remember it—measure with your compass the exact bearing on which the sun rises over a flat horizon. Pencil the bearing on the back of the compass. Then, at any night camp, all you have to do is take out the compass, sight along the correct bearing, make due allowance for close or distant heightening of the horizon, and site your camp in the right place. With a little experience you can prophesy accurately enough to make use of even narrow gaps in trees.
But perhaps you know you’ll forget to take a sunrise bearing before you start and are afraid there will be no sun on the first day. If you delight in dabbling with tortuous theory and have a copy of Practical Boating: Inland and Offshore—Power and Sail by W. S. Kals (Doubleday, 1969, now out of print) you’re still in good shape: on this page you’ll find a table showing the true bearing of the sun at sunrise, at various latitudes. Or, suggests Chip, simply take a bearing on your first morning out.
Your criteria for a good campsite will vary a lot with the kind of country, your expected length of stay, and your personal preferences. For the first day or two of a trip, especially in strange country, you may find yourself circling around a promising area like a dog stirred by ancestral memories. But before long you’re once more recognizing a good site at a glance: not only a flat bedsite with reasonable protection from wind but also (if you want a fire) plenty of firewood and (where there’s water) a bathroom.
Don’t underrate the importance of a good bathroom. There’s a yawning gap between a camp with running bedside water (where you can without effort scoop out drinking water, wash, wash up, and wash your feet) and a place in which you have to crash through tangled undergrowth and yards of sucking swamp to reach a tepid outpuddle of a river. By comparison, the difference between hotel rooms with and without a private bath is so much fiddle-faddle. Naturally, I’m speaking now of large lakes or rivers in genuinely remote places. In most of today’s teeming wildernesses it’s rarely possible to make your choices with so little consideration for fellow travelers.
You earn, by the way, an oddly satisfying bonus if you succeed in choosing a memorable camp from the map—as you can sometimes do once you grow used to a certain kind of country. If you play the percentages and hunches and get everything right—level bed, shelter from wind, firewood, water, morning sunshine, pleasing surroundings, even (and this is what makes a camp truly memorable) the stimulation or mystery or magic that can come from an isthmus of woodland or an oddly shaped hillock or a quietly gurgling backwater—if you get all these right you experience the same slightly surprised pleasure as from finding that your checkbook total tallies with the bank statement.
I was astonished to read in a magazine a few years back an article about the “new” practice of dry camping—that is, of carrying enough water, for a short or long distance, to enable you to choose a campsite independent of any water source. Under a wide range of conditions—from deserts to almost any place there’s no regulation that you must camp in a bureaucratically consecrated campsite—I have for years carried enough canteens to give me such freedom. I may fill up at a creek and carry the necessary extra load only half a mile. Or I may lug it much farther. Sometimes this is purely a making-mileage ploy. But often it’s not. And when it’s not I almost always find that the extra convenience or shelter or privacy or beauty of the campsite I’m freed to select makes the effort well worthwhile. I’d guess that these days, except in well-watered high mountains, at least 50 percent of my campsites are more than half a mile from my water source.
We examined most details of how the bedroom operates in our Sample Day in the Kitchen (this page and this page). More appears under A Sample Day in the Rain (this page). And for modifications under various kinds of roof, see their separate subheadings in this chapter. But several points remain unmade:
After dark you must always know exactly where the flashlight is. Otherwise, chaos. My flashlight spends the night in an easy-to-feel position in one bedside boot. And I used to have a rule that when it was in intermittent use, such as before and during dinner, I never let go my grasp on it without putting it in the pocket designated for the night (which pocket depended on what I was wearing). This rule was so strict that I rarely broke it more than three or four times a night.
Nowadays the rule has been superseded: I virtually always have the flashlight tied to a large loop of nylon cord that slips over my head.
For more on flashlights, headlamps, and subgenres see this page. For candle lanterns and even fancier illumination, this page.
Although I’m told that many people fail to do so, it seems only common sense that before you get into bed at night you should always shake the sleeping bag by the edges and so fluff up the down or even synthetic fill and suffuse it with the air pockets that actually keep you warm. At this point in the original Walker I wrote: “One of these nights I must try it out.” I’m happy to report that the act of writing that sentence prodded me into doing the job fairly regularly. It remains good to know, firsthand, that the book has taught somebody something.
