Getting cold in the early hours

[Shug]

Still waiting on my HG incubator but have still been getting out, stacking 4oz/6oz layers of apex underneath me has helped but made me realise apex ratings are just not accurate for me, although a 7.5oz TQ on its own worked well....can’t wait to try the 20* incubator when it arrives.
A lovely night in the garden last night, -3c solid throughout the night, rh around 95% so pretty decent frost inside and outside the tarp, bit of moisture on quilts but given the conditions it’s to be expected.
My next challenge is to keep my nose warm without covering my whole face or looking like a bank robber! I try covering mouth and nose with a buff but it gets condensation and cools/feels horrible.
Any tips for a warmer snout!?

I have a soft fleece (not neoprene) facemask that I use covers nose but lets me breathe. I love it. Really hard to find all fleece ones these days.
Really treasure mine.
Shug

Shug frost face Ely MN by Sean Emery, on Flickr

[Norfolk Yeti]

Cheers fellas.

[fugalster]

Just saw this, but I have good advice because I always had this problem too but was able to solve it.

Basically it's your body running out of fuel to keep the metabolism going strong. There's 3 basic calorie sources: carbs, protein, and fat. Of the three, fat is *by far* the slowest burning. So when it's going to be cold I always pack a big fatty bedtime snack to eat in the evening (the closer to bedtime the better). This could be cheese, summer sausage, etc. My favorite is to make a chia seed pudding (the seeds will thicken to a jelly consistency when soaking) with chocolate powder and sugar and some dried fruit. The seeds are jam packed with fat calories (the healthy kind!). It works wonders for keeping me warm all night long.

[arutha]

FWIW, eating never helped me with this. I eat low carb anyway and there's enough body fat to burn as well when needed

However I have made my own experiments and so far it seems to have been over-insulation close to the body. I used to sleep in shirt, sweater, down vest and sometimes fleece jacket over that and long johns plus pants as well as wool socks.

With my new stacked UQ setup I've been more open to trying to use less clothing and it seems to be working so far. Warm feet and warm overall, all night long, including the wee hours. I'm waiting for it to get down below 24F but the last few days have been stubbornly warm, bouncing between 32F during the day and 24F-ish at night. But basically I now sleep with just the cotton sweat pants (no long johns), wool socks are off (but accessible should I need them) and then t-shirt and PJ shirt (my warm winter PJ tho). I wanna try with just PJs and colder weather next.

My guess so far is that it's about actually using the whole UQ/TQ setup properly and letting it catch all the body heat, while over insulating my chest area before was basically removing the biggest heat generator for the UQ/TQ from the setup. Does that sound like a reasonable guess or is my UQ/TQ setup just too warm for current temps (20F Trail Winder stacked w/ 40F Incubator) and I'll get a cold awakening when it goes lower again?

[Norfolk Yeti]

I’m finding a good feed before climbing in is helping a lot, as is layering the underquilts as the ratings on apex just don’t seem to be accurate for me as I said above.....really have great anticipation for my HG incubator when it arrives, hoping some goose down loveliness will be my answer, not only because packing and carrying all those layers of apex is a tad like hard work!!
It’s all part of the learning curve and enjoyment, definitely enjoy the dialling in.

Edit addition, how I could forget I don’t know but I’m finding warm feet = warm all over too, I go to effort to achieve this with a traditional hot water bottle if in the garden at home, or a nalgene hot water bottle when camping, works very well in combo with possum merino socks!!

[arutha]

Yep, the Incubator definitely helped me too. Of course I can't really tell if it's the down vs. synthetic right now because of the temps vs. ratings on mine, but we'll see as spring comes along.

Agree on the warm feet part. That makes a lot of difference. Feet and hands. I never had warm hands in winter until starting this hammock journey and learning about 'wristies' from Shug (DIY from wool socks) and I finally got -40 Baffin boots. Nice and toasty.

I've also done the PJ only test last night (went down to 24.5F) and I was warm all night and only woke up to pee. When the alarm rang @7:30a.m. I was still warm but starting to feel that my body was 'working' to stay warm but my feet were still toasty (bare foot!).

[BillyBob58]

I’m finding a good feed before climbing in is helping a lot, as is layering the underquilts as the ratings on apex just don’t seem to be accurate for me as I said above.....really have great anticipation for my HG incubator when it arrives, hoping some goose down loveliness will be my answer, not only because packing and carrying all those layers of apex is a tad like hard work!!
It’s all part of the learning curve and enjoyment, definitely enjoy the dialling in.

Edit addition, how I could forget I don’t know but I’m finding warm feet = warm all over too, I go to effort to achieve this with a traditional hot water bottle if in the garden at home, or a nalgene hot water bottle when camping, works very well in combo with possum merino socks!!

Yep, the Incubator definitely helped me too. Of course I can't really tell if it's the down vs. synthetic right now because of the temps vs. ratings on mine, but we'll see as spring comes along.

