Saturday 12 January 2019

Water for winter camps when there's no snow


As we all know, when the temperature drops below zero water freezes. And that can be a problem for winter camping if there's no snow to melt. Fill your water bottles at night and find them blocks of ice in the morning. Insulate them from the ground, wrap them in spare clothing, turn them upside down so any water can still be accessed. These all work to some extent. But they can all be awkward, inconvenient, and inefficient. Much easier to just let the water freeze and then melt the ice.

I do this in two ways. Firstly I fill my pots at night and then put them on the stove in the morning. I don't carry big pots though so this doesn't give me that much water. So I also carry flexible water carriers with wide openings. If these freeze overnight I just break up the ice by bashing them with a boot and then shake it out. This doesn't work well with rigid bottles! I have two flexible Platypus containers I use for this, the latest being the Water Tank.

Of course you can carry an insulated flask and fill this at night. I often do. But again it doesn't hold that much water. Or you can leave your tent and go and collect water from a nearby source if there is one. On a freezing stormy morning this isn't very appealing though. I much prefer to have hot drinks and breakfast without leaving my sleeping bag. Plenty of ice is the way to do that.

The picture was taken in the morning at my camp on the Moine Mhor in the Cairngorms earlier this month and described here.

8 comments:

  1. Some good tips there Chris. I've had my Platypus at the bottom of my sleeping bag and that works well. You have to be sure though that it won't leak!

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    1. I know people who've had water bottles leak in their sleeping bags!

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  2. I've also had faulty gas canisters leak - lethal!

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  3. Hi Chris

    What stove system are using? Gas, petrol other? Any tips here would be useful. I have yet to try (proper) winter camping.

    Really enjoyed the watershed book by the way 😀

    Thanks.

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    1. Hi Matt,

      I mostly use either a gas stove with a preheat tube and a hose-connected cartridge so the cartridge can be turned upside down to turn the stove into a liquid feed one so it works far better in sub-zero temperatures. The stove in the photo is my favourite one of these, the Optimus Vega. Sometimes I use a gas stove/pot/heat exchanger unit like the MSR Reactor, which also works well in the cold.

      Pleased to hear you enjoyed my book.

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  4. I've experienced two gas canisters leak, without a stove attached.The first outside my tent beside a tarn in the Rhinog Fawr, the second indoors at home. So now I'll never sleep with a canister in my tent! I warm up my canisters as best I can in the morning, and use an Alpkit remote canister stove for efficiency. In all seriousness, it could have been lethal.

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