With experience (and I guess there’s no other way) you can usually gauge pretty accurately how much clothing, if any, you’ll need to wear in your sleeping bag. Or, in warmer weather, how tightly you need pull the hood drawstrings, and whether you should unzip the bag partway. But you’ll never get so good that you always hit the nail dead center.
In general, be a pessimist: if in doubt, wear that extra layer of clothing, and pull the drawstrings tight. Sleeping too hot is uncomfortable; but sleeping cold is murder. In any case, the night will usually, though not always, get progressively colder (the coldest time typically comes either at dawn or, even more often, in the last few minutes before sunrise).
There’s another and even more important reason that you do better by deliberately looking on the bleak side: boosting insulation is a major operation, reducing it a very simple one. When you wake up uncomfortably hot (and you will do so occasionally unless you consistently under-insulate, and then God help you) all you need do is slacken off the drawstrings. At least, that usually lets out enough heat, especially if you flap the bag in a bellows effect a couple of times to introduce some cold air. If you find that to establish the right balance you have to slacken the drawstrings until there’s a gaping hole around your head you’ll probably discover that the upper part of your body gets too cold and the lower part stays too hot. If you’re wearing heavy clothes, take off one layer. (A minor disadvantage of a close-fitting bag is that putting on or taking off socks and pants “indoors” is a struggle. But it can be done. At least, taking them off can.) If you wake to find yourself too hot when you’re wearing few or no clothes (which will mean that outside air temperatures are not too barbarously low), feel for the inside tab of the zipper and slide it partway or all the way down. Two-way zippers, now almost standard, allow you to open up a breathing hole at your calves as well. Once again, only experience will tell you how far to go, and also how to tuck the opening under you, or to wriggle it around on top, or away from the wind, or whatever else achieves the balance you want. If you unzip you may well have to rezip as the night grows colder, and/or to tighten the drawstrings; but you soon learn to do so without coming more than about one-eighth awake.
On really hot nights the only comfortable way to use the bag may be as a cover—fully unzipped and just spread out loosely over your body. At such times it may be most comfortable to wear a shirt to keep your shoulders warm and to tuck your feet partway into the foot of the bag. A little to my surprise, I find myself sleeping this way more and more often on windless nights when the temperature’s over about 40°F. One advantage of using the bag instead of wearing a couple of layers of clothing is that as the night grows colder (which it mostly will) you can compensate, without coming even one-eighth awake, by pulling the edges of the outspread bag a little more firmly around you.
Dealing with a full bladder at night
See this page.
Getting to sleep
An experienced outdoorsman once suggested that I include in this chapter “the ritual of getting to sleep in a bag,” and as he was my editor I decided that I had better attempt the task. In an earlier edition I wrote that my technique was to lie down, close my eyes, and go to sleep. That’s still true, mostly. Sleeping is one of my fields of competence. But if I experience any difficulty—as I understand some people regularly do—I now quieten myself with Selective Awareness (this page), and soon slip down and away.
*1Important safety note: mountain peaks, although superb, are treacherous. Some, like Shasta, are so big they make their own weather—and it can change within minutes. So if you’re going to camp on a peak you must know what you’re doing. Shasta, I understand, has killed a fair number of people; and before I decided to camp on its peak I made sure that (a) the weather pattern was stable in a way it rarely is in that part of the world; (b) I had a tent ready, should the weather change; and (c) a tentative evacuation-to-lower-elevations plan was always lurking ready at the back of my mind.
*2No, come to think of it, it was a friendly afternoon.
*3A curious but nevertheless real hazard of wedge tents is that, on being suddenly awakened (by the thwump of an avalanche or the scream of a real cougar) you’ll rear up and bash heads with your partner. Knowledgeable doctors call this mutual skull trauma Bibler’s Syndrome. Frequent sufferers are advised to sleep head-to-foot.
*4Most broken poles result from rough transport (the disastrous car-trunk slam), inept or impatient setup, and clumsy falls (i.e., you on top of your tent). High winds rank a strong fourth. Large dogs are also significant malefactors. If you lack a pole-sleeve repair kit, a section of aluminum cut from a beer can, plus a hearty hi-ho silver wrap with duct tape will serve. But don’t use so much that the wand won’t fit through its sleeve.
