European norm — the skinny for campers
It’s very cold out tonight, -10C or thereabouts, a nice night to be curled up inside by a fire, at least that would be a good estimation of the general consensus. However, there are folks who differ.
I’m one of those outliers. Cold nights get me excited and thinking about camping, winter camping. I love sleeping in a tent any time of year, but the freezing cold of winter is special. It’s likely that many of you are thinking right now that I am crazy. But really, winter camping isn’t nearly as uncomfortable and extreme as you might think. You just need some basic know how and decent gear. Well, I suppose it is a tad extreme.
My first experience with winter camping was many years ago with the Ascension Collegiate Outdoor Club. That was the mid 1970s and the gear wasn’t so fantastic. I had one of those used army surplus down filled sleeping bags. I spent my first night in that bag dressed in one piece wool long johns from Sears, home knit wool socks from Mom, and a stocking cap pulled down over my ears. I remember shivering only a little.
Nowadays there’s fantastic technology available for life in the outdoors, even sleeping in a tent during the coldest winter nights. All gear is important, but of most critical significance to your comfort and well-being is the sleeping bag. If your sleeping bag isn’t up to snuff, you will surely have a terrible sleep. And in a worse case scenario hypothermia may endanger your life. It is serious stuff.
There are three broad categories of sleeping bags available to us campers. These are summer bags, three season, and winter sleeping bags. All three may be purchased with natural down or synthetic insulation. I’ve written previously about down versus synthetic so I won’t belabor the topic here. Suffice to say; down gives you the best warmth to weight and compression ratio, but it loses insulation value when wet. Synthetic dries more easily and gives adequate protection from the cold even when wet.
For winter camping I have a minus 18-Celcius rated Marmot bag insulated with 800-fill goose down. The higher the fill rating the better the bag insulates for its given weight. This bag compresses down to the size of a 2L Pepsi bottle and weighs just over 2-pounds. It’s a far cry from my 70’s army bag. On the other hand, for a fifth the price, you can buy a minus18 synthetic bag from Marmot. But it weighs in at almost 5-lbs and takes up lots more space in your pack. It’s a great deal if you aren’t backpacking. Lightweight, compressibility and warmth isn’t a cheap combination.
Getting back to categories of sleeping bags and temperature ratings. Summer bags are generally considered those with a comfort rating above the zero-celsius freezing point. If you want to summer travel super light you choose a bag with a higher rating like 10-degrees, and then pray for no cool nights while you are on the land. Bags rated for below freezing, down to minus 15 are considered three-season. True winter bags are rated for comfort below -15-Celcius.
Here on the Avalon Peninsula I suppose you could winter camp with a lower end of the category three-season bag, but I wouldn’t recommend it. There are many factors and these are just ratings. Why take chances? Mine is rated on the warmer end of winter for the sake of weight in my pack. You can buy minus 40-Celcius bags, but even with 800-fill they will weigh significantly more. It doesn’t often go below -18-Celcius here on the Avalon. I did sleep out in negative 20 a couple of winters ago and survived just fine. It was the coldest night of the entire season. I kept my base layer and warm socks on all night, and had my stocking cap well secured.
How do you know that these comfort ratings are accurate and dependable? After all, if you are hiking 10-km back in the woods and sleeping overnight in January, your life is on the line. You are depending on your sleeping bag to deliver its intended insulation value. How can you be fully certain?
It wasn’t always so, but nowadays an independent laboratory carries out scientific testing to consistent standards and rates sleeping bags. Almost all sleeping bags sold today have an EN rating. It stands for European Norm and it has standardized sleeping bags so that we have a good idea what we are buying from any of the serious outdoor gear manufactures. It definitely wasn’t that way in the 70’s.
Let me explain how it works. Engineers place a manikin complete with temperature sensors in a specific to be tested sleeping bag. It’s a very special manikin that generates heat to whatever extent possible similar to a typical human camper. They dress the manikin in a typical wool base layer, warm hiking socks, and you guessed it, a stocking cap pulled down over its ears. The whole works is placed on a standard foam sleeping pad in a controlled chill room and monitored.
A sleeping bag works by trapping air warmed by your body in the space between you and the bag. By the laws of physics, the heat in this cocooned layer to some extent must transfer through the bag to the outside cold air. But the lesser the better, and this is what is being measured. The temperature in the room is gradually dropped and when the sensors indicate lowering skin temperature on the manikin, the lower end of the comfort zone has been reached. This is roughly how it works. At this point you would be feeling cold
Note that the testing is done on a sleeping pad. That’s important because your body weight compresses the down or synthetic fiber under you. It doesn’t insulate when compressed. So you have to use a sleeping pad if you expect your bag to perform up to its rated temperature specifications. Lot’s of folks don’t realize this. The icy cold ground will suck the life out of you. Green spruce boughs are better than nothing, but a proper pad is both more comfortable and superior insulation.
I’d love to hear about any experiences you have had with winter sleeping set-ups. My ears are always open for tips and information, don’t go to bed with damp socks on.