REI blog-I think they’re wrong.

[CS]

The eerie thing about what they’re doing to me is that it’s more about unlearning counterproductive strategies we’ve been told, and doing what you’d probably have done without training. Don’t lose more heat at all costs. Great tutorial.

[Bonzo]

Don’t lose more heat at all costs.

That’s a good way to put it, in my opinion.  As mentioned, the human body generates an incredible amount of heat…so to warm it up, all you need to do is stop the rate of heat loss from exceeding the rate of heat production…and that’s why I don’t understand the thing about ditching clothing inside the bag.  I can absolutely see the ulterior motives about it:

Attractive Person: “What do I do if I get cold?”
Retail Associate: “Get naked and snuggle someone.  You know, for safety…and reasons. Here, let me show you how to do it.”

That aside: when they say “uncontrollable shivering” they really mean it.  The brain says “Body, you’re going to move whether you like it or not” and all of that rapid muscle contraction will heat you and dry you more quickly than you think…so I guess the REI person may have been doing nothing more than parroting a trope, as mentioned.  Great discussion on this. 👍

[Paul Wagner]

Good article indeed, although he says they lied.  Small OCD joke.   He should have said they lay in their tents.  Right tents, wrong tense.  Or at least wrong verb in the past tense.

OK, I’ll stop now.

[Bonzo]

^ Now that was funny.

[Bill in Roswell]

Ideally Paul could have inc!uded a link. But, The public posting area is at rei.com, look at top menu bar, on the far right see Conversations.

I don’t know if that is where Paul saw it, but it is public access. REI has a number of comms only for employees.

[Paul Wagner]

I have just spent a few minutes trying to FIND this blog/article on REI’s website, unsuccessfully.  Maybe they pulled it down.  Maybe Paul didn’t see it on REI.  Maybe my search skills are not up to the task.

[Paul S]

It was an REI blog that I saw on the mountaineers facebook page.

 

o./k…here, I found it….

https://www.rei.com/blog/snowsports/can-i-get-sunburned-in-winter?fbclid=IwAR21yzCcULWyG3CDszlgXhy0SfYc9k3jeDNwHOpy6ADqqVdqwQKjxuUDed4

[Paul Wagner]

Thank you, Paul S.  And you are right.  And they are wrong, as we have noted above.

[Roger Caffin]

Sunburnt on the snow? Oh god yes! The UV levels can be horrible.

I remember one XC ski trip where Sue and I had to wear (silk) face masks the whole time to avoid sunburn. And hats with big floppy brims.

Cheers

[CS]

“I should wear more layers to stay warm in my sleeping bag.”
First, a quick lesson on how sleeping bags work: They trap your body heat within the down (or downlike synthetic) insulation. But a sleeping bag cannot do its job if (1) you’re not emitting heat inside the sack or (2) the insulation is compressed. Regardless of its stated temp rating, a sleeping bag is only as warm as the sleeping strategy zipped inside it.

When you wear extra clothes to bed when camping, you create more barriers between your body heat and the insulation of your sleeping bag. If those layers aren’t very permeable (like a waterproof jacket or puffer coat), then your sleeping bag won’t warm up properly and you’ll ultimately be relying on the insulating properties of your clothes instead.

If you wear so many layers that you compress your sleeping bag, preventing the down or synthetic fill from lofting, it loses its insulation power, anyway.

It’s counterintuitive, but the best thing to wear inside a sleeping bag is often a set of breathable, moisture-wicking base layers. Yes, peeling off your expedition puffy before you go to bed might be the most miserable moment on your camping trip, but after a few minutes of shivering, you might be surprised how quickly the heat turns on.

 

The more simple issues lofting aside, and other “it depends” issues in the blog post, the interesting thing I’m understanding is they’re saying that insolation improves the more it’s used. So there’s a feedback loop. That should be pretty easy to find data on…

 

[Brad W]

Millions upon millions of nights spent with extra clothes on to improve bag rating say this blogger is wrong. Not surprised with the current quality of information presented today.

[Roger Caffin]

No mention of the ‘quality’ of the mat he was on?

Cheers

[Monte Masterson]

Just what we need, pseudoscience from REI, the company that rakes in millions each year selling tons of heavy Chinese made gear to gullible consumers.

The blogger writes: “It’s counterintuitive”. Lol, yea no joke, maybe that’s because the whole concept is ridiculous.

Reminds me of a guy at work who says he won’t get jabbed because the vaccines contain a radioactive chemical which allows the government to track you.

[Roger Caffin]

Could it just be ‘blogger for hire’?

[Bonzo]

Reminds me of a guy at work who says he won’t get jabbed because the vaccines contain a radioactive chemical which allows the government to track you.

I’ll just leave this here.

[Eric Blumensaadt]

I agree that theREI blog is totally wrong. More clothes equals more insulation and anyone who has ADDED more insulation to stay warmer in a bag knows thesis true.

The REI blog makes as much sense as “If you sleep naked you will be warmer than if you have clothes on.” Total BS.  True you can warm your bag up faster if you are naked but if the bag does not have enough R value for the temps you are camping in then ya gotta put on clothes.

[Sam Farrington]

The added insulation I use is from uncoated fabric, breathable puffy tops and bottoms bought from BPL years ago when they were marketing gear.  The batts in it I believe are from Polarguard Delta, but Ryan later stated they were from something better, but did not say what.  In any case, they were a great product, have lasted for decades, stored instuffed, and are as warm now as they were when bought.  And when the temp drops, they can also be worn when up and about in camp, adding to grid fleece and an outer shell.

Those puffies plus a good hat and thinsulate lined booties complete the picture.  And in extreme cases, with fresh hiking sox added under the booties.  So it is not “barriers” being added; but rather, layers of insulation.  And as with any insulation, too much can be as bad as too little if it makes you sweat.