Agree on the warm feet part. That makes a lot of difference. Feet and hands. I never had warm hands in winter until starting this hammock journey and learning about 'wristies' from Shug (DIY from wool socks) and I finally got -40 Baffin boots. Nice and toasty.

I've also done the PJ only test last night (went down to 24.5F) and I was warm all night and only woke up to pee. When the alarm rang @7:30a.m. I was still warm but starting to feel that my body was 'working' to stay warm but my feet were still toasty (bare foot!).

Speaking of warm feet(and sounds like you are already doing great in that area): admittedly I am just a poor southern boy who only rarely gets close to zero F, very rarely indeed.

OTOH, one of my hobbies is seeing how little I can get by with and stay comfy. And, I have never had cold feet in a hammock, even in low single digits. And it does not take below 0F temps to get folks around here complaining of cold feet!

Back in the day, before I retired, one of my important jobs was to keep patients warm while they were laid open for hours in a cold operating room. And especially in the days before forced air warming blankets(but really even after), we really concentrated on keeping those heads warm. If a breathing tube was in, we would even cover up the entire face and head with warmed blankets.

Any way, the theory we were taught in anesthesia school back in the dark ages was that brain temperature controlled or influenced the temperature of the extremities. If the brain temp drops a bit, signals are sent to the arteries of the extremities to constrict. Which reduces the flow of warm blood from the core(heart) to the extremities, and shunts it to the much more important brain. Conversely, warm the brain up a bit, and signals are sent to the arteries in the extremities to relax and dilate, which shunts some of that warm core blood away from the brain, which can now flow more easily thru those opened up, relaxed arteries. Even serving to cool off the brain if needed. The brain is really aggressive about maintaining it's temp within a tight range, and will happily stop the flow of warm blood to less important areas.

So with those theories in my head, I have always attempted to keep my head as warm as I can, almost too warm. This became much easier once I added a thick down hood to my TQ, to replace the hood of my mummy bag. I suspect that this has helped me keep some very toasty toes. Of course, I sometimes use some other tricks like vapor barrier socks, but either way I never get cold feet while sleeping. Seems like plenty of folks do. More likely my feet are too hot even in single digits. So, lots of head insulation might indeed help. I guess I need to ditch all of that head insulation- and of course, no VB socks- to see what happens. To put it too the test.

[arutha]

I can definitely corroborate the warm head thing @BillyBob58 and what you're saying from a professional standpoint makes very much sense from an experiential standpoint to me as well. Unfortunately my body is exceptionally well at conserving energy and only keeping the vital organs alive. I'd rather it burnt all the extra fat to try and keep all my extremities alive too!

I get a cold head really easily and it actually 'hurts'. My SO can walk outside in 15F weather with no hat while I'm all balled up in my Ushanka style sheepskin hat (which btw. is _the_ hat I can stay warm in. My real sheepskin Ushanka style hat is the only thing that keeps my head warm in 'proper' windy winter weather. Like windy -20F and below where the face freezes up and I speak real slow, but my head and ears stay warm. I haven't tried a down hood so far and only knew they even existed since starting this hammocking journey but once I had that hat, I so far haven't had a need either.

That's why in the hammock, I always have my Balaclava, wool knitted hat (not good against wind, coz pretty large 'knit loops', but otherwise nice and warm too) and then the mummy bag hood on (I use it in TQ mode but put the hood on). The first thing that overheats when I shovel snow or otherwise do 'work' outside in winter is the head.

[arutha]

So reporting back on the next step in the experiments. It was finally much colder and last night I slept outside.

I went with PJs again. Went to bed at 10F. Wiggling into place in the two TQ mode sleeping bags makes for real cold hands ! But after that it was all nice and warm. Except for my feet. I had left my socks on, thinking that would be better, since it's colder than before, but they just wouldn't get warm. So I took the socks off and voila, that did the trick. So I slept barefoot in the end. Toasty! Checked my thermometer this morning and coldest temp was 8F overnight.

I did wake up at a bit after 5 a.m. I would think, coz I needed to pee. My feet were super warm still (barefoot!) but I'd say stomach to knees I felt a bit chilly. Not really comfortable any longer.

I tried to fight it and finally went to water the porcelain inside at 5:45 a.m. I grabbed a little bite to eat to try that trick again and went back outside. But no dice. After that I couldn't get my feet to be warm any longer and the stomach to knee area was also staying chilled. I even tried to pull in the down vest and use it as an extra blanket for that area (inside the sleeping bag). It helped a bit - after it warmed up - but it didn't really cover everything and since it's a vest, the arm holes aren't really helping.

[Norfolk Yeti]

Brilliant, that’s a good test at 10f !!
I wonder if you’re onto something with the socks off thing, my hands warm up far quicker without gloves sometimes, it’s as if the glove holds in the cold