How well do Blizzard Bags breathe?

A sleeping bag saturates quickly if it and you are inside a plastic survival bag, but what if you were wearing vapour barrier clothing?

"Miss Davidson was found alone on the eastern side of Cairngorm and directed her rescuers to the location of the rest of party about half-a-mile away.

The two boys were alive, but one died shortly after the mountain rescue team arrived. All five girls and the assistant instructor, Sheila Sunderland, 19, were dead."

'Miss Davidson' was a 21 year old instructor, so I assume she was fitter than the others and managed to keep going until she found a spot with better natural shelter.

"So how DO you survive without shelter?"

What I was taught is that your clothing system is your first shelter. My background is a little different and UL is new to me but one thing I've noticed with UL is that clothing systems don't always look like they would be able to handle a tough weather situation such as what we're discussing and the reliance is largely on the shelter that is being carried. I'm used to a slightly heavier clothing system that when properly layered would BE your shelter if necessary (although you would still strive to get out of the wind and build a shelter around you if resources were available). Winter travel in Alaska can necessitate that. While I am striving to go lighter, one area I do have trouble making concessions in is my clothing system, for that reason. Additionally, in my survival kit in the winter, I always have a space blanket and a candle (among other things). If I can hunker down out of the wind, wrap the space blanket around me, and light the candle at a point near my feet that isn't near the space blanket the heat from the candle can keep me reasonably warm inside the space blanket. The blanket itself is impervious to precip. It's a mini-shelter system and doesn't weigh much at all.

UL means that you carry the minimum you need to survive in any particular situation.
If that means your base weight increases from 5 pounds to 15 pounds, so be it.

Stuart,

What happened to your friends was certainly tragic.

I presume that you shared that to illustrate that unforeseeable bad things can happen to the best of us. The information given raises more questions than it answers in that regard.

I agree with Mike

UL means that you carry the minimum you need to survive in any particular situation.
If that means your base weight increases from 5 pounds to 15 pounds, so be it.

IMHO if you are pushing a weight goal so hard that you are taking on increased risk, you need to take a very careful look at what you are doing and whether you really do want that risk.

Dena, I have spent a night wrapped in a space blanket. It was not a cold night, nor particularly windy. I sheltered beside a low wall. Despite that I was freezing - I shivered so much I could not sleep. I regard a space blanket to be useless. Now I take a blizzard bag as a minimum (I have not had to try it yet).

Robert, I shared the details mainly because Craig asked, but in the context of this thread it illustrates that:
- the weather can turn out worse than forcast, sometimes much worse
- man made shelters can create a false sense of security
- your emergency shelter may not perform as well as you might expect, when needed
- decisions can be compounded by events which rapidly result in a situation getting out of control

I was in a faily hairy situation about 12 years ago in mid Winter on top of one Ireland's highest Peak and luckily enough we managed to self rescue, we did not have sufficent kit with us. A guy from my home town got blown off a ridge the same night and fell to his death.

That experience really shock me up and I started carrying sufficent kit (Bivy and some extra clothes)

I always carry a Blizzard bag, lightweight bothy bag and a half foam mat. 750g for the lot could save my neck some day.

The real hard question is - how would you do it if you were injured? I think for most folks with a lot of experience in the outdoors, being unable to get to a more sheltered spot is much more likely to be due to injury than anything else. In 40 years of backpacking I have never been unable to get to a more sheltered spot due to being lost or anything else (mostly because I am conservative in what I attempt), but if I got hurt (knock on wood) in such a way that I could not walk, I could definitely be in a bad spot. Just imagine you have a broken leg and you are in foul weather - you'd have a heck of a time even if you could get your shelter up.
That sort of scenario makes a nice Bibler or I-tent start to look pretty attractive. crawl in, zip it up and you are out of the worst. And it's breathable. And if the weather slackens a bit, you erect the poles from inside, and you can do it sitting or even lying down if need be.

Of course, I don't have a Bibler or I-tent, so I guess I'd be in deep sheet.

My worst case scenario is getting stuck out overnight on a day hike, with a cold and probably wet night. My backup is a poncho and an AMK bivy-style space blanket. If I can't pitch the poncho, I can wrap it around me and hole up under a tree or behind a rock. If it isn't blowing, I can make a bed of evergreen boughs or leaf litter along with my pack for insulation, pitch the poncho and climb in the bivy sack with all my clothes on. If possible, I can build a fire too. I do know how to make emergency shelter from forest debris and branches.

