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Comment by andyl | Hacker News Reader

I teach search and rescue people how to travel on skis or snowshoes and live in winter mountains. If you are prepared, you can stay out in sub-zero for days and days very comfortably.

A key skill is constant regulation of your body temperature. You never want to become too hot/sweaty or too cold. If too cold - get into shelter, drink something hot, eat carbs, add clothes, move faster. If too hot - remove clothes, or move slower. Fix temperature problems immediately - never tough it out.

Common mistakes: people get distracted by gadgets, or they get impatient and start to wander. Then they lose awareness of their body temperature, and become hypothermic. Once you get hypothermic, things fall apart fast.

If you do winter travel in remote areas, carry warm clothes, water and food. Then if you get stuck, be patient and steady. Follow this advice, and the odds of freezing to death go way down! :-)

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I agree with all of this advice.

The article describes one type of winter danger (extreme cold), but there's another equally dangerous condition it doesn't deal with — temperatures right around freezing.

A friend and I ended a snowcamping trip a day early yesterday because temperatures were ±32º morning and night. The result of the temperature staying just below or at freezing is that you get very wet. You get very wet just doing mundane tasks like shoveling snow because your body heat needs to shift the temperature of snow on your clothing by just a few degrees to melt. Being slightly unprepared for a night in these conditions is just as dangerous as being in the arctic (where you may be cold, but you'll definitely be dry).

If you're out with others when it's cold, be aware of the "umbles":

Stumbles, fumbles, mumbles and grumbles.

These can be relatively early external signs of altered mentation and potentially of the on-set of hypothermia.

Hypothermia can occur even in fairly warm temperatures, too; you don't need freezing temperatures.

When carrying food, remember you're going to be eating a whole lot more when it's cold and you're exercising.

Avoid cotton clothing, as that gets and stays brutally cold when it gets wet. Wool or synthetics work much better.

Never go out with Flint Fireforge. Got it.

Also: STAY WITH THE VEHICLE.

In general, if you're driving somewhere remote and something goes wrong, you're almost always better off staying with your vehicle vs. setting out on foot for help. There are obviously exceptions, but as a general thing, it's true.

That reminds me of the sad story of CNet editor James Kim. He got caught in a snow storm with his family. He left the car and died trying to get help. His family was rescued in good condition. Had he stayed with them, they all would have survived.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028_3-6141498.html

The "family gets lost, guy goes off to find help, gets even more lost and dies, and then the rest of the family is rescued" is a pretty standard story.

Today, in the age of gps enabled cell phones there is no reason to leave the car (unless there's a risk of explosion, car sliding off a cliff, etc, etc)

Get your position, call 911, wait.

If the signal is not good enough to make a call, send an SMS

What if the signal isn't good enough to send an SMS?

I'd tend to agree that staying with the car is sensible. Maybe with some bright orange tarpaulin / flag thing over the car (although that'd probably get buried in snow.)

At least if you're travelling in really bad weather you know you might get stuck and so you should prepare.

People in England were caught out when light snow was forecast; they left work early and joined the M25 at the same time as the road gritters, which caused a weird cascade effect and blocked a major motorway in the UK for 24 hours when there was only 1 or 2 cm of snow.

Then write your SMS, try sending it and try exploring different positions (maybe try exiting the car, or even climb it). Just don't wander away from it.

In my experience, the phone will retry sending the SMS a couple of times if the signal is low.

When I go riding around central Utah on my motorcycle (note: these are paved roads with a street motorcycle), I'm often out of cell coverage for hours at a time. The reality is that the high mountains and deep valleys for "real" mountains, combined with the lack of towns, provide for no coverage, either SMS or cell. If I got caught in those places in snow that is feet-deep, I wouldn't expect my electronics to free me.

Yes, there are huge areas without cell coverage

Still, having a gps is helpful (at least you know where you are and can wander but knows how to get back)

Having an automotive gps with maps is even more helpful

But yeah, it is a very bad situation nonetheless

If you have any cellular reception at all, you're generally not lost or stuck in the wilderness and at risk of freezing to death.

I don't think that's right. I've been places in Colorado miles from "help" and still had cell reception.

The metric "miles" isn't as useful as the time it takes for that help to actually arrive.

