Why You Were Cold, and What Fixes It

A cold night is nearly always one of four things: not enough insulation under you, a bag rated optimistically, going to bed already cold, or going to bed damp. None of them are solved by a more expensive bag.

Sort the mat first. Cover this thoroughly in the gear guide, but the short version: if you are cold from below, add insulation below. A cheap foam mat under whatever you already have is the most effective thing you can do for the money.

Go to bed warm. A sleeping bag does not generate heat; it slows the loss of yours. Getting into one already cold means staying cold for a long time, and sometimes all night. Move about before bed — a brisk walk, some star jumps, anything short of sweating — and get in warm.

Eat before sleeping. Digestion produces heat, and a snack with some fat in it before bed genuinely helps. Being underfed is a common reason people sleep cold.

Change into dry clothes. Day clothes hold moisture even when they feel dry, and evaporating moisture cools you all night. A dedicated dry base layer, dry socks, and a hat is a substantial upgrade over sleeping in what you wore.

Do not over-layer inside the bag. Wearing a thick jacket inside compresses the bag’s loft and can leave you colder. A base layer and a hat is usually the right amount.

A hot water bottle. A sturdy bottle filled with hot water, checked that it seals, put in the bag twenty minutes before you get in. It is the oldest trick there is and it works.

Empty your bladder before bed. Your body spends energy keeping that warm, and more to the point you will not sleep through the need to get up.

Vent the tent. Counterintuitive, but a sealed tent fills with the moisture from your breath, that condenses on the inner surfaces and rains gently onto everything. Keep vents open, and expect some condensation regardless — it is not a leak.

Earplugs and an eye mask solve the other half of the problem. Campsites are noisy at 6am and tents are bright at 5am.

Cooking Without a Kitchen

The first-trip mistake is planning meals that would be moderately ambitious at home. Cooking outdoors is slower, the wind steals heat, washing up is awkward, and it gets dark.

A workable pattern:

  • First night: cook nothing. Bring something that only needs heating, or eat before you arrive. The first evening is spent pitching.
  • Breakfast: anything that involves boiling water. Porridge, coffee, eggs if you are feeling capable.
  • Lunch: cold. Bread, cheese, cured meat, fruit, whatever needs no stove.
  • Dinner: one pot. Pasta with a jar of sauce, a stew, rice with something in it.

Prepare at home. Chop onions, mix spices, portion rice into bags, marinate meat. Every task moved into a kitchen is one you are not doing in the dark.

Bring more snacks than seems sensible. You will be hungrier outdoors, and cold plus hungry is where bad moods and bad decisions live.

Fuel discipline. Shelter the stove from wind, which drastically improves efficiency; use a lid on the pot; do not leave a stove unattended, particularly on uneven ground. Check the canister connection every time.

Washing up is easiest with a bowl, hot water, and a scraper for the worst of it. Scatter strained waste water well away from camp and from any watercourse, and take food scraps home with the rest of the rubbish.

A cool box works for about two days if you pre-chill both the box and the contents, pack it full, keep it in shade, and open it as rarely as possible. Frozen bottles of water outlast ice packs and give you cold water when they melt. Plan the meals so that anything perishable is eaten early.

Water

Know the arrangement in advance. At a managed site, taps are usually marked drinking or non-drinking, and non-drinking means it. If you are relying on natural sources, treat everything — filter, chemical tablets, or a rolling boil — regardless of how clear it looks.

Carry more than you think for cooking, since a single pot of pasta and the washing up afterwards uses a surprising amount. And drink steadily through the day: people dehydrate outdoors without noticing, especially in cold weather where you do not feel like drinking, and it produces headaches that get blamed on everything else.

Weather, Honestly

Check the forecast before you leave, and check the one for the specific location, not the nearest city — a valley and a ridge twenty kilometres apart can behave completely differently. Look at overnight lows rather than daytime highs, because that is the number your sleeping kit has to handle, and note wind speed, which changes how cold a temperature feels enormously.

Rain is manageable, wind is the one to respect. A well-pitched tent in rain is pleasant. A tent in strong wind is loud, stressful, and occasionally destroyed. If the forecast is genuinely bad, the correct response for a first trip is to move the weekend. There is no prize for going.

Cold plus wet is the combination that matters. Getting cold and wet in wind is how hypothermia starts, and it starts in ordinary conditions in mild climates far more often than people expect. Early signs are shivering, clumsiness, and slurred or confused speech — and the person affected is usually the last to notice. The response is shelter, dry clothes, insulation from the ground, and warm sweet drinks, and if someone stops shivering while still cold, that is serious and needs help.

Camp Routine

A few habits make everything else easier:

Do tomorrow’s small jobs tonight. Water filled, stove ready, torch where you can find it, tomorrow’s clothes in the tent rather than the car.

Keep the tent tidy. A small tent becomes unusable fast. A stuff sack for dirty clothes, everything in the same place, boots outside in the porch under cover.

Shake out and check boots before putting them on, particularly in warm regions.

Keep the car keys in one place and preferably one person’s pocket.

Have a plan for rubbish from the start. One bag for waste, one for recycling, both closed and both stored where animals cannot get at them overnight.

Leaving It As You Found It

The general principle everywhere: take out everything you bring in, including food scraps and anything biodegradable, which takes far longer to break down than people assume and attracts wildlife in the meantime.

Use established fire rings if fires are permitted at all, keep them small, burn them down to ash, and be certain they are cold — not warm, cold to the touch — before you leave or sleep. Where fires are banned, they are banned entirely, and dry-season bans exist for extremely good reasons.

Toilet arrangements outside managed sites vary by region and by rules; where burying is the accepted practice, it means well away from water, paths, and camps, and it does not include paper, which comes out with you in a bag.

Leave the pitch looking unused. Someone else arrives tomorrow with the same two hours of daylight you had, and what they find is decided by you.