Any time I step off the pavement I have the following with me:

Poncho
Space-blanket bivy sack
A small roll of light line
Matches
Firesteel
Mini-bic
Tinder Quick tabs
A spare layer appropriate to the season:
*a Power Stretch vest for "height-of-summer" hot weather
*a Power stretch hoodie for the next step cooler
*a synthetic insulated jacket or vest for slightly colder stuff
Light gloves
Fleece beanie
First aid kit
Spare medication
Sunscreen and DEET
Headlamp
Small LED flashlight
3.5" folding knife
Whistle
Map and compass

I would usually be wearing a long sleeve base layer top, synthetic pants, windshirt and a Tilley hat, briefs, socks and low-top hiking shoes. It I'm taking off on a predictably rainy day, add a rain shell and pants. There is a spare pair of socks in there somewhere.

I think the kit listed above would give anyone a fighting chance in moderately, cold weather and more so with a fire possible. If I were going above treeline in winter conditions, I would be adding a lot more insulation and shelter options.

And someone always knows where I'm going and a return/check-in time.

> The real hard question is - how would you do it if you were injured?

Don't forget -- if you are seriously injured you are almost certainly also in shock -- i.e. generating less body heat than usual.

A while back 3 of us came across two guys who where in bad way from the onset of hypothermia, they where absolutely soaked to the skin as they had no proper rain gear and where wandering around a big peak in the fog, also they where dehydrated as there was no water sources at all in the area. We got them warmed up, fed and hydrated and brought them down off the mountain.

They where in a fairly remote area and didn't have clue where they where, when we found them they where heading for some fairly serious cliffs.

The funny thing was that the reason they knew to head to us is they heard someone shouting in the frog and headed towards the voice, it turns out it was me cajoling one of our group to get in to a Bothy bag to eat their lunch and warm themselves up (they had refused for 5 minutes saying they wouldn't fit)

If it is TRULY too windy to pitch a tent then wrap it around you or crawl in after inserting your pad and sleeping bag.

With my TT Moment tent I can't imagine it being so windy I can't pitch that wonderfully aerodynamic shelter.

Provided you have trees around you, I don't see why it would be too windy to set up a tarp. Sit on top of the thing, find a tab, scoot over to the tree with trying to keep the tarp contained under your knees, tie to tree. Then find the other tab and tie off, stand up, and walk over the other tree and tighten down. You have to just ignore how floppy it is while you are trying to set it up. Try and snag each one of the tabs while they are flopping like crazy and stake down. There you have an A-frame set up. You would probably want the stretchy band things that let the lines flex in the wind and prevent the tarp from ripping.
I will admit that I am not that great at setting up tarps yet, this is mostly from what I have seen others do and accomplish with tarps.

Edited by justin_baker on 08/25/2012 10:50:10 MDT.

Pitching a tarp in high wind is just the first part of the job. Having it stay put for the night is the other part. If it is dark and raining hard, you are cold, wet, tired and scared, you might not do the best job. Finding a site that isn't a creek or bog or has dangerous trees might be a challenge too. It is really good to think about these things ahead of time!

In NZ if there are trees around you large enough to tie off to you are still bebeath 'the bushline', usually about 1400m.

However a lot of the best trails and huts are higher than this and many of the fitter outdoorsfolk spend a lot of time up on 'the tops'. Sub-bush line survival is realitively straight forward (very rare that hikers succumb to the elements in the bush) compared to the trouble one can find oneself in up higher.

In a few favourable spots in Scotland there are trees at 1500' but but more generally the treeline is less than ~500', so we don't depend on trees for anything.
If the weather turns bad then lose altitude fast - it's always less windy and less cold lower down.

Its the same in Ireland also.

Treeline is highly variable with rain/snowfall and terrain, but is more like 5000 feet in Washington. Shoulder season snowfall can get you here, as well as getting soaked with cold rain. Weather prediction on major storms is good, but the micro-climate changes that can be troublesome. Rainfall can vary by 50" a year in 20 miles. If the Jet Stream shifts here, there can be sudden weather changes that bring in colder air and bad surprises.

Those 40F-45F days with rain and high humidity are ripe conditions for hypothermia, with perspiration and precip coming at you from both sides of your clothing. If you get caught in wet snow, you can be working hard to post hole through it and get soaked from the inside.

If it is well below freezing here, say 20F, it tends to be clear and dry with more pleasant hiking.