Camp Booties vs Overboots

[DougPaul]

I use a whisperlight universal and still haven't converted it to white gas. I used the canisters inverted and it seems to work well enough.

Note that the inverted-canister stoves and upright-canister stoves are different beasts...

Both start at the same fuel vapor pressure (determined by the fuel mix and the temperature). In both stoves, the fuel is driven into the burner by the vapor pressure. If the vapor pressure becomes too low, the stove will cease to operate.
* In the upright-canister stove, the fuel evaporation occurs in the canister which cools the fuel and reduces the vapor pressure and ultimately the heat output. In a mixed fuel canister the higher vapor-pressure component also evaporates and burns faster than the lower vapor-pressure further reducing the vapor pressure as the fuel is consumed.
* In the inverted-canister stove, the fuel evaporation occurs in the stove burner so that the the fuel temperature stays the same and its vapor pressure stays at the initial value. This kind of stove is analogous to a gasoline stove where the vapor pressure has the same function as a pressure pump.

FWIW, I use a gasoline pump stove in winter. Works well at any temp found in the NE and doesn't require babying.


Re the thread title: I use polyester booties with cordura soles around camp. (With felt insoles to improve the under-foot insulation.)

Doug

 

[sierra]

I used white gas stoves in all my winter camping. Until I left it on a mountain in the Sierra Range due to altitude sickness, my go to stove was the Optimus 8R with a primer pump and an eyedropper to fill the brass reservoir. Daytrip, have you considered going white gas for the winter season? it's just foolproof and you don't have to use all those "tricks". Just my 2 cents.

 

[DayTrip]

I used white gas stoves in all my winter camping. Until I left it on a mountain in the Sierra Range due to altitude sickness, my go to stove was the Optimus 8R with a primer pump and an eyedropper to fill the brass reservoir. Daytrip, have you considered going white gas for the winter season? it's just foolproof and you don't have to use all those "tricks". Just my 2 cents.

I dumped a ton of cash into new gear with all the sales the past month or two so I'm holding off on another stove. I really can't imagine myself camping in weather below about 10 deg F (particularly with my current sleeping bag - which I went with a liner for instead of upgrading) so if my Jetboil works with a few tweaks I'm just going to stay with it. I really like it and I use it camping in Summer pretty much exclusively so I have some other accessories for it already. If I find I have big problems using it from 10-30 deg F I'll have to reconsider that plan.

 

[DayTrip]

And while we're on the tricks and tweaks topic is it possible to use one of those handwarmer packets to sit a canister on to keep it warm rather than using a bowl of water? I assume if you can hold those packets in your hand without burning yourself it could be in contact with the canister (or wrapped in something like foil that isn't flammable but would conduct the heat) without creating a flammable or combustible issue. Bad idea?? Figure those heat packets could serve double duty in the sleeping bag or boots so having a few would be worthwhile. Just curious. I have some of those packets already but have never used.

 

[DougPaul]

Yes, you can use a handwarmer to warm a stove canister. However, if you overheat it, it can explode.

The pressure in a purely pumped liquid fuel stove* (eg many MSR models) is controlled solely by the pump--the fuel bottle stays cold. Thus there is no risk of explosion unless you insist on over-pumping (or the stove leaks gas...).

* For those who are not familiar with with the Optimus 8R, it is a self-heated liquid fuel stove. A pump can be added to extend its low-temp performance and it too can explode if overheated... (Sierra: I still have mine, pump and all...)

For safety, you should use the stove outside of the tent due to fire and carbon monoxide hazards. (If necessary, build an alcove in the snow to protect it from the wind. And put a non-flammable base under the stove so it doesn't melt a hole in the snow... I use a piece of corrugated cardboard covered with aluminum foil.) Using the stove inside the tent should be an absolute last resort--leave plenty of ventilation open.

In winter, you may end up melting snow in cold and windy conditions--you will need a high heat output in such conditions. You will also need to bring the water to a boil to kill any microorganisms. (Snow contains all sorts of wind-blown particles.) (Also read up on how to melt snow properly--if done incorrectly, you can melt a hole in your pot...)


One of the risks of buying equipment before knowing what is appropriate for the expected conditions is that one can end up with inappropriate gear. Nature and survival don't care what it costs... (I expect the canister stove will be fine in warmer weather--many use different winter and summer stoves.) In winter, dehydration can be deadly--losing the ability to find or produce water can be more dangerous than running out of food.

Doug

 

[hikerbrian]

Figured this would be a good "baseline" for future tests. Low canister, no special treatment/precautions and I got usable water.

