How to Stay Warm with a Minimum of Gear

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How to Stay Warm with a Minimum of Gear

Being cold is one of the more unpleasant experiences in the outdoors. But perhaps equally unpleasant is carrying a heavy pack. Thankfully, with lite-weight gear and technique, and some common sense, you can avoid both scenarios by learning how to stay warm with a minimum of gear.

Staying warm at night

Staying warm at night is a common problem, especially for women. When we sleep our muscles are less active and therefore generate less heat than when we are active. And the warmth that we do create can be easily lost through conduction (via the ground), convection (via the atmosphere), respiration (via the warming and humidification of inhaled air), and evaporation (via insensible perspiration).

With all of these sources of heat loss, the challenge of staying warm at night can be a difficult one, especially if you are trying to do it with a minimum of gear. Here are a number of tips that can help:


- Realize that your sleeping bag is just one thing that you can use to keep warm. Your clothing, equipment, shelter, bivy sack, ground pad, backcountry companion(s), body fat, and nourishment can also play a role. Use these factors to your advantage, like by wearing all your clothes to bed, placing your pack under your feet (and using just a torso-length pad), using your soft-sided plastic water bottles as pillows, placing stuff sacks over your hands and feet, sharing your body heat with your companion(s) under a multi-person quilt, and fattening up before a particularly cold trip.

- Invest more weight in your sleeping bag than your shelter, because a heavier sleeping bag (per ounce) will provide more warmth than a heavier shelter.

- Use a bivy sack that has a waterproof nylon bottom and breathable nylon top in order to reduce drafts, add warmth, and encourage moisture transfer out of your sleep system.

- Use a closed-cell foam pad instead of an inflatable one. Foam pads are warmer for their weight, can be easily modified to contour your body, and double as a "virtual frame" for frameless packs.

- Pitch your shelter over a soft bed of dry pine needles, tall grass, or sand. Avoid hard-packed and wet areas, as these campsites will lead to great conductive heat loss.

- Dry your sleeping bag (and other insulated clothing) regularly so that it always is at its maximum loft potential. This is especially important in cooler and more humid environments, when the air is less capable of absorbing the perspiration your body gives off at night, leaving some of it trapped in your insulation. Moisture build-up in insulation, of course, has notable adverse affects on its loft (and, therefore, its warmth), more so with down insulation than with synthetic.

- Eat a hot dinner not long before going to bed. The food’s warmth will heat up your body, and it will provide fuel to be metabolized (which produces heat) for many hours after you fall asleep.

- Stop hiking just shortly before you go to bed. Your metabolism will remain strong for a while after you stop, helping you to stay warm at least during the early portion of the evening. By sitting around camp for hours before going to bed, you allow your metabolism to return to normal, so it will not generate above-average warmth. If you prefer not to hike from the time you wake up to the time you bed down, you may want to consider taking a long break around dinner-time, then hiking a few more miles before finding a campsite.

- Do not climb into a sleeping bag if you are cold. Try generating some body heat before climbing into the bag by running in place or doing jumping jacks. The added warmth emitted by your body when you first climb into the bag will help your bag feel warmer faster and enable you to maximize your sleep.

- Consider boiling extra water after you have made dinner. Put this hot water into your water bottle/bladder and then place the bottle/bladder into your sleeping bag. This added warmth will enable you to warm up quickly in your bag. Be sure to secure the lid tightly to avoid having a major accident in the middle of the night!

Deluxe to Ultra-Light: Changing your mentality

I have loved hiking and backpacking for as long as I can remember. I owe many thanks to varied numbers of scouting leaders who taught me to love and appreciate nature. The one lesson I didn't learn was how to enjoy it in less than a 60 lb pack. Not until recently have I explored different classes of backpacking as defined by REI.

Deluxe, Lightweight, Ultra-Light, and Minimalist. After the last year, I think I can say I have made the transition from Deluxe to Ultra-Light but don't know if I will ever be able to become a full Minimalist. I have minimalist tendencies but don't think I could ever convert completely...

This is the beginning of a series of posts that will allow you to see that I was a fool for carrying so much weight and see how I can still fully enjoy backpacking in nature without having to carry boulders on my back, and also to show that less weight does not always signify less comfort. So without further ado, let's begin:

My first recommendation is not to go out and spend $1000 on new gear. Come up with a list of what you normally carry, or what you think you will need. If you have never backpacked before, or can't remember what your pack should contain, here are a couple of good links to a REI list and to the Backpacking.net site.

Everyone's first inclination is to first buy an ultra-light backpack and then get the rest of the ultra-light gear as finances permit. The problem than becomes that you have an ultra-light pack carrying deluxe weight gear. Discomfort will inevitably occur. Before emptying the bank account on new gear, it's important to mentally convert to a new way of thinking first. Here are a few simple steps that will help train your mind for the new ultra-light mentality.

Step One: Weigh your gear. If you don't own a digital scale, buy one or borrow one. You'll be surprised at how much little things actually weigh and just how quickly they begin to add up in your pack. And the old cliche does ring true: "ounces add up to pounds and pounds add up to pain on the trail."

Step Two: Decide where you can cut back. Maintain the things you need but evaluate the contents you are planning to bring. Do you really need a camping chair, cell phone (that won't work anyways), machete-sized pocket knifes, heavy winter snow jackets, or a full aerosol can of bug repellent, etc?

Step Three: Pack for your specific trip. If you have a 2 lb. first aid kit and you're only doing a 2-3 day hike, evaluate what you actually need in that first aid kit. Do you really need an instant cold compress? Or 150 different sized band-aids? Do you need the 5 lb., 0 degree mummy bag when you're only going to 4000 ft elevation with no chance for rain and average night temperatures in the 50 degree range? Why not go spend $9.99 at Wal-Mart on a 2 lb. fleece sleeping bag?

Step Four: After your hiking trip, pull everything out that you brought and determine if you needed it on the trek. You'll find things you thought you needed but then realized you never used and/or forgot you had even brought them.

Stay tuned for part II coming soon...