Question for people who live and camp/explore in the snow....

Hay all,

Last year my brother and I spent a week camping in the snow and spent our time snowboarding at a near-by resort. Saved us thousands on accommodation, the road trip was fantastic and the camping was...an experience.

So we're doing it again. We have vastly improved on our camping set-up but the one thing that is still bugging me and without doubt I want sorted before we go is a way to dry our riding boots so they are bone dry (or as close to dry as possible) the next day. At one point last year I was in such utter pain from my feet being so cold that I spent 3hours lying on the floor in the foyer of the resorts main reception waiting for my boots to dry and my feet to regain feeling. The reception staff gave me lots of weird looks but maybe it was because I was staring the the ridiculously attractive female staff too much:thinking:

Anyway - seen as all my time in the snow has been 2 weeks or less, and I live in sunny Australia, I was wondering if anyone can give me some pointers or possible ideas for getting the boots dry?

Yes boot dryers exist, but we want to dry 3 pairs of boots (gloves as well hopefully) and seen as we are camping (proper camping mind you, no toilets, power, showers or anything) we need to be able to run the dryer for extended periods on battery power. I have seen some DIY solutions that are pretty much how I intend on doing it but they all say don't use a heated source of air as it may ruin the boot moulding. Given the ambient temp will be around and below zero (Celsius) will blowing air into the boots not just freeze them? Should I suck the air out? Anything I can improve here?

I guess I'm asking because there are a lot of seriously clued up people on these forums, and a very large amount of you are North American's who experience the weather we'll be camping in on a far more regular basis than I do.

I'm tapping your brains people!!!!!

Any suggestions?

- Matt

If you are going to be enjoying the great outdoors again (Roughing it), no electricity, etc. you are going to need another pair of riding boots to wear while the others are drying out.

A question for someone smarter than myself ~ Since moisture is drawn to cold, if Mattaus were to place two or three of those chemical hand warmers inside each of his boots, would the effect be the moisture being warmed inside the boots be drawn to the colder air outside, thereby drying the boots? :thinking:

~ Chance

Chauncey Gardiner said:

A question for someone smarter than myself ~ Since moisture is drawn to cold, if Mattaus were to place two or three of those chemical hand warmers inside each of his boots, would the effect be the moisture being warmed inside the boots be drawn to the colder air outside, thereby drying the boots? :thinking:

~ Chance

Click to expand...

Just my speculation...
The hand warmers would help to speed up evaporation of the water in the boots on the contact surface but won't really help elsewhere since air is a poor conductor of heat. Condensation of gaseous water occurs on cold surfaces so my guess is that the colder parts of the boot would act almost like a condenser in a chemistry set.
Couldn't you carry around some desiccants, like silica gel, and throw it inside the boot with the boot inside a bag to keep external moisture out?

I have heard good things about a product called absorba balls they apparently absorb the moisture and can be dried by heat or sunlight.dont know where to get them but probably google knows.check them out as an option

spare set of boot liners

chemical warmer trick is a waste of chemical warmers
but it will thaw a frozen boot

use wool and silk socks, use no other substance

get used to having somewhat wet boots

wear the boot liners to bed to dry them out

sounds like you may need to rig a propane heater with a rack for boots and stuff so it can dry them off. I don't see a battery powered heater capable of putting out enough heat to suffice unless you want to carry around a few marine batteries and recharge them somehow every day.

I am not overly familiar with snowboarding boots, so their construction is the big question for me, but I have spent many many weeks hunting and camping in winter over the past 50 years. Polar bear camping was a particular favorite before getting into my 50s and wanting just a tiny bit more luxery. If you are living in primitive conditions drying boots is extremely problematic, it is better to keep them dry or your feet dry to begin with. One wants to start with a waterproof insulated construction or a wicking construction which takes moisture to the outside of the boot to evaporate, leaving the inside relatively dry. You should have waterproof exteriors so that your biggest concern is now from your feet themselves.

Everybodies feet sweat, yes even in cold snowy conditions, some more some less and this is the biggest reason for cold wet feet in my experience in those instances where a quality boot is used to begin with. To combat this you want to layer socks and add or remove layers to prevent sweating. You also want to several times a day change your socks completely, and completly dry the old one before putting them back on. Adding some foot powder will help keep them dry, it is not much different than foot care in your warm climate. Layering is the key in cold temperatures, in both outer and inner layers, several thin layers are better than one thick one, they can be adjusted for different temp and exercise to maintain optimal insulation properties and to prevent sweating. I like natural materials such as wool and silk.

Another things is air space, you do not want a tight constricting boot and sock combination. You want air space, this is what heats up and provides insulation characteristics.

DO NOT sleep in a pair of socks and then put on boots, put on dry socks. People tend to sleep too warm and their feet and bodies collect some moisure inside the bag at night, read up stories about polar travel and how much weight their bags can gain in moisture/ice accumulation over an expedition if they are not extremely careful. This is especially true if you are one of those who likes to put their head down into their bag, we exhale a LOT of moisture each night which will directly do into wetting everything in the bag, including socks. Socks can be dried in most temps by hanging, but not directly over ones face where breath mousture will dampen them.

For gloves I wear an inner pair of fingerless wool gloves (the type with the little rubber grippies if I am not using primitive pre- French and Indian War gear)) and an outer shell of wool mittens which hang by my clothing by lanyards, enabling me to remove them when working with my hands. My socks are a similar situation I wear a silk inner with several layers of wool outer socksand add or remove for different exercise. My boots are light and either uninