Heat Redistribution is Socialism.

Author awakens refreshed and energized for another day of freezing his ass off in the mountains

Whose failed policies are to blame for this? I thought as I clutched myself for warmth inside my damp sleeping bag.

The weather forecast had predicted a nightly low of 11 degrees Fahrenheit where I was tenting at 9,000 feet in the Big Horn Mountains. The bag was rated to 25.

I was wearing my parka and my ski mask for extra warmth and had thrown a space blanket over everything. My hiking boots were snuggled up inside the bag with me so that they wouldn’t freeze up before the morning. I had also filled a stainless steel bottle with hot water and put it in the foot of the bag. It rested at the far end of the bag, where I tried feebly to warm my feet against it.

The thing was, my head and body were almost at a comfortable temperature, not great but hardly hypothermic. Even my hands were doing okay, kept warm from the heat of my chest. It was only my feet that were completely frigid. My upper body had hoarded all the warm blood for itself and left the feet drained, lifeless and cold.

No matter how many times I curled over to rub them or hold them against a warm thigh, they froze again immediately, as soon as I stretched out again.

Stupid blood circulation.

Of course, that is the genius of the body’s regulatory system, that it could rank the importance of different body parts and delegate the distribution of what warmth remained.

Through it is no fault of their own, my feet and toes, are lower-class citizens in my body and in the heat economy that keeps that body alive. No warm blood for you toes!

The hypothalamus, or whatever messes with my circulation, keeps that warmth in my torso and in my head, enough so that I can break a sweat even while my feet and hands remain like so many lifeless slabs of frozen meat.

Apparently, my brain has more worth than my big toe, even though the big gray organ immediately leaks the warmth it gets my scalp — outsourcing precious heat to the atmosphere.

Then, alive and foolish with warm blood, it gets the brilliant idea that I should go for another hike in the snow, where my hapless feet will have to freeze again.

How they suffer to appease the stupidity of the brain. The only recourse for them is protest — lighting up the nervous system with indignant howls.

“We’re fucking cold!” the feet tell the otherwise clueless cerebral cortex.

“Why did you make us walk out into this crap without gaiters? Why can’t you send some heat down our way and not be so selfish all the time?”

The brain ignores its underlings at its peril. After all, it still needs to walk out of the icy forest it journeyed into. If the feet freeze off, my brain would have to call on the hands to make its escape— and lord knows the hands are even worse complainers.

Bighorn Peak from Rainy Lake

About that snow....

I doubt much more than a month went by between the last 100 degree day in Gillette and the day the first icy flakes came whipping across the Wyoming plains in early October.

That day, I looked out from the office window at the winter weather and it dawned on me that the Big Horn Mountains would soon be covered with thigh-deep powder, and climbing peaks was going to get a lot harder.

I also knew that the road into Circle Park would close and make it that much harder for me to get to Darton Peak and Big Horn Peak, which I had been on the list of peaks that I wanted to knock off this year.

It was time to drive back down the highway to Buffalo again once again and spend another night in the thin, cold air.

I pulled into Buffalo around noon and dropped into the Sports Lure to hunt up some new gear. I was in the market for a warmer sleeping bag and thought I might see what selection they had before I bought one online.

I came close to dropping cash on a Mountain Hardware Lamina rated for -15, but I didn’t see anything warmer. If I made the investment in a high-tech sleeping bag, I wanted to be sure that it would keep me warm in any type of abuse that I would be willing to walk into it with. While a -15 rating would probably be adequate for any of the expeditions I have pulled off in the past, I didn’t want to sell myself short on any future adventures either. The decision to hold off meant I’d be spending the night in the 25-degree bag and cold times were ahead.

I did pick up hand warmers as well as a fancy inflatable air mat that had been marked down. Several outdoor websites I’ve read have told me that it’s kind of pointless to own a warm sleeping bag if you sleep with your body is only millimeters off the icy ground.

I found out that there was already about four inches of snow at the higher elevations when I paid up at the cash register. I cursed myself for bringing the snow pants, much less gaiters. I would have to try that much harder to keep the snow out of my boots when I hiked in.

But I had already spent enough time messing around in town.

I took my new loot back to the car and got back up on the road, to the mountains, navigating the switchbacks on the way to Circle Park.

The turnoff was a dirt road that was snowy, but not too daunting, even for my '93 Mazda Protege.

A month ago, I had barely been able to find a parking spot at the trailhead. Now I was the only one there. I filled out a backcountry slip so there would be a record of where I was going. Then I set off down the path, putting the first prints in the fresh powder.

The slant light of the afternoon made the trunks of the lodgepole pines glow orange. The whole thing was sickeningly Christmassy, those needles glistening with snow — booby traps actually. Brush up against the branches and they will be sure to dump the snow down your neck or into your boots.

It was a different, more hazardous world than the one I had found on my previous visit. A sheet of ice covered a swamp that had been festering with bugs and peepers only a month ago.

Sherd Lake wasn’t frozen yet, but it was on its way. Little ghost ships of mist whirled and danced up into the cold air, betraying the heat below to the entropy of the universe.

I glanced at my arm and noticed the same mist rising up from me. Shoulda been wearing a jacket. Hopefully I wasn’t about to freeze up too.  The sun was getting lower. I got moving.

On the second day, I was climbing over this stuff, trying to get up Darton Peak

I planned to put up tent at Otter Lake about a mile further on. The snow seemed to get deeper as I hiked and I had to keep shoving my pants-bottoms over the tops of my boots to keep it from getting in and melting. Some got in anyway of course, and that is a big part of why my feet would freeze in the night to come.

I waded through a meadow of tall, snow-covered grass near the lake and spied a dense stand of trees that looked like a good wind shelter for camping.

The lake was frozen, which raised the possibility that I would need to melt snow for water that night.

The cold fell over me like an icy blanket almost as soon as I stopped moving. I made my freezing hands set up the tent, threw on clothes and clutched myself for warmth. Still getting colder. 

Dammit. Dammit.

I needed fire and a hot meal.

My thoughts turned to the mashed potatoes I’d brought for dinner. If I could find liquid water instead of having to melt snow, I could move things move a lot quicker. I thought about just emptying what was left in my bottles, but decided I didn’t want to use up what I had left if I didn’t have to.

Maybe I could bash a hole in the ice and fill up that way.  I walked out to the lake and struck uselessly against the ice with my ski pole and then my metal cooking pot. I thought about putting my weight on it to make it crack, but I was sure such this would end poorly.

Then I looked at my feet and realized they had sunk through the snow into the boggy area by the lakeshore. A cold dribble of murky water had filled the boot print. It was a good thing I had waterproof footwear. Still, this was not a good place to be at all.

I thought about options, and then stepped down hard neared to the edge of the ice.

Sure enough, more brown water trickled in.

Cold. Cold. I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get warmed up.

I scooped my pot down into the depression and brought it back up full of bog water. Little particles and other decomposing odds and ends drifted in the dirty suspension.

I didn’t care. I lurched back to the tent where I had set up the propane stove.  There was a lighter and then matches as a backup.

I started with the ligher, flicking uselessly at the wheel with my cold fingers. I summoned sparks but no flames.

Matches then. Again, I was greatly encumbered by my cold hands. When I struck a flame, I was too slow with the fuel knob on the stove and the flame sputtered out before I turned on the gas.

The Jack London story “To Build A Fire” came to mind. Fire can be a savior in a tough situation. It can also be a fickle bastard — hardest to light when it’s needed most.

Compounding it all, I had made the asinine decision to bring a small LED flashlight with me in lieu of a headlamp. This meant that I had effectively limited myself to using one freezing hand for the task. It was the kind of cheap light that requires you to keep your finger on the switch in order to stay lit.

If I could make fire I would probably just light some flames and then go to bed. After about seven matches, I finally got the stove going. The purr of the propane combusting was music to my ears. I put the pot of dirty water over it to boil any germs to death.

It was already looking like a bleak evening, but then the burner went off. I went off too, with a stream of profanity that only warmed me up oh-so-slightly.

Looking south from a ridge on Darton Peak 

I fumbled for the flashlight and realized that I had forgotten where I had put it. This was no good because was about as dark out as the inside of a polar bear’s rectum in the darkest night of the arctic winter. It’s the little things, I thought. The little mistakes that kill your ass when you’re too full of yourself to think about what you’re doing.

The best I could find in the way of light now was the little sensor and the LED screen of my camera, which cast a pallid illumination over the snow.

I had a suspicion that the propane might run out, so I had brought a second cylinder. With numb hands, I screwed out the empty canister and put in its replacement.

 Now to light the stove. It took a few misfires, but eventually, I got it up and running.

Within several minutes, I had a big pot of bog-flavored mashed potatoes. I put the steel can of water over the flames to heat up. Unfortunately it was only slightly warmed by the flames, before the other canister ran out too. Next time, I’ll know better than to have brought two canisters that I have used before, and think that I can get away with it.

With nothing else to do, I finished the potatoes and went to my bag to sleep. Even with the new pad underneath the bag, the set-up was still as cold as hell. I did crunches every now and then to try to get warmth, hoping my body would be generous enough to share some with my feet.

I realized I needed to pee. Not wanting to leave my sleeping bag, I unzipped the tent and have the sleeping bag, and let the stream go out into the snow.

When at last I hit the illumination button on my watch, it told me that it was 2 a.m.. I had been in the bag awake and freezing for at least five hours.

Finally, after kicking around for who knows how long, I finally drifted into fitful slumber.

Sunrise over Otter Lake

When I awoke, the eastern horizon was aglow as the morning light crept across the cold sky. I watched the fiery orange ball of sunlight climb out from behind the pines, its hesitant beams filtering through the branches and lighting up the frost crystals atop the frozen pond.

The icy landscape glowed, but seemed no warmer for it.

My feet were still cold. I wanted to go home.

I went over to the pond for water and found that the bog trick that I had pulled the night before wasn’t working. The lake edge was frozen with everything else. I had forgotten to put my fuel canister under my pillow, and the propane fairy hadn’t visited my camp at night to refill my stove. I still had some water left in the bottles and drank some with the dry handfuls of oatmeal and peanut butter tortilla that constituted my breakfast.

No water meant I was definitely hiking out and not trying to climb any mountains.

On the way back I thought about some smaller hikes I could do. I took a quick detail off the trail to look at Rainy Lake, which has a nice view of Mather and Big Horn Peaks. Frowning escarpments of stone towered above the frozen water.

I was getting ready to hoof it back to the car, when I noticed some weak areas in the pond ice around the rocks and stabbed at them with my pole. Remarkably, I was able to bust an opening. I threw off my mittens and went for the water bottles.

The water was dirty sludge with the corpses of various insects floating in it. No prob. That’s why I brought iodine tablets. I looked back at the mountains, then to my watch. It was almost 10 a.m., which was probably too late to get any summits.

I was amazed to discover the half hour of hiking that I had put in had already warmed my feet and had me peeling layers.

Well, I could give myself a turnaround time, say noon and make my way down then.

I set off without feeling very committed to the summit. This was good, because the going was a lot harder than I thought it could be.

I was going off trail, which meant that there were more cobbly rocks like the ones I had bitched about in my earlier entry on Mather Peak. Only this time, they were covered with snow which made it about twice as hard to go anywhere without falling down. Snow covered up ankle-twisting crevices between boulders, snow made my feet slide off the rocks in weird directions.

It was a helpless feeling, knowing that no matter how careful I was, I would still end up falling down.

Finally, I chose a low, unnamed outcropping at just over 10,000 feet and make that my turnaround point.

It was 1 p.m. now. I ate a flour tortilla filled with peanut butter and washed it down with bug-water.

2,000 feet above me,  Darton Peak stood unconquered. Not even close.

I couldn’t feel bitter though. Incredible scenery was all around, from the high-walled cirques and frowning escarpments of the mountain range, to the strange clouds drifting in and out. Looking to the east, I saw that most of the snow had already melted off the rangeland. I recognized the Pumpkin Buttes, about 80 miles away in Southwest Campbell County.

In spite of it all, the experience was a valuable one. The next time I take to the mountains, I’m not going to underestimate the cold. Misery is a good teacher.

Much of my philosophy surrounding the outdoors is that one should make do with less, as much as possible. After all, I seek the outdoors as an escape from our consumer-driven society. However, Mother Nature has forced me to rethink certain elements of that philosophy.

I didn’t do myself any favors by cutting corners on this trip. Now I have a checklist of things that I didn’t bring on this last trip and plan on bringing next time.

Behold!

Warm sleeping bag (I just went online with my hard earned journalism dollars and bought myself a -40-rated North Face Dark Star. I’ll be sleeping it the next time I go to the mountains.

Pee bottle (so I don’t have to get out of said sleeping bag when I inevitably have to take a leak at night.) They say it is important to hydrate when it is cold outside. This allows me to do that, and also to 

Bowl (so I can have water boiling for a hot water bottle

Switch-operated lighter: no more screwing around barehanded with an icy metal wheel.

Headlamp: no sense keeping one hand tied up to hold a light. I need to have as many prehensile fingers in the game as possible.

Gaitors:  (already have em’, though one needs to have a strap mended) Might find some super gaiters.

Snowshoes: (Maybe not for the first trip, but I’ll need them eventually. I tried to get away without these last winter, I’ll be damned if I get stuck trying to push through waist-deep snow again.)

More fuel: (I’ll need a lot if I want to boil snow.)

Snowpants: ( I’ve already got these, but need to get a hole mended.)

More Socks: to put water bottles in (preventing freezage). Many recommend traveling with bottles kept upside down, preventing the lid from freezing on and blocking access to water.

   It is important to remember to keep boots and bottles alike inside the sleeping bag at night to prevent it from going to ice.

Another word on gear: You can have the best there is, but it ain’t worth jack if you don’t know how to use it. One of my biggest struggles has been not only acquiring the right stuff, it’s been learning to be efficient with it. The more time spend fiddling with matches, snapping a tent together, packing and unpacking, the more time a body has to lose those two most valuable resources: warmth and time.

Looking northwest from the slope of Darton Peak toward Mather Peak. Pity about the fog on the lens.