If you’re planning an adventure during the the colder months of the year, there are many precautions that must be taken into consideration versus other seasonal hiking, a few of which I learned the hard way in the mountains of Virginia one mid-January night.

It was around 7:00pm and my fellow hikers and I had decided to stop at an upcoming shelter for the night.  Once we arrived, I slipped off my low-top boots (mistake #1), changed socks into my sleeping pair, set my water bottles next to my sleeping bag (mistake #2), and left my lighter outside of my food bag (mistake #3).

That night, the winds picked up and it started snowing heavily.  Being inside a three-walled shelter with no cover from the weather on one-side, the snow started to blow in and covered everything open to the air. 

As for me personally, I prepared correctly for the cold by wearing a balaclava, wool socks, mittens, thermal long johns, my rain paints and a fleece.  All of which was inside of a silk sleeping bag liner inside a 30 degree sleeping bag.  Needless to say, I was toasty and slept right through the concurrent snowstorm.  On the flip side, the same couldn’t be said for my possessions.

When I awoke early the next morning, the sun was just coming up and I noticed the snow covering all the items I had left out the night before….

Mistake #1

When I slipped my boots off, I failed to untie the shoe laces, causing them to be encapsulated in ice.  With the stiff boots and tied laces, there was no way of getting the knots undone. Especially with cold hands.

Thinking to myself, “no problem, I’ll just grab my lighter and thaw out the ice”….

Mistake #3

My lighter was left out and covered in snow, which caused the flint to get wet. That, along with cold weather (which if you google the effects of cold weather on butane lighters, there is some really interesting science behind it), made the lighter nearly impossible to strike.

Mistake #2 (Yeah, I know it’s out of order, but I’m this far into the story and can’t turn back now…)

The rule of thumb when hiking in winter months is to always throw your water bottles at the base of your sleeping bag (make sure the lids are tight!), so your water doesn’t freeze overnight.  In my sleepy stupor, I failed to properly store my water bottles, which were now frozen solid.

Back to the story at hand…after striking the lighter numerous times (all the while shaking it vigorously) to create a flame, it finally caught and I proceeded to use that flame to melt all of the ice incrusted onto my shoe laces. Once complete, I put my boots on and was ready to gear up for the next day’s hike, with frozen water.

As for the water bottle, when water is solid ice and the temperatures aren’t expected to get above freezing, there are very few options in getting that ice back to a liquid. One of which is using body heat.  Typically in the freezing weather, layers are the way to go to keep warm. What I did was tucked my Nalgene bottle in my fleece pocket, underneath my outer shell.  This trapped my body heat in and melted the ice over the next few miles of hiking.  It’s a slow process and feels like it takes forever to get back to a liquid state, but does work.

So just a reminder, if you plan on sleeping outside in the winter, be sure to keep your water liquid, your fire source covered, and never for the love of anything sacred, take your boots off without untying them.