Very useful data point. You already know all the caveats with this experiment, so I won't restate, except to say starting with liquid, relatively warm water and not achieving a rolling boil in 10 minutes heat time really does represent extremely poor performance. "Good enough" in this case, and a very useful experiment, but you'll want to explore the various hacks to improve productivity in the field (as you already know). ~Two minutes heating is what I'd expect to get a rolling boil if your stove was performing reasonably well.

A couple of notes: a hand warmer or foot warmer attached to the bottom of the canister is a known hack, although there is a challenge of keeping it in contact with the canister. Even foot warmers, which have adhesive, I think would fall off as the cooling canister got some condensation on it from the evaporating fuel. I haven't tried it. Related: I've heard the advice to pour boiling water into a bowl and then set your canister in that to warm it up. Holy sweet jesus please do not do that under any circumstances. That's a recipe for how to kill yourself. Along the same lines, a hand warmer actually does get quite hot, but I'd be surprised if it got hot enough to rupture a canister. I think it's an excellent safety cushion in the case that you're cold and just want to get your stove started.

Importantly: did you stay warm??? How was it sleeping out??

 

[DayTrip]

Very useful data point. You already know all the caveats with this experiment, so I won't restate, except to say starting with liquid, relatively warm water and not achieving a rolling boil in 10 minutes heat time really does represent extremely poor performance. "Good enough" in this case, and a very useful experiment, but you'll want to explore the various hacks to improve productivity in the field (as you already know). ~Two minutes heating is what I'd expect to get a rolling boil if your stove was performing reasonably well.

A couple of notes: a hand warmer or foot warmer attached to the bottom of the canister is a known hack, although there is a challenge of keeping it in contact with the canister. Even foot warmers, which have adhesive, I think would fall off as the cooling canister got some condensation on it from the evaporating fuel. I haven't tried it. Related: I've heard the advice to pour boiling water into a bowl and then set your canister in that to warm it up. Holy sweet jesus please do not do that under any circumstances. That's a recipe for how to kill yourself. Along the same lines, a hand warmer actually does get quite hot, but I'd be surprised if it got hot enough to rupture a canister. I think it's an excellent safety cushion in the case that you're cold and just want to get your stove started.

Importantly: did you stay warm??? How was it sleeping out??

Thanks. Just to clarify, are the times you are stating (2 min) for 32 oz of water? I think my Jetboil in the Summer is 2-2.5 minutes to get a vigorous boil for 32 ounces of water so I wouldn't expect to do any better in colder weather. And if you meant a lesser amount (say 16 ounces) is it better/faster/uses less fuel to do smaller batches of water versus fewer larger amounts? I just picked 32 oz because it is the size of a Nalgene. My Sumo cup is 1.7L.

As far as the night out I did stay reasonably warm. I have a 20 deg synthetic bag and I put one of those Sea to Summit liners in it (which claims you can "gain" 20 deg worth of warmth - I'm doubting that). I wore a thin base layer, my Precip shirt (which is my standard starting layers for hiking) and a fairly heavy fleece on top and compression pants and fleece pants on legs with liner socks and some VBL "like" socks that I always wear in Winter under my wool socks (they're more like a neoprene type material. I don't know that they are truly a VBL). I was quite comfortable most of the night (I actually vented my zipper a bit early which I probably shouldn't have done in retrospect) but by morning I was starting to get a chill in spots. Very tolerable but I was approaching the point of wanting to make adjustments. I was out from 10PM-6AM. I expect when I start doing some of the tips and tricks like the water bottle, stuffing extra clothes in the dead air pockets, etc I should be able to get down to my goal temp of 10 deg F.

All in all I was pleased with everything. One glaring annoyance - my inflatable pad does not stay on the foam pad worth a crap. Is there a trick for keeping an inflatable pad centered on a foam pad? I'm a side sleeper and toss and turn quite a bit so by morning I was half off the foam pad, which was noticeable temperature wise. I expect there's not much to be done there but if you know a hack for solving that problem I'm listening! Thanks again.

 

[dug]

May want to be careful wearing VBLs to bed. Might be better to let your toes breath a little after wearing them during the day. You can get trench foot.

As for cold spots, I'd get them around the zipper. So, I'd put a fleece top on that side and would normally sleep with as close to nothing as possible otherwise.

 

[hikerbrian]

I was thinking for 32 oz, but it was a bit of a guess since my experience with a Jetboil is minimal. Still, I wouldn't expect a huge difference between summer performance and optimized winter performance. The vessel is insulated pretty well, so the loss of heat to surroundings should be fairly small, whether it's summer or winter. And the difference between heating water from, say 15 C (stream temperature) to 100 C vs. heating water from 10 C (what you probably had in your experiment) to 100 C is small. The big energy suck in the winter is when you need to actually melt snow. That takes a TON of energy (relatively speaking). Or when it's really cold (say below minus 10) or windy. Then your loss of heat to surroundings would be more significant.

