It's pretty damn cold in Siberia

[Montegriffo]

It's blowing a hoolie here right now. My truck is swaying like a boat at sea, woke me up at 5.30 am which is pissing me off as I'm working a 13 hour day today and I would have prefered to have more than four and a half hours sleep.

[Smitty-48]

My recce course started in the fall and ended in the winter, so our final exercises were in January, it was actually a lot of fun, three man det, no DS most of the time, they just gave us a target and graded us on the results, they didn't care how we executed, if the OPFOR didn't bump us and the patrol report was accurate, that was a pass, so we actually ran our own show for long stretches, most of the time we actually got quite a bit of comfortable rack in the sack, just by going balls to the motherfuckin' wall, so we'd get to the RV way early, then we'd sleep.

Arctic sleeping bag inside goretex hooped bivvy bag, slept like a baby.

[ssu]

Coldest that I've been is -40C in Lappland. I remember driving my BMW in that weather and the car started to make cracking noises as starts to freeze up. The difference in temperature when in a low valley or on a higher hill was more that ten degrees.

Here's your winter warfare drill in a nutshell, while you're moving, don't wear your cold weather kit, just wear light windproofs and thermals, when you stop, then you put your cold weather kit on. When you camp, you break out the bivvy bags, one hooped bivvy as a tent, another for your sleeping kit, then you put wet windproofs and thermals between them to dry at night by your own body heat, don't wear anything in the sleeping bag, strip right down because that's the warmest. Then when you wake up, you unzip and fire up the coleman stove, wear your cold weather kit until you start moving, when you start moving, you switch back to windproofs.

It's all about evaporation, so long as you stay dry you stay warm, the biggest mistake people make, is wearing their cold weather kit on the move, which then gets soaked with sweat, so when they stop, they freeze.

Yep. Basics of it. Yet if the air is very dry, cold temperatures don't feel so bad. Cold, windy and moist is the worse weather.

One of the most important things is to know how wind effects the temperature as wind chill can be dangerous. If you are on a snowmobile or truck exposed to the elements, you have to be really careful. I remember a story from the army that one brilliant officer had had the brilliant idea to put his AAA unit to drive about 400 km with the AA guns mounted trucks and the gun crews manning the guns for the ride as an "excersize". It wasn't extremely cold, but once the unit finally came to the live fire excersize, it was incapable to do anything and the soldiers had to be put straight to the sauna.

[Smitty-48]

Dead of winter I don't mind at all, the shittiest infantry weather is transitional weather, +/- 5 and wet, dry and colder than a witches tit, don't bother me at all, I actually like it that way.

-30C in the woods at night, dead quiet in the snow, just the creaking of the trees in the wind, buck naked and cozy in the bivvy bag, it's bliss really, some of the best sleep I've ever had.

I don't like being in a tent group, I love it solitary in the deep woods, one man one kit, that's the only way to roll for winter operations.

Survival was not the standard we aspired to, we prided ourselves on being very comfortable, in the coldest conditions, just surviving is for REMFs, Recce doesn't just own the night, we enjoyed every minute of it.

We were fuckin' snow ninjas, we ran circles around people in the winter wastelands, and had a good time doing it, the only real concern was not running out of cigarettes, so we had cartons of them in our rucksacks, half the winter kit goes into the locker just to make room for smokes, and don't forget the Johnny Walker, couple bottles of scotch in there too.

[Speaker to Animals]

This is an interesting hack:

Why bother? You can buy a Canadian Forces five man arctic tent surplus for $300-$400. Ten man for $500-$600.

More kit than you need really, I just use my hooped bivvy bag, single burner coleman stove, and a candle lantern, Recce owns the night.

Here's your winter warfare drill in a nutshell, while you're moving, don't wear your cold weather kit, just wear light windproofs and thermals, when you stop, then you put your cold weather kit on. When you camp, you break out the bivvy bags, one hooped bivvy as a tent, another for your sleeping kit, then you put wet windproofs and thermals between them to dry at night by your own body heat, don't wear anything in the sleeping bag, strip right down because that's the warmest. Then when you wake up, you unzip and fire up the coleman stove, wear your cold weather kit until you start moving, when you start moving, you switch back to windproofs.

It's all about evaporation, so long as you stay dry you stay warm, the biggest mistake people make, is wearing their cold weather kit on the move, which then gets soaked with sweat, so when they stop, they freeze.

We never used those tents on recce, too slow, too much kit for one man to carry, we were one man one kit, self contained, no need for winter tent groups at all, we just blazed on skis/snowshoes and lived out of our rucks.