COLIN: When carrying curved poles in your pack, pad them with soft gear or protect them with something strong and rigid—by packing them along one of the internal-frame stays or the framesheet. You can do the same with straight poles or can lash them, very securely, to the side frame of most external-frame packs or carry them, preferably in tent-pole bags, flush with the sides of internal-frame packs. Some such packs now come with pockets near the bottom to make things easier and safer. Wrapping poles in the tent often results in holes being poked through its fabric.
*5The only situation where body heat will warm an outer layer of fabric enough to keep condensation from occurring is in a bivouac bag of breathable laminate. I’ve stayed surprisingly dry on otherwise miserable slush-and-rime nights.
*6COLIN: I’ve used my old Chouinard pyramid occasionally for years—in low-bug-potential situations—largely because of its lightness (2.5 pounds complete). And although the center pole indeed mangles available space, the rig is still palatial for one, and on balance I’ve enjoyed being a live ringer for a dead pharaoh.
*7One season I slept out in my bivy sack to avoid run-ins with an overbearing coworker who resided in a VE-23—I thought of her as the Dominatrix.
*8For years I have sporadically packed out some of the trash other people left behind. Although finding the act rewarding (that is, it made me feel good), I’ve always suffered from the bitter and inhibiting knowledge that it was an insignificant drop in a gigantic bucket. Then, for the last edition, a Texas reader offered an excellent idea: “No one person can clean up all that plastic and other gunk that has been left in the mountains. But there are a lot of civilized backpackers. If—in the later stages of every trip, when we aren’t carrying so much and won’t have to carry it so far—we all picked up at least one piece of abandoned plastic and schlepped it out with our own trash it would make one hell of a damn dent in the wilderness trash accumulation. Doing so gives a tremendous ‘holier-than-thou’ rush. In other words, schlepping somebody else’s garbage on one’s back for twenty miles, just to help save the wilderness, would appeal to all ‘holier-than-thou’ junkies. And it might soon become as trendy and aware to have a recovered abandoned groundsheet in one’s pack as to have a Sierra Club cup on one’s belt—and to casually mention it when you stop to chat with other walkers…. Can’t you imagine a whole new leitmotif in casual conversation? Trash machismo!: ‘Yeah, I carried thirty pounds of abandoned groundcloths down Mount Whitney in a January blizzard. Roughest descent I ever had. Published a note in Mountaineering Gazette!’…Seriously, though, and exaggeration aside, perhaps it should become a sign of conservation awareness to pack out more trash than you generated yourself. And while very few people would do this as isolated individuals (feeling that it would not make enough difference) they might do so if they knew they were part of a large group, all doing it. If, for example, it began to be urged in print by one or more of the authors they consider to have earned some attention, Mr. Fletcher, sir.”
And here it is. Again.
*9CHIP: The coated nylon floor protectors (called “footprints”) for tents make excellent groundsheets with bound edges and stake loops. Depending on the tent’s size and floor plan, they can also be strung up as partial shelters.
*10Note that, in spite of fire-retardants, all foams—and also many nylon fabrics as used in sleeping bags and other equipment—present serious fire hazards. I don’t say they’ll burst into flames at the drop of a match. But they’ll burn. And foams may give off toxic gases. I’m not sure what you can do about it, beyond exercising reasonable care. But I feel I must sound this warning.
*11To patch this type of pad: 1) Find the hole, using a bathtub, alpine lake, or large amounts of spit; 2) wipe the area around the hole clean and let it air dry; 3) put water in a pot with a relatively clean bottom and bring it to a boil; 4) always open the valve fully when making repairs; 5) work McNett Seam Grip or other recommended cement into any exposed foam and the inside of the fabric; 6) apply a thin slather of cement evenly around the hole; 7) unlimber the patch, trimming it if necessary, and peel the backing off without touching the inner surface; 8) gently smooth the patch on; 9) if the pot is funky, or perhaps in any case, spread a clean hanky or scrap of other thin cotton cloth over the patch; 10) take the pot off the stove and set it on the patch. Then go away. Leave it absolutely alone till the water has cooled.
