Maya Calderon
Six weeks ago I returned from a 5 day snowshoeing trip to Finnish Lapland with cold-toe damage that lasted for six weeks. I was pleased to note the arctic conditions I encountered made for a very challenging but wonderful adventure, and gave me plenty of opportunity to identify mistakes made prior to the trip that, in order of severity, are detailed below.
Mistake 1 – My Kit Was Warm Enough For Other Cold Weather Hikes.
This mistake was made because I had been researched into winter gear before the trip. The problem with most research into winter gear is that it assumes the winter will be of a reasonable temperature for a few hours at a time. But the arctic is different from that. All the winter gear researched before was rated for cold weather but none of them had been tested below freezing for more than an hour or so. The gear performed adequately in that case but in the arctic, with temperatures below freezing and with wind, it was not enough. It is easy to be misled by normal winter gear lists and so more research into arctic gear lists are required for a trip such as this.
Temperature – minus 18 with moderate wind is quite a different proposition than minus 5 without wind. The lower temperatures are bad enough but when combined with wind the wind chill factor (the effect of wind on how cool it feels to skin) makes for very poor conditions indeed. The arctic gear list for really severe weather was clearly better suited to this kind of weather than the kit for generic winter conditions that I’d been researching previously.
Read the gear list for arctic trips not general winter trips. Pick the worst case scenario.
Mistake two: cotton anywhere on my body
My base layers have been Merino Wool. This is a excellent material for winter sports, because it regulates body temperature. For below freezing conditions I have merino socks and mid layers as well. My insulated jacket and the outer shell also were excellent. However, under my merino base layers I wore normal cotton underwear. So every now and then a bit of my underwear got visible under my base layers, because of sweating and not drying out as fast as I wished. And I was already warm enough as it was with all this insulating material on me. Looking back to all this I now know, that the main factor of cold weather, in arctic winter conditions is moisture. All my gear had been designed for warm and cold dry weather. And in Arctic winter, wet conditions are much more normal than dry. For most of my day one I had problems with my lower back getting more and more damp. Due to pack and my bent position while snowshoeing the lower back was a big problem. Wet, the insulating layer was not able to keep me as warm, as it could when it stayed dry.
This fix for Problem #2 (cotton any where on body) was purchased on the 2nd day of this 5 day arctic expedition. After research on line it was clear this item cost a total of 28 euros – I must say that for the single best piece of equipment that I have purchased for many years it was a wonderful find – located in a small shop in the village in which we spent the night prior to commencing this trek.
Mistake three: navigation hubris
The route was marked with approximately 30m spaced out reflective poles which would be more than sufficient for orientation. However, the route had some sections where snow occluded visibility in low light, and even I with a topographic map background and plenty of knowledge of route-finding would have struggled to continue without some means of determining correct progress. In hindsight when I am wrong about travel logistics it is usually the same way.
The phone’s battery capacity fell drastically within four hours due to the cold temperature. The poles would have been fine for viewing in dry conditions but as we knew the weather was going to turn in the late afternoon and we would be making our way back to the lodge in the poor light the poles did not show up well through the blowing snow. This meant that for stretches of 200m or more between poles I had no idea where I was on the map.
A spare map (paper copy), a compass with the option to set declination (to enable use in the Arctic), and an additional GPS device (a separate, independent unit) charged with strong lithium batteries (better in cold weather). All of these were bought before the next trip.
Mistake four: drinking too little water
Dehydration from cold weather is very deceptive. You don’t feel like you are losing water, you are not feeling thirsty, you are not sweating, but respiratory water loss is huge, and two days without sufficient intake of water caused me to have a severe headache, very slow legs and general fatigue, making it extremely difficult to even want to drink the ice-cold water that was all I had.
Instead of drinking ice cold water, I now bring an insulated thermos and fill it with hot water at every rest stop. This allows me to drink a sufficient amount of 250ml of water every hour, and hot water is much easier to drink when cold water (it may sound silly, but it really makes a difference).
Mistake five: underestimating the day-end ritual
Arctic camp setup is much slower than you would anticipate. As soon as you cease to move, you begin to lose heat and the cold penetrates your clothes within 5 minutes. The subsequent 90 minutes of setting up a camp, filling up water etc. is probably the riskiest part of the day as you are cold before you even go to bed and don’t get into your warm period until the next morning.
Camp setup in arctic conditions is also longer than one would think and the initial cooling of the body after having stopped moving in the cold for the day happens immediately and in a few minutes the highest risk of time of day for getting cold happens. After 60 minutes I would usually have completed camp setup by the time I started to get warmed up by eating dinner. This deficit in warm time would have continued for the rest of the evening and would have reoccurred each day at the start of the evening. By the time I got to day 3 I was already cold when I went to bed and did not recover until sunrise on the following day.
Fix: arrive at camp earlier. Leave time for setup to take 150 percent of your planned duration. Pre-stage food and water so the highest-priority tasks happen first.
I generally book the second option (of comparable quality) as they tend to fill up later than the first option.
Mistake six: not checking my feet enough
The boots had fitted well and been warm. On every occasion that I went to bed with my boots on my feet were warm and, I had regularly checked them for signs of cold and all had been fine. This, however, was the arctic and cold-toe problems can develop rapidly. My problem occurred on day three of my trip when the wind picked up and temperature dropped.
While the boots and feet were initially fine the numbness of the outer toes started to affect me after a few hours and the tingling from the circulation pressure in the boots continued to increase but I just carried on as I was sure it would ease as I was tired and would sort itself out by morning. Alas not.
Even check your feet every two hours for cold-toe and frost-bitten toes. Even stop for the night if necessary to warm up cold-toes. That’s the value of having extra batteries for your electronics and spending the extra money for vapor-barrier foot wear. They are cheap when compared to the damage that could be done to your toes.
What I do now
I have since been on four more arctic excursions and can tell you that the way one sets up for these trips is quite different than for say a medium-altitude/middle-latitude backpacking trip. For starters, I wear a lot heavier base layer, in addition to a vapor-barrier liner in my boots, as well as a heated insole (that can be recharged with a small battery) as a backup. Furthermore, I try to keep up a good amount of rest, especially considering that I am trying to recover from a long day of hiking. I also bring much more food and water than I normally would, and, for arctic backpacking, I plan out my daily mileage to be half of what I normally would for such a trip in more moderate conditions. The end result is a much slower, warmer, and more pleasant arctic excursion.
The Arctic is not especially dangerous, it is simply that all of the normal variables of outdoor travel are pushed to extremes and so the margin for error is small. But with proper preparation and knowledge the Arctic can be one of the most rewarding places to travel to.
If you are contemplating an arctic trip as your very first trip into polar regions, do yourself a great favor and first go on a guided tour. Go through all the things that your tour guide does before he or she leaves the camp for the day and be sure to note all the seemingly minor things, which in reality will save your life should disaster ever strike. Then go on your own. You’ll be so much better off on your first solo trip than I was on my first arctic trip, the trip related in this article.
