Getting cold in the early hours

[Shug]

Lots of good info given here.
I agree that we lay there a long time on a Winter night and the body gets depleted during that rip-van-lay.
Eat well before sleep.
As I get up to pee in the night I add my down jacket around 4am so that I am dressed for breakfast from the hammock but also warmed in the early hours.
Occasionally I eat a candy bar in the middle of the night in deep winter when below 0ºF.
If I get a chill I have often called it a phantom chill. Usually on my chest upper torso region.
Sometimes it is easy to keep a jacket or vest in your rig and I often slip it on backwards so the back of the jacket is laying on my chest. Easy to do that without having to get up...slide arms through sleeves as you slip the down jacket on backwards.
Shug

[BillyBob58]

After post #14, and y’all’s great posts about keeping warm, I must confess.
While car camping at a “Frozen Butt Hang”, I did not have adequate winter clothes and shoes, socks. I was really cold when I walked to my hammock for nights sleep.
I had failed to follow all the great advice.
I could not feel my feet and toes. I reached down and touched my bare feet as I got in hammock.
My toes felt like foreign objects—like ice cubes but not wet—just cold. I was cold all over.

Temperatures were in high teens Fahrenheit

A couple hours later I woke, to be pleasantly surprised—I was warm all over—even my feet and toes! I had stacked my zero* underquilt and 20* underquilt—as well as my zero* top quilt and 20* top quilt. All that downy goodness, saved the night!

That’s a lot of quilted loveliness, I’d bet it would be difficult to be cold amongst all that!!

Phantom, I agree with Norfolk Yeti, LOL! I estimate that, assuming all of those quilts are good for you at their ratings(varies of course with how cold of a sleeper and skill at using), and assuming a mythical perfect hang of both UQs and no drafts on top, that would have had a theoretical rating of minus 50F! So at say +18F you had about 68 more degrees to go before you had to worry! Even with real world failures, maybe you only had another 40 degrees to go before getting cold. And it sounds like indeed, all of that was enough to more than make up for errors causing you to go to bed perhaps on the verge of being hypothermic, at least in your feet. But, it sounds like that worked like a charm!

I'm curious as to what sort of clothing you slept in and what you had to insulate your head.

[BillyBob58]

.................................................. ......... If I get a chill I have often called it a phantom chill. Usually on my chest upper torso region.
Sometimes it is easy to keep a jacket or vest in your rig and I often slip it on backwards so the back of the jacket is laying on my chest. Easy to do that without having to get up...slide arms through sleeves as you slip the down jacket on backwards.
Shug

I have not had the opportunity to sleep below zero, only rarely very close to zero. Just lots of teens and 20s over the years, and on backpacking trips several long days hike and several high mountain passes from my car. But, that "slide arms through sleeves as you slip the down jacket on backwards" has proven to be one of my fav tricks, a real trip saver more than once. Particularly when using a TQ below it's rating. Most often using my old Speer Pea Pod, as I detailed up in post #20, to fill a top gap caused by the hammock side edges raising the top quilt portion of the pod. Worked great. It can't slip off of me with my arms thru the sleeves.

[Firesong]

My personal body functions seem similar to Shugs. I know that it's a natural thing for the body to cool slightly during the night and then start to warm back up at around the 5pm/6pm getting you ready for wake-time. I think it also has a correlation to calories which your body naturally burns throughout the night. Depending on what you have eaten that 4-5am period is where you are generally out of recent food caloric burn and your body will start to burn off the less easy stuff (fat stores) It's also that fasting period that goes on till noon where you will enter the burning fat period if your body gets into it. So right around 4am (ish) your body needs the calories and you will be the coolest. This happens to me. In the 3 seasons (non winter) I don't have food in the hammock due to bears but in the winter it's become a thing to have something easy for the body to burn like a bar of some sort. We also don't have rodents trying to get into the hammock so I am not worried about that.
Interestingly enough, a new phenomenon for me is the indulging in potato chips before bed will actually cause a 2-3 am intense heat in me. It's brutal. I will actually wake up at 2 am in a sweat at sub 0°F temps. Usually end up getting out of my hammock wearing my bottoms to water a tree and not feeling the cold at all. Then trying to cool off a bit (without wanting to wake up making sleep hard) and getting back into the hammock. I've stopped bringing potato chips for snacking. It doesn't happen with corn based snacks. Something about the oils. Weird Old Age. (darn it)

[Norfolk Yeti]

Thanks all for your replies, much appreciated tips and insight.
Had a great night out in the woods last night, got down to -1c and wet with it so decent testing conditions (for my neck of the woods anyway!)
Got a new 7.5oz apex TQ from Jared at Simply light designs and was toasty warm....again until the obligatory 4.30 am watering stop, where I felt the chill creep in.
Piled on another layer and a sit pad behind me, ate a cereal bar and did get some more snooze.
Definitely need to be warm for any insulation to work....

[Phantom Grappler]

BillyBob, I slept in two cotton t-shirts and four cotton sweatshirts and all cotton jeans. Not good cold weather gear. Oh, and two synthetic toboggans-acrylic?
I’ve not bought cold weather clothes that experienced campers use. Maybe one dees days.

[Norfolk Yeti]

Another night in the garden and it got down to -3c so a good chill, toasty warm on top but I was cold from below, two layers of apex 4oz/6oz, loads of fiddling, nice loft I think, underquilts both up against the hammock but could run my hand between them/hammock and feel warmth, not overtight.
Quite an abrupt question coming....
Believe me I’ve tried to make it work, have various quilts made with it, European/American, usually pretty adept at making things work with a decent understanding of most things!
“Is apex really all that?”

[brutalguyracing]

This past weekend I was in the catskills by
Temps were around 20 with 30mph winds with higher gusts
I awoke to cold feet
I got up to water the bushes and used my down jacket to wrap around the foot box
Problem solved
It seemed the winds were robbing my heat
The jacket saved the night
And I must say 12 hours in the hammock is refreshing

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[Shug]

Another night in the garden and it got down to -3c so a good chill, toasty warm on top but I was cold from below, two layers of apex 4oz/6oz, loads of fiddling, nice loft I think, underquilts both up against the hammock but could run my hand between them/hammock and feel warmth, not overtight.
Quite an abrupt question coming....
Believe me I’ve tried to make it work, have various quilts made with it, European/American, usually pretty adept at making things work with a decent understanding of most things!
“Is apex really all that?”

Have you tried a goose down UQ?
Down is all that!
Shug

[Norfolk Yeti]

Have you tried a goose down UQ?
Down is all that!
Shug

I’m going to on that recommendation, cheers Shug.