by Griz

Created on: May 08, 2008

How to Stay Warm

It always surprises me how many people seem to think that blankets or coats somehow generate heat. I know you didn't sign up for a science lesson, but you're never going to learn how to stay warm while camping if you don't understand how heat works.

Assuming that we don't have any external sources of heat available like a fire or tent heater, then it's important to realize that your one and only source of heat is: you.

Everyone knows how to bundle up to keep warm, but there are a few little things that you can do to keep warmer and be more comfortable while camping. Later on in this article I will share the number one secret that will change your life in the keeping warm while sleeping department. It's simple, cheap, and it works.

People are mammals and mammals are warm blooded. You eat food which is "burned" by your body to create heat. Warm blooded creatures need this heat or all sorts of bad things start happening.

When you are camping and it's cold enough to affect your body temperature, it is important to conserve the heat from the one source you have: your body. Everything that you do is for the purpose of holding that heat in so that you can use it to warm yourself.

Heat is energy. When two things of different heat levels come into contact with each other, the heat flow from the hotter one into the cooler one until they are the same temperature. This heat transfer can occur in several ways. We are concerned mostly with two: conduction, the two things are in physical contact; convection, heat is transfered to a moving medium, in this case air.

When you are cold, it's because through either conduction or convection you are losing body heat to the air or some other thing you're in contact with. What you need to stop that is insulation. Insulation is something that prevents heat from trasnferring. It's your friend when you want to stay warm. It's why we wear clothes and live in houses.

The first and biggest heat stealer you will encounter is the cold, hard ground. Probably the second most important piece of equipment in keeping you warm is the pad or mattress that you sleep on. The farther from the ground the better, but the main thing is to insulate you from the ground and prevent heat loss. The ground is a good conductor of heat, and, added to that, when you are sleeping you are laying down and making contact with the ground with a large part of your body's surface area. Major heat loss!

The next heat stealer is the air. Moving air is the culprit

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