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Spent the coldest time of my life one February near the DMZ in Korea.
Temps with wind chill down to 57 below zero.
Kept rubber overshoes on leg boots while marching, VB boots when we stopped and set up camp.
Not too bad in a pup tent with the old Arctic sleeping bags on air mattesses, as long as the mattress would hold air. Once it let down, the frozen ground would get chilly pretty quickly. Light a candle or can of Sterno (never heat tabs) in the tent 20 minutes or so before you got up, with all of the snow on top of the tent, it got pretty cozy till you went outside.
The waterproof bag over the foot of the sleeping bag is good till the moisture condenses inside of it, then the chicken feathers freeze together and the bag has to be dried out.
Slept in a watch cap, pile cap, or sleeping bag cap. Agree that if you keep your head warm, the other extremities stay warmer as well. The sleeping shirt was also helpful in the pre- poly-pro days, as were wool outergarments and field jacket/pant liners.
TR
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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
De Oppresso Liber 01/20/2025
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