I would probably be more likely than most to leave my vehicle but I have training in mountaineering and I wouldn't do so without a good plan and sufficient equipment. My car always holds a basic level of backup supplies including: a first aid kit, a bottle of water (which can also serve as a water container), a head-lamp with extra batteries, a multi-tool, matches, a fleece blanket, rain gear (including rain pants), mylar thermal blankets, and a simple drawstring backpack (which holds the blanket and rain gear) in blaze orange.

Even in a worst case scenario where I happened to drive up into the mountains in just jeans and a t-shirt and get caught in a snow storm and nobody knew where I had gone I could easily travel for several days through the back country (let alone alone the roads) with just that equipment. And if I stayed with my car it would definitely extend the amount of time I could survive until rescue arrived. The total cost of all of this stuff is almost nothing, it's worth it to be prepared.

I don't really leave a 2hr radius of SF now (although I guess I drive to Front Sight and Vegas sometimes, but prepare separately for that), and have all that stuff and more. Case or two of water, some tools, often a range bag with items, etc. Mostly worried about responding to someone else's accident, but there's the lingering fear of an earthquake, big fire, or other event like that. This is one of many reasons I like having my own car vs. zipcar or public transit -- it's 100 pounds of things to deal with emergencies (including "server broke, need tools and some network cabling", which is a much more common emergency for me than gunshot wounds...)

I really want to get into bay area amateur radio and get on some repeaters and stuff. An HT in the car seems like it would be a good addition. Maybe 2013.

If you read the annual compilations of mountaineering accidents in North America you'll notice a few trends, generally people being under prepared and having insufficient basic equipment like lights, warm clothing, or rain gear. A common theme is people getting lost or poorly estimating time or getting caught by weather and then being forced to spend a night out on a mountain when they hadn't planned to. Generally, just being more knowledgeable and trained can help though also making sure you always bring those "ten essentials" also helps a great deal and they don't add much weight or hassle if you do it right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Essentials

I just saw a list of the "ten essentials" posted at the entrance to a wilderness area in New Hampshire's White Mountains. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I was without many of them, though it was on a day hike with a partner on a very wide, flat, heavily-traveled trail. I remember a spring backpacking trip in the Smoky Mountains where one person in my group fell into a creek we were crossing near nightfall as it was beginning to snow. Fortunately we had extra dry clothes ready at hand to give that person to change into.

Lots of good points. Its also, perhaps counterintuitively, the case that wet and above freezing is almost more dangerous for hypothermia many times. Snow is a source of potential shelter and insulation, provided a minimum level of preparation. But, being un-prepared ans without shelter in cold rain is a very dangerous place to be. Your core only needs to get to 70 degrees to kill you, etc. So its all about the differential and exposure.

An emergency blanket or bivy is extremely useful too and weighs very little. I just came back from spending a night in the snow (http://i.imgur.com/yc0cc.jpg sunset, Sequoia National Park, ~8,000 feet). At night, temps went down to the 20s (fahrenheit) I believe and I was shivering pretty bad in my sleeping bag until I took out my emergency blanket. In the morning, I cut it up and wrapped the pieces around my feet before putting on my boots, since I was still using soaking wet socks from the previous day (lost my extra pair somewhere on the trail). The mylar isn't breathable though so one has to watch out for perspiration.

Thank you for specifying Fahrenheit. Given there are different temperature scales used throughout the world, I always appreciate people who take the effort to clarify. Thanks ... Oh, awesome pic!!

The one time I fount myself at risk of hypothermia was because I had overestimated the cold. I put on too many layers which kept me nice and warm. But exertion in that warmth caused me to break a sweat. By the time I got where I was going things were just bad enough to make me feel like I had learned a lesson.

I can't say that I've been in extreme cold or dressed with lots of clothes, but I always undress in order to prevent (too much) sweat. Then I dress back as soon as I'm getting cold.

The best defense against the cold I find, up until about 10F or lower, is several layers of long sleeve tshirts. You can add or remove layers rapidly with a rather good resolution (You can easily have 5 "settings") and if you get wet they are very quick to dry (separate them to dry them fast.) If you are out for several days, you can start to cycle which shirt is closest to your body, to delay discomfort caused by dirty clothing.

Canadian here, a lot of people don't realize how dry winter is the humidity can be very low on a cold day probably comparable to a desert environment.

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