Below zero in a tent

I don't do -0 anywhere or in any structure. That is why I live and keep my butt in Texas!!

Some luxury camping there! Beats waking up with a face full of ice. Young, dumb, and not a lot of $$, but we still had fun. Good luck!!

That looks like a nice set up. You don't want to get out of the cot to stoke the fire. We stayed above zero but are expecting a thaw tomorrow. I hope the elk are out moving for you.

My dad was stationed at Lowry AFB in Denver from 1968-71 . I was a boy scout and we had a polar bear patch . You guessed it , you had to sleep out in a tent below freezing . It wasn't too bad , but like John said , we were too stupid to know better . One thing I remember . We had an older leader well versed in cold weather camping . The best thing was a good mummy sleeping bag , and women nylons . Don't laugh , ask any woman if they don't keep them hot . That's something you can only imagine , boy scouts running around in womens nylons .

You are freezing me.

I am too old to do now but a bit over 30 years ago we hunted elk in th Centennial Valley of Montana. We had two campers on trucks that we sat on the ground. It was well below zero many mornings and the propane heaters would quit during the night as the battery ran down and there wasn't enough power to get the blower fan up so the propane would ignite. Darn that was cold! We did it and thought it was fun, because we were hunting. If we ran the truck to charge the battery we had heat until 3 or 4 in the morning. That got a bit old but we did it and loved it because we were Maine boys in Big Sky country. Most years we didn't have a lot of snow except above 7-8,000 in the surrounding mountains. We hiunted in the valley 4-5 timed. Sure wish I was young enough to do now. Good times, great country!

I can set my camp up by myself in a day taking breaks as i go. Barrel stove can keep it nice inside even below zero. Truck has 2 good wenches, one for each end. Carry a saw in tool box. I can get a 14" dia round in stove so seldom get much over that. See good trees i remember them, then during middle of day drop a couple and cut into 6' lengths and load. I have a hand cart in my stuff . So load it up and haul in some everytime i go to truck for something. Barrel Stove has a side mounted 7 gallon tank and a tube from tank to stove so always have hot water. Have a toilet tent that can also be a nice shower with propane heated water. But in real cold mostly do sponge baths. Cots have 4" memory foam. Fooors are heavy canvas. I could camp far south in New Mexico , Nevada, Arizona in winter and do summer s in MT, WY, and Idaho.

steelslaver said:

Truck has 2 good wenches,

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2 wenches is enough to keep any man warm!

Arrrgh!!

E I E I winch wench. My one winch is a small 6000# and is strung with 250 yds of 1/8" cable . The other is a 8000#er. I carry chains and snatch blocks. My truck has a couple gin poles i can set up in a couple minutes and load say 1000#s by myself. All my camping gear fits in a 6'x8' trailer.

Back in the days when my children (now 49 and 47 years old) were toddlers I used to go deer and elk hunting in Colorado every year. Some trips we slept in the back of a station wagon, sometimes in a tent, once in the bed of a pickup truck with a tarp pulled over the top, always in below-freezing weather, and usually at or near 10,000 feet above sea level. One year I went by myself, sleeping in a GI-surplus "arctic" model sleeping bag laid out on an canvas tarp, which I then pulled over the top, with temps below zero, and woke up to find ice from my exhaled breath inside the tarp and sleeping bag and a foot of fresh snow overlying my accommodations.

Back in the day we looked forward to those trips and thought of it as having fun.

I clearly recall many nights with a full bladder demanding relief, but being unable to convince myself it was worth it to climb out of the sleeping bag to seek that relief while knowing that the bag would be ice cold before I could get back inside.

Some years later a half-dozen of us like-minded geniuses went together, pooled our funds, bought two GI-surplus "GP Small" tents, one for sleeping and one for cooking, eating, poker playing, beer drinking, and lie telling (first liar never stands a chance in elk camp). Each tent was equipped with a GI-surplus gasoline drip stove, inside temperatures always in the 50-60F range even when below zero outside in a blizzard. We thought we had it made, a week away from everyday concerns and nothing to worry about but getting far enough away from the tent while we performed our necessary bodily functions.

In much later years I had solar panels with 12V charge controllers and deep cycle batteries with 12VDC-120VAC inverter, LED lights, electric blankets, and a Mr. Coffee machine ready to go every morning.

