The Time I Thought I was Going To Die

In a previous post I mentioned that I started out car camping, ended up getting a pop-up trailer, started backcountry camping, and have now super simplified to basically just doing backcountry camping. You can read about that here.

With backcountry camping I started buying much higher quality gear and through research I learned a lot about sleeping systems. What prompted this was the time I thought I was going to die while car camping in Algonquin.

Back in May 2015 we went car camping at Mew Lake in Algonquin Provincial Park. The Victoria Day long weekend was pretty early that month and we arrived on May 16th and we stayed for a couple days past the holiday. There were still some snow banks on the ground.

Everyone had left the park after the holiday Monday and we were the only ones left in our big section of the park. The ranger would come and check on us every day and say hello. We were in a big tent that fit oversized cots. This was our sleeping setup:

We had:

• Coleman Pack-Away Cot
• Windriver -10 sleeping bag
• Full sized pillows from home with cotton pillow cases
• A small fleece blanket

Now, anyone who knows about camping sleeping systems is going to look at that list and think we're insane for having camped at Algonquin in the spring with that setup.

If you look at the historical weather for Algonquin for that time period you'll see that most of the days were about 10 degrees at night and 20 degrees during the day. Except one night it went down to 2 degrees and it was windy and rainy.

We weren't insulated below us because we were up on a cot with nothing between us and our cots. The sleeping bags were made with a cotton flannel lining. We put on all the clothes we had, which happened to all be made out of cotton, and we were still freezing. We decided to go into our Jeep and turn on the heat and that's when we discovered that the brand new battery we had put in the month before was faulty and we couldn't even turn on the Jeep. It was a really bad night. We were so cold that night we were jackhammering in our bags. Here's a picture of me freezing my butt off:

That's the night I thought we were going to die and when I learned something important: The temperature ratings on sleeping bags are kind of a lie.

The temperature ratings on sleeping bags aren't entirely accurate. They don't have a proper r-value rating (r-value measures how effective something insulates - more about that here). The only thing that the temperature rating on sleeping bags is good for is that it gives you a relative comparison against other bags made by the same manufacturer. So the -10 bags are warmer than the +5 degree bags made by the same manufacturer. The American outdoors store REI does a great job explaining this on their website in an article called How to Choose Sleeping Bags for Backpacking:

Source: REI

I've since switched to a sleeping bag that's better made than the Windriver one I had. When rolled up my North Face sleeping bag is half the size of the Windriver one and it's made with better materials (seriously, cotton for a cold weather sleeping bag... what was I thinking?). I've also switched to using a sleeping pad instead of a cot because it's warmer, lighter, and now that we backcountry camp instead of car camping a cot just isn't practical. If you car camp and want to use a cot I recommend using a sleeping pad with the cot so that you'll have insulation.

This is my current setup:

• The North Face Dolomite -7 sleeping bag
• Klymit Static V Insulated sleeping pad r-value 4.4 (for colder weather)
• Thermarest Scout sleeping pad r-value 3.4 (for warmer weather)
• Teton Sports camp pillow

For pajamas I wear merino wool instead of cotton and I wear a wool toque instead of a cotton toque. I had heard the expression "cotton kills" before but I never really understood it. Apparently if cotton gets wet it will basically rob your body of warmth by directing heat away. When you're camping at night you'll get condensation in the tent (especially if it's raining like it was for us) and your body will perspire naturally. So bundling up with all cotton clothes during a very cold rain storm under a lot of layers was a really bad idea. Gizmodo actually gives a really great technical explanation about why cotton kills here.

If you're wondering about the Jeep and how we got out of there with a dead battery... we tried to bump start it since it's a manual transmission but the Jeep was facing downhill onto our site so there wasn't enough space. The next day we got a boost from people who showed up at the site beside us and we drove to the Canadian Tire in Huntsville and got a warranty exchange on our battery.

Here are some videos I took during our trip of the loons, a sunset, and a sunrise.