10 Tips for Winter Camping — Backpacking Technology

Here are some tips that I have found useful when camping in deep snow, in very cold temperatures:

Cut a step outside your tent, for easy entry and exit.

Use foam pads for sitting, under butt, back and under feet.

Use a gear sled to carry your gear, which will be heavier than your gear for summer backpacking.

To build a fire, lay down a bed of bigger (4” diam") pieces, and build a fire on top of those. The fire will eventually burn through the bed of logs, and sink into the snow, but it will take quite a while.

Use a thin plywood piece as a stove base, to prevent the stove from melting into the snow.

Use a gasoline stove, which produces lots more BTUs than alcohol, which is useful when melting snow. If you take propane you have to sleep with a cannister of fuel in your sleeping bag, and even with that the stove will be hard to light and won’t reach full output.

Learn how to build a snow trench. One can be built in 30 minutes with practice, and is way warmer than a tent. Its a great survival skill to have, and a confidence builder. They are pretty much a single person shelter. its hard to make them wide enough for two people. But two trench shelters can be build so your head is close to another person’s trench, for ease in talking.

Make a kitchen shelf, with a bench seat facing the kitchen shelf, for convenient cooking. Again, sit on foam pads and have foam pads under the feet.

To keep your water from freezing, cut a block out of the snow to make a “refrigerator”. Put your water bottle in the reefer with the threads down, and put a cap of snow over the refrigerator. If the water starts to freeze, it will freeze from the top down, so the threads won’t have frost in them and you can open the bottle. And, just in case, put a liter of water in your sleeping bag. That liter of water will at least get you through breakfast.

To keep your boots from freezing, turn a stuff sack inside out, and put the boots in the stuff sack. Put the stuff sack inside and at the bottom of your sleeping bag. There is nothing worse than waking up to boots frozen solid.