None of that compared to the comfort of a 31-foot Aerolite camping trailer with forced air heat, air conditioning, self-contained bathroom facility, and full kitchen.

No more! My camping out days are long behind me. Gave away my tents, sleeping bags, cots, propane heater, camp stove, and everything else associated with those days. Wonderful memories, but I won't be adding any more similar experiences! Roughing it now means staying in a motel without WiFi or premium cable channels.

You can probably find me at the nearest Holiday Inn Express! Stop by for coffee in the morning if you like.

Sounds freaking awesome! Good on you guys, it shouldn’t always be “easy”. [emoji41]

What a grand hunting camp that is!!

Hilton in a tent!

We used to set up our camp above Hyattville, WY on upper Paintrock Creek in the Big Horns a couple of weeks before the elk season started. Had a couple of big wall tents that we would just leave, then drive up to the camp after work as time allowed. It was quite common to knock 2’ of snow off the tent when we got there, then we would fire up the stove and be good to go. Killed a lot of elk on those trips and no one ever bothered our camp.

When we hunted the Absarokas on the west side of the Big Horn Basin we used horses. We rode in about 8 miles and camped about 4 miles below where we hunted. The tents were warm but many mornings we were saddling up at 4:00 a.m. to make that ride to the top. That could be brutal late in the season. Sometimes you just about had to have someone lift you out of the saddle. Great hunting, though, and you just have to learn to tolerate the cold.

I’m less willing to do that stuff these days though I suppose I could still be tempted, and I have friends that still do the horse packing every year. No backpack camp for them. This year they went in with a 14 horse packtrain! I loved it back in the day, though, and it sure made for a lot of great memories.

Sure reminds me of several hunting trips I have made. Tent camping always. A 10x12 6' wall tent with wood stove, cots & a canvas floor makes things better. Out door plumbing?, no way. Brush the snow off a log & hurry up.

For a few years shortly after the turn of the century, I used to do the Colorado Elephant Ride every February. It was a motorcycle ride over Guanella Pass, elev. 11,667’. The ride was on Sunday morning, so the night before, we would camp in Grant, at about 9600’. There was some drinking and telling lies around the campfire, and some ice races on a frozen pond.

Sooner or later, we would retire to our tents for the night. I would put one sleeping bag inside another, and put them down on a Thermarest mattress. The secret to staying warm, though, was to take all the covers off all the beds in my buddy’s house in Pueblo, throw them in the van, and pile them on top of our sleeping bags when we pitched our tents.

The alcohol didn’t help us stay warm, but it did render us oblivious to the cold for a few hours. The Elephant Rides made for a lot of good stories, and put us well along the road to becoming Legends in our Own Minds.

These days, I don’t think I could do the ride or the camping.

did winter camping with my sons, they were Boy Sprouts and did the cold weather camping. In 1988 January the outside temp did not get above -10 the entire month and at night the temps would fall into the -20s. The boys made their snow caves and covered them with pine branches. The camp was on a burned out forest there was plenty of charcoal stumps for the boys to use for heat. I made a nest with pine branches a tarp a artic sleeping bag. The boys and I wore panty hose to help keep warm. It was a lesson I learned while working as a Sky Cop. Food was a problem for some of the kids as they brought canned soup and canned pasta. Lucky we has a large kettle to heat water to defrost the canned soup. I made my kids sandwiches and wrapped them in foil; and powdered milk and hot chocolate. made a big cherry pie with canned biscuits. Yes it was fun and the kids learned new survival skills that weekend.

It is 28 degrees in Ft. Worth Texas at 1am. It is 78 degrees in my condo.

No I ain't going outside !!

bigwheelzip said:

Of course a Marine would have a camp that needs Seabees to construct.

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All that camping in the cold is for those not bright enough to qualify for the chair force. I did all my cold weather camping and survival training in the Boy Scouts. That said, I appreciate your service and sacrifice. ������

Re pantyhose to keep warm, I remember being taken aback as a kid when I learned pro football players do that. Or did anyway.

For camping in cold weather, though, what’s the advantage of pantyhose over long johns? Lighter to pack? Easier to keep clean?