Winter Camping: Camping Warmer

Any prudent winter camper knows the importance of having a warm sleeping bag. Supplement that with adequate clothing and a good ground cloth, and you have pretty much covered your options for a warm sleeping space. About the only way to improve on that is to provide a heat source that will heat up the air in the tent. Let's look at a few ways that can be accomplished.

Externally, one can pitch a tent out of the wind, and on the south slopes to catch as much of the warming sun as possible. If you are in rocky country, you might consider pitching your tent along an exposed wall of rock that captures the sun's heat by day and radiates it back out by night. A variation of this would be to situate your tent so it is in line for any re-radiated heat from a reflector fire either directly or perhaps by catching the radiant heat off a wall that is absorbing the heat from a fire. Of course the concern whenever sleeping at the base of rocky outcroppings is falling rock or debris make sure you check out your overhead environments.

Internal heating is available either through area heaters (catalytic heaters) or via small heat-generating packets that can be tossed into the sleeping bags and boots.

I remember one deer hunting trip far north of Ely, Minnesota near the Canadian border. The temperature had dropped to about 10 degrees F during the night. My buddy and I awoke to chattering teeth and near ice fog conditions inside the Baker tent we were using.

We quickly stoked up my Coleman stove and huddled around it until we could feel our lips and cheeks again. Unfortunately we burned our entire weekend supply of white gas in about three hours. I bought a catalytic heater the next weekend.

My tent has a vestibule. That's where my catalytic heater goes. It's technically outside the main body of the tent, but the confines of the canopy help it to at least capture some of the heat. The vestibule is not nearly as windproof as the tent so I drape a space blanket up over the entryway like a hood and that seems to contain the heat initially. Once I am tucked into my winter sleeping bag, the outside temperature seems less an issue. Obviously it is imperative to follow all safety steps whenever fueling, lighting or using any heating appliance in an enclosed area.

Even a candle lantern can bring up the air temperature in a tent. Lanterns, too, can drive out some of the cold in a tent long enough to get out of clothes and into the warm cocoon of a sleeping bag.

There is one other way to keep warm in a tent. In Australia, the aborigines would make it through cold nights by making one of the camp dogs cuddle up next to them. As temperatures dropped, the tribesman could add a dog sometimes two. Some evenings go so cold it was referred to as being a Three dog night!

Whatever warms your bottom!