Watching Fox news, they are talking about how difficult it is tyo stay out in temps below Zero. They ought to come up here and camp out with me and my partners, or some of our army troops sometime. While I was still active duty, we had an exercise where we went down to Ft Greely for two days to set up camp for a big exercise and to accomidate the troops from Anchorage, (Ft Richardson and Elmendorf). We spent two days setting up tents, heating units, a field kitchen, everything needed for a two week encampment. The plane landed from Anchorage, the General in charge got off, walked around the camp, took a tempature reading. Said -52 is too cold for his troops got back onto the plane and left. Think how we felt, we had already spent two nights there, and he was there at midday. We were packed up and on our way back to Fairbanks in two hours!
Went Moose hunting last year in November, we took a sheet of visquin and a small stove. My partner had planned to make a tent out of the visquin. After we got there and he discovered his idea was flawed, and the stove was burning wood faster than he could collect and feed it. I decided it was time to get some sleep, so I cut the lower limbs off a spruce tree, threw them on the snow, unrolled my sleeping bag, took off my boots and parka, and crawled into my sleeping bag. I also took two Thermo-care heat wraps into the bag with me. One around my waist, and the other at my feet.(Old man trick) I slept good, it was only -35. Starting the snow machines the next morning was the hardest part of the trip, they don't like to turn over colder than -20, had to use canned heat to thaw them out.
Many year ago a close friend and I went on a day trip up the Steese highway. That was in the days before the state kept the highway open. We drove to Chatanika, parked the truck, unloaded the snow machines and went riding. We went all the way to 12 mile summet, which is mile 82 of the highway. The winter scenery was absolutely beautiful. We had lunch there and was reading to depart when we looked at the sky and realised we were in trouble. We headed down the highway as fast as we could go. Our biggest mistake was passing a Homestead and not stopping. Anyway the storm caught us before we got back to the truck. After I rolled my machine and broke off the handle bars we decided we needed to build shelter and hunker down and outwait the storm. We had enough rations to last for two days, so we built a snow cave and crawled in. We used a candle stove, (Coleman stove was too much heat and melted the roof) to melt ice for water. We actually caught a Snow Shoe Hare with a snare and ate it the second night. We knew it was cold, but we were ready, and had the proper gear to stay warm. We could have stayed there for a week or longer if need be. The third morning in our shelter the storm broke, and the temp rose. We dug out our snow machines and went to the truck. When we got to the truck we were met by rescue teams getting ready to come search for us, our wives had reported us missing. The team told us the tempature had been in the -50 degree range. My partner Bob now is always singing that Hank Williams Jr song "Country Boy Can Survive" when we think about that trip. Bob and I did not have any formal cold weather training, we just did things our Grandfathers taught us, and used common sense. But I think the most important thing was that we never even thought of being scared, we were just annoyed that we got caught by the storm.
Those men climbing that mountain can do just fine if they use their heads and don't get caught by an avalange. They have the gear so cold should not be a problem, altatude is their enemy.