Don’t know whether the misinformation on REI came from them or a blogger.  But as Paul W implied, we hear a lot of this stuff in the stores.  So the challenge is to educate the source without being obnoxiously pedantic.  With a positive connection, people will alter views.  It is a challenge, though, in today’s polarized world.

The only different view I’ve heard came from Warmlite, and was exactly the opposite of what was said on REI.  The Warmlite catalog sold sleeping bags lined with waterproofed fabric, and said they worked like a charm.  Of course we could see in their catalogs that they all wore nothing (except maybe hiking boots?) most of the time.  At any rate, many folks swore by their approach, but I was not among them.  With the passing of Jack Stephenson, I think Warmlite may have changed with the times.

Glad to see that most of BPL’s members are critical thinkers and not easily misled.  That is what makes these forums so enjoyable and rewarding.

[CS]

And as with any insulation, too much can be as bad as too little if it makes you sweat.

Only time I’ve ever been close to hypothermia was in a bed with thick blanks and a hot water bottle. I was visiting friends in a town aptly named Cold Norton is Essex England, everything was damp in winter, tule fog on the fields added to the feeling you were never going to get warm again. The only heater in the house was a small coal fire place on which you could burn your front side, turn around and burn your backside, and end up just as cold as when you started. When I got into bed, and pulled the blankets over they sucked the last bit of warmth out of me, along with the hot bottle’s. Shortly after I started actually shivering, so I ended up removing the blankets and getting into a 60s era down sleeping bag I had with me. It also wasn’t warm enough, but I stopped shivering. So yeah, if you can’t warm up your insolation because there’s too much or it’s too heavy, then it’s a hinderance. And fires are apparently useless if you get deeply cold, you’ll just burn your skin is all.

 

 

[Bonzo]

So the challenge is to educate the source without being obnoxiously pedantic.

Challenge not accepted; I like being pedantic.  It’s one of the only things I’m good at doing.

And fires are apparently useless if you get deeply cold, you’ll just burn your skin is all.

See, what you were trying to do, there, was grill a frozen steak…and that only works if you have a really hot fire and you like your steak to be blue.  Personally, I prefer extra-medium-rare, but only in my steaks.  I try to keep myself well-done.

In all seriousness, I’m having more and more trouble wrapping my head around the clothing-in-the-bag situation.  Hypothermia is a drop in core body temperature by way of heat loss to one’s surroundings; regardless of the layers that are involved, if one changes their immediate surroundings in such a way that the heat loss is mitigated, any functional heat-generating mechanisms of the body will begin to have an impact.  When I walk inside a warm room on a cold day and I’ve been shivering, I usually start to warm up very quickly…even though I might be wearing an uninsulated hardshell.  I’m not sure that I’ve ever 1) been really cold, 2) walked inside a warm building, and 3) thought “You know what?  I should take off all of my clothes, or I’ll stay cold.”  I’ve often thought “I had better shed a layer before I start sweating” though…so this entire thing actually makes even less sense to me, now that I’ve had time to ponder it and start being pedantic.

[BlackHatGuy]

“Don’t know whether the misinformation on REI came from them or a blogger.”

This particular piece seems to have been written by an REI member and outdoor writer, not an REI staff member. Not that that matters, of course.

The main point she seems to be making, though, is not that a person shouldn’t wear any extra clothes, but that they should not wear non-(air) permeable clothes (ie., don’t wear a waterproof jacket). She muddles this, of course, with the last paragraph. Most of the responses to the post are about clothes overall, not about the class of clothing she seems to be writing about. May not matter, but I find it interesting.

[Bonzo]

The main point she seems to be making, though, is not that a person shouldn’t wear any extra clothes, but that they should not wear non-(air) permeable clothes (ie., don’t wear a waterproof jacket).

Thus, my comment about wearing a hardshell indoors after being in the cold; it doesn’t keep me from warming up.  Nor does it seem to keep me from warming up when I throw a down poofy over it.

[Daryl and Daryl]

And to confuse things further……..I’ve also slept with an insulated and water proof coat inside a sleeping bag.

It was a closed cell float coat.  Easy peazy.  Roasty toasty.  No problems.

[BlackHatGuy]

“Thus, my comment about wearing a hardshell indoors after being in the cold; it doesn’t keep me from warming up.  Nor does it seem to keep me from warming up when I throw a down poofy over it.”

Not sure this is a good analogy, since one would assume that it’s warmer inside than outside. I’d think that would play a role in your warming up.

[BlackHatGuy]

“I’ve also slept with an insulated and water proof coat inside a sleeping bag.”

As have I, wearing a DCF jacket inside a sleeping bag (not insulated, but waterproof and before the breathable DCF variants). I was toasty as well, but became so before I got into the sleeping bag.

[Bonzo]

Not sure this is a good analogy, since one would assume that it’s warmer inside than outside. I’d think that would play a role in your warming up.

It’s definitely warmer inside than outside in the first part of my analogy, but within that framework I’m not warming up from soaking in heat from the air outside my body…unless it’s, like, really warm air; rather, I’m warming up because the heat that my body is already generating is no longer being outpaced by environmental losses.  Stopping the loss – either by conditioned building, sleeping bag, poofy coat, tauntaun entrails or whatever else you have on hand – is a similar process no matter how you achieve it.  At least, it’s very similar in my head…but that’s not a very reliable place, now that I think about it.

Also, if we want to be pedantic: moist air takes more energy to condition than dry air, so you could theoretically heat up faster in dry air than humid air…but humid air is more dense, so it has more thermal mass; therefore, it’s…actually better at keeping you warm?  I’m not sure on that one.  Perhaps we should consult someone who is good at doing the big smart with the science.

[Author]

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