Leave No Trace Winter Backpacking Best Practices

Interesting article. I’ve done a fair amount of winter/cold weather backpack camping and I’m curious about the pictures of the tarps installed with a foot or so of clearance above the ground/snow. My understanding has always been that one of the values of overhead cover is to contain rising heat and contribute to the general warmth. From what I know physics and thermodynamics it would seem that positioning the tarp with that much ground clearance (hence ample space for wind, etc, to enter under the tarp and whisk away any accumulated warmth) would seriously negate the value of using the tarp. Of course the tarp could/would still serve to block vertical rain/snow, but I don’t understand why it wouldn’t be preferable to pitch the tarp with only a very small amount of ground clearance (sufficient to allow some ventilation). I’d love to hear the explanations for this technique.

@ John. Did you see Ryan Jordan’s recent article on investing the weight in insulation and not shelter?  He talked about how he uses tarps and sometimes just a bivy in that article.

@ Mark. This was a very thorough and comprehensive article.

I was very surprised at the LNT.org recommendation to bury human feces.  It might be acceptable for solo camping but I would hate to come across in early summer a site where three or four snow campers spend a couple of days.

However . . . during the thaw the snow melts and tends to dissolve any faeces and wash them down into the soil. If the campers spread out a bit it is unlikely that you would see anything in the spring. (In my experience.)

Um – you might however see the odd bit of TP on the surface. Not much: that generally also dissolves.

Cheers

I’ve winter camped in snow trenches, snow caves, built-up Quinzhees, tarps and, my favorite, DOUBLE WALL TENTS.  The others are “OK” except for tarps. Don’t like ’em in winter.

and, my favorite, DOUBLE WALL TENTS.
I can agree! So does Sue.

Cheers

My local Sierra Club Snow Camping Section uses wag bags to pack out human feces and TP.

We also started to do periodic LNT “audits” of the locations where we conduct the two different introductory snow camping classes, the first for one night and the second for two nights.

The audit found bits and pieces of gear and kit: Metal deadmen, lost articles of clothing, lost spoons, etc.

So in the spirit of continuous process improvement we had a discussion on how to obviate losing items.  We also moved away from the practice of using chopsticks from your favority Chinese takeout restaurant (almost always bamboo) as  deadmen since folks were indolent about getting the bamboo chopsticks out of the the sintered snow when packing up, and bamboo is not a wood naturally found in the Sierra Nevada.

I usually eat meals in a bag when camping, these bags get packed out, so they’re easy to use as a toilet!

They stand up by themselves, and are stable in light wind. Haven’t tried in a whole gale but they work in the rain. Ziplock seal them, then into the Sea to Summit trash bag.

It’s a minor annoyance that the trash bag gets heavier, but not as much as the food bag lightens. And a warm inner glow of not adding pollution/nitrogenous fertiliser to the environment (except some yellow snow). It’s not as hard as for my Antarctic Division mates who have to lug the ‘honeypot’ portable toilet, even urine is carried out in a serious ‘leave no trace’.