What are we talking about here? My cold weather gear is pretty good too, but if we are talking about a bugout situation where I have to go hide up in those mountains I see out my window for a couple of weeks, at near zero temperatures or worse, then I kind of wouldn't mind a tent warmed up to about 70F with a wood stove where I can cook food. I mean.. that's just me. One of the larger tepees with a decent wood stove would be golden. I could stay locked up in that thing for as long as I have food to cook. No sense living in a gortex bag all day because a hot tent is luxurious by comparison.

The ultimate escape gear, for me, would be a decent-sized tepee with a collapsible wood stove and pipe, a cot, and enough freeze-dried food to last a few weeks. I could probably rock that at under 80 lbs. Not lightweight by any measure, but not undoable either. Get some snow shoes and just fashion a sled once you are in the forest. Then you can just drag the 80 lbs if you want on the sled.

The cool thing about those tepees is that you don't even need to carry the pole. You can just fashion one from deadfall once you get to the campsite.

[Smitty-48]

This is an interesting hack:

Why bother? You can buy a Canadian Forces five man arctic tent surplus for $300-$400. Ten man for $500-$600.

More kit than you need really, I just use my hooped bivvy bag, single burner coleman stove, and a candle lantern, Recce owns the night.

Here's your winter warfare drill in a nutshell, while you're moving, don't wear your cold weather kit, just wear light windproofs and thermals, when you stop, then you put your cold weather kit on. When you camp, you break out the bivvy bags, one hooped bivvy as a tent, another for your sleeping kit, then you put wet windproofs and thermals between them to dry at night by your own body heat, don't wear anything in the sleeping bag, strip right down because that's the warmest. Then when you wake up, you unzip and fire up the coleman stove, wear your cold weather kit until you start moving, when you start moving, you switch back to windproofs.

It's all about evaporation, so long as you stay dry you stay warm, the biggest mistake people make, is wearing their cold weather kit on the move, which then gets soaked with sweat, so when they stop, they freeze.

We never used those tents on recce, too slow, too much kit for one man to carry, we were one man one kit, self contained, no need for winter tent groups at all, we just blazed on skis/snowshoes and lived out of our rucks.

What are we talking about here? My cold weather gear is pretty good too, but if we are talking about a bugout situation where I have to go hide up in those mountains I see out my window for a couple of weeks, at near zero temperatures or worse, then I kind of wouldn't mind a tent warmed up to about 70F with a wood stove where I can cook food. I mean.. that's just me. One of the larger tepees with a decent wood stove would be golden. I could stay locked up in that thing for as long as I have food to cook. No sense living in a gortex bag all day because a hot tent is luxurious by comparison.

The ultimate escape gear, for me, would be a decent-sized tepee with a collapsible wood stove and pipe, a cot, and enough freeze-dried food to last a few weeks. I could probably rock that at under 80 lbs. Not lightweight by any measure, but not undoable either.

But you'd need three men to run a tent group, the more you carry, the more guys you need to carry it, for one man bug out, one man one kit, for a tent group, you'd need a det to pull the sled.

If it was me, I wouldn't bother hauling the tent group, I would just make an improvised shelter with materials at hand in the woods, build a snow wall, then cover it over with conifer bows, easy peasy, no arctic tent required, fuck those tents, once they get wet, they're a pain in the ass to haul.

[Speaker to Animals]

One of those tepees wouldn't be too much to carry. It's going to weigh on you, but not that much. A tepee and a stove might add about 25-40 lbs to your load, depending upon materials. The really expensive ones are very lightweight. You technically don't need a cot either. You can build one of those from deadfall as well. You just need the ripstop nylon tarp you will use to make the cot, which weighs only a few ounces. To make those you just cut the tarp into the right-sized rectangle for your frame, and then sew sleeves on the two long sides through which you run some branches.

It's not as much weight as you might think when you think about it. You are thinking like a reconnaissance unit, but you need to think more like a mountain man. Most of the heavy materials are already out there in the form of deadfall. The stuff you actually need to carry is just the fabric of the tepee and the cot, the sleeping bag, and the stove. The stove breaks down flat and is super lightweight too.


You still need to carry other gear (especially an axe). But I am not talking about a huge increase in weight here.

[Smitty-48]

If I want a lightweight tent, I'd just go for a lightweight tent, no need for an arctic tent in Appalachia, that's overkill, those tents are made for Nunavut not Dixie, I'm not hauling a forty pound tent around, I gots to pack smokes and booze too, mate, priorities yo.

[Speaker to Animals]

That's definitely not an arctic tent. It's just a tarp fashioned into a tepee.

[Speaker to Animals]

If the situation requires I cover a shit ton of distance across the mountains quickly, then I am just going with the MSS and a tarp. It depends upon the situation, I guess.