*12COLIN: After initial skepticism, I’ve succumbed, blissfully, to the Easy Chair.
*13Having suggested venting options to the maker (brusquely rejected), I took the laws of physics into my own hands. Using a torch-heated tuna can, I hot-cut two openings and stitched two coated-nylon hoods over them, with stiffeners of electrical cable. The sewing was torture, but my supermodified Dryad is much less subject to condensation.
*14Okay—might as well come clean. While Dryad camping on high, I was trying to come up with an eco-sensitive method of taking a crap without actually rappelling. Nor did I wish to risk a rimshot inside the thing. So there I was, hanging outboard, paper bag in hand. There were unpredictable winds.
*15Since Colin asked: the Venus of Willendorf (an Austrian town on the Danube River) is a well-known Paleolithic sculpture of a woman with exaggerated breasts, hips, and buttocks—an image said to represent fertility, or a personification of nature as female.
*16CHIP: Reports from outdoor programs, which launder rental bags after every use, peg the effective life of most synthetic insulations at 6 to 8 machine washings. So, as with down, you’re better off keeping your bag as clean as possible and washing it infrequently. Most sleeping-bag makers are mum on the subject. But Jerry Wigutow of Wiggy’s, who is anything but mum, claims that his Lamilite synthetic insulation will withstand regular washing.
*17The new Sierra Designs bag I’m testing, a 0°F-rated model, also lacks a draft collar. But it has stretch baffles, which hug the body and slow air circulation inside.
*18CHIP: Because it seems to me that the major benefit of a VBL sleeping-bag liner is to keep moisture out of the insulation, I would now use one, if at all, for extended trips in deep cold. If you’re likely to lack the benefit of a sunny dry-out before packing up and it’s cold enough that progressive icing is possible, a VBL liner’s survival value might outweigh its potential for serious discomfort. Besides night sweats (which are not, as some VBL devotees assert, a moral failing) another problem with VBL liners (shirts, socks, etc.) is that they create ideal conditions for bacterial growth. One of my VBL-using friends was noted, even in our scruffy crowd, for his wolverine reek. I’ve also heard of yeast infections, rashes, and boils being attributed to frequent VBL use. Antimicrobial powders seem advisable, and the antibacterial longjohns now available might help. So does washing occasionally.
*19From The Thousand-Mile Summer, page 86.
*20CHIP: Toxic solvents like perchloroethylene, the dry-cleaning industry standby, have proved to be harmful both to human health and the environment. Silicone-based wet-cleaning compounds like Rynex are being tested, but the most promising method seems to be with liquid CO2 and a compatible detergent. Developed at North Carolina State University, this nontoxic “green cleaning” technique uses no heat and is said to strip less fiber than other methods. A new franchise called Hangers employs this CO2 method, but the machines cost $80,000 to $100,000 each, so it might be a while taking hold.
*21CHIP: Crossing a clear-cut in the savagely logged Medicine Bow National Forest, I found a small bubble level, about the size of a pen with a pocket clip (0.6 oz.). For the rest of the trip I checked my prospective beds with it and found that my native judgment isn’t as good as I thought. If you’re highly sensitive to tilt, hardware stores sell both pocket-clip levels and smaller keychain-bob models (0.4 oz., $2).
*22CHIP: Outdoor programs have lately been urging the practice of camping on bedrock. A wee trick—since you can’t exactly level bedrock—is to roll a parka, pants, or vest, etc. and lay it along the low side under your pad. This at least keeps you from rolling downslope.
*23CHIP: In the windswept Wind River Range, rock enclosures are common above treeline. Since people seem to dependably heap them up at about the same rate Forest Service wilderness rangers dismantle them, it makes sense (to me at least) to leave the most popular ones in place. I also noticed that the rocks in some of the best-built enclosures all had slow-growing lichens on their upper faces, meaning they’d been in place for a century or more. In fact, some of the structures looked very old indeed. Later, a knowledgeable Shoshone elder confirmed that his people built many stone firepits, windbreaks, shelter walls, and sweat-lodge frames at high elevations in the range. They also left convenient rings of stones on bedrock, for tent anchors. Thus, by dismantling such sites, the wilderness rangers had violated the federal Antiquities Act. Not to mention, said my Shoshone informant, courting damned bad luck.