The only hack I know for staying on your pad is to fill your floor space with pads and have bodies on top of all of them. Warm bodies preferred. And yeah, I'd recommend giving your feet as much air as possible overnight. They really need to dry completely.

 

[DayTrip]

I'll definitely experiment with my feet. They get cold very easily so I'm concerned about what I do or don't wear for socks,etc. Have to see if less is more on that front. I carefully checked all my layers when I came inside to see about moisture and I had no moisture issues with this past night but I hadn't hiked at all either. I'm sure that will be a different story altogether after a full day of hiking.

 

[DayTrip]

May want to be careful wearing VBLs to bed. Might be better to let your toes breath a little after wearing them during the day. You can get trench foot.

As for cold spots, I'd get them around the zipper. So, I'd put a fleece top on that side and would normally sleep with as close to nothing as possible otherwise.

This past October we camped and temps went down to around 32 deg F (hardly cold but much colder than my wife and friends would normally be out at). The second night I "wore" my Primaloft liner jacket around my neck and shoulders and it had a major impact warming me up that night versus the first night. Prefered this to the velcro draft tube and cinching the hood down tremendously and it was warm and ready for use when I got up.

 

[alexmtn]

. . . One glaring annoyance - my inflatable pad does not stay on the foam pad worth a crap. Is there a trick for keeping an inflatable pad centered on a foam pad? I'm a side sleeper and toss and turn quite a bit so by morning I was half off the foam pad, which was noticeable temperature wise. I expect there's not much to be done there but if you know a hack for solving that problem I'm listening! Thanks again.

I haven't thought long and hard as to why to this point, but I find that my foam pad stays on top of inflatable pad better than my inflatable pad stays on top of my foam pad -- and there's also a thermal case to be made for putting the foam next to your body rather than the air, especially in the case of an inflatable pad without built-in foam insulation: heat can be lost via the edges of the inflatable bad, whose air, in turn, is right under your body. I also think that the surface of the foam pad is more comfortable to sleep on than the uneven, somewhat shifty surface of the inflatable pad (your inflatable model may vary). So for both reasons, my inflatable (just a basic NeoAir unless it's cold enough to justify a (heavier) foam/inflatable Thermarest) gets relegated to the "box spring" role.

If no matter what you do the slip-sliding persists, you could do what the insulation-on-the-top-only sleeping bag manufacturers do, and loop cord or a strap around the pair of pads at hip level -- or two at separate longitudinal points if you're really squirmy. You could also attempt elegance with a few thoughtfully-placed pieces of adhesive Velcro (scratchy/grabby halves facing down from the undersurface of the top pad), but you might need to augment the adhesive with SeamGrip.

Alex

 

[alexmtn]

I normally have two 200 g cartridges (one I've been using and a full backup) but I'm thinking multiple 100 g cartridges might be better in Winter. Any thoughts on that? Easier to heat in a pocket and improve pressure vs a larger cartridge or irrelevant given the small sizes?

I've found that pocket-warming a 200g (aka "large") canister doesn't take noticeably longer than warming a 100g ("small") canister. I prefer carrying the large canisters because

- I'm certain that I'm going to burn through more than 100g of fuel, and want to keep to a minimum the number of times I have to switch canisters when they run out; and

- It's also a little more weight efficient on any trip where I know from the get-go that I'll be using >100g of fuel

- I find lots of little canisters jangling about to be more annoying than just one or two larger ones

Alex

 

[DayTrip]

I've found that pocket-warming a 200g (aka "large") canister doesn't take noticeably longer than warming a 100g ("small") canister. I prefer carrying the large canisters because

- I'm certain that I'm going to burn through more than 100g of fuel, and want to keep to a minimum the number of times I have to switch canisters when they run out; and

- It's also a little more weight efficient on any trip where I know from the get-go that I'll be using >100g of fuel

- I find lots of little canisters jangling about to be more annoying than just one or two larger ones

Alex

Excellent. Thanks for the info. I'll stay with my standard 200 g size.

 

[DayTrip]

I haven't thought long and hard as to why to this point, but I find that my foam pad stays on top of inflatable pad better than my inflatable pad stays on top of my foam pad -- and there's also a thermal case to be made for putting the foam next to your body rather than the air, especially in the case of an inflatable pad without built-in foam insulation: heat can be lost via the edges of the inflatable bad, whose air, in turn, is right under your body. I also think that the surface of the foam pad is more comfortable to sleep on than the uneven, somewhat shifty surface of the inflatable pad (your inflatable model may vary). So for both reasons, my inflatable (just a basic NeoAir unless it's cold enough to justify a (heavier) foam/inflatable Thermarest) gets relegated to the "box spring" role.

If no matter what you do the slip-sliding persists, you could do what the insulation-on-the-top-only sleeping bag manufacturers do, and loop cord or a strap around the pair of pads at hip level -- or two at separate longitudinal points if you're really squirmy. You could also attempt elegance with a few thoughtfully-placed pieces of adhesive Velcro (scratchy/grabby halves facing down from the undersurface of the top pad), but you might need to augment the adhesive with SeamGrip.

Alex

Interesting ideas. I'll give that a try next time. Thanks.

I'm pretty sure my foam pad (The Therma-A-Rest RidgeRest Solar) is wider than my inflatable (I have the Big Agnes Quad Core something or other) and my inflatables' side walls are slightly higher than the body of mattress to keep you centered on pad so not sure how that will work but I agree that the feel of the foam pad is nicer than the plastic of the inflatable and the reflective finish will probably work better closer to my body rather than under the air mattress. I considered just using the foam pad itself but from everything I've read the inflatable adds a degree of R value which is highly desirable. Have to try it for myself and see. I have some extra straps for attaching things to base of my back pack so I'll have to see if that helps out at all.

 

[jfb]

As far as the night out I did stay reasonably warm. I have a 20 deg synthetic bag and I put one of those Sea to Summit liners in it (which claims you can "gain" 20 deg worth of warmth - I'm doubting that). I wore a thin base layer, my Precip shirt (which is my standard starting layers for hiking) and a fairly heavy fleece on top and compression pants and fleece pants on legs with liner socks and some VBL "like" socks that I always wear in Winter under my wool socks (they're more like a neoprene type material. I don't know that they are truly a VBL). I was quite comfortable most of the night (I actually vented my zipper a bit early which I probably shouldn't have done in retrospect) but by morning I was starting to get a chill in spots. Very tolerable but I was approaching the point of wanting to make adjustments. I was out from 10PM-6AM. I expect when I start doing some of the tips and tricks like the water bottle, stuffing extra clothes in the dead air pockets, etc I should be able to get down to my goal temp of 10 deg F.

Here's the kind of trick that I'd use to stay warm: http://www.sierratradingpost.com/al...pecdataor~temperature rating!below 5 degrees/

 

[DayTrip]

Here's the kind of trick that I'd use to stay warm: http://www.sierratradingpost.com/al...pecdataor~temperature rating!below 5 degrees/

What is polyester batting insulation?? This sleeping bag weighs twice as much as the comparable zero degree bag of the style I have. Also, looks like the chambers the fill is in are pretty large (bunching and settling??) and there is not much mentioned about a draft baffle or other features. Do you own this brand of bag? Certainly inexpensive but that is a very hefty weight should I ever take backpacking. Even the pre-close out price is well below anything in that temp range by other companies. In short I'm skeptical.

 

[jfb]

What is polyester batting insulation?? This sleeping bag weighs twice as much as the comparable zero degree bag of the style I have. Also, looks like the chambers the fill is in are pretty large (bunching and settling??) and there is not much mentioned about a draft baffle or other features. Do you own this brand of bag? Certainly inexpensive but that is a very hefty weight should I ever take backpacking. Even the pre-close out price is well below anything in that temp range by other companies. In short I'm skeptical.

No, I don't own one of those bags. It looks like it would be suitable for car camping at temps down to 10 degrees. Probably similar to this model: http://www.backcountry.com/alps-mountaineering-crescent-lake-sleeping-bag-0-degree-synthetic

Here's my winter bag: http://featheredfriends.com/peregrine-ex-down-sleeping-bag.html

 

[DayTrip]

No, I don't own one of those bags. It looks like it would be suitable for car camping at temps down to 10 degrees. Probably similar to this model: http://www.backcountry.com/alps-mountaineering-crescent-lake-sleeping-bag-0-degree-synthetic

Here's my winter bag: http://featheredfriends.com/peregrine-ex-down-sleeping-bag.html

Yah those look more like the price tags I remember looking earlier. It may not have been obvious in this thread because there is some overlap with other threads I have posted but I am doing all my "trials" as prep for eventual hiking, not car camping. So while I am doing backyard and car camping for now I am strictly limiting myself to clothes and gear I would take hiking so down the road I don't have to eliminate any "crutches" that were part of any car camping routine. That Alps bag does seem like a great value in a car camping scenario but I wouldn't pack that heavy a bag.

I've read a lot of good things about the Feathered Friends brand. If I ever take the plunge on "big boy" Winter gear that is definitely a company I will revisit. Thanks for the links.

 

[jfb]

It may not have been obvious in this thread because there is some overlap with other threads I have posted but I am doing all my "trials" as prep for eventual hiking, not car camping.

OK, that wasn't clear to me. Still, my "trick" is to buy a bag that's rated to about 10 degrees cooler than the temps you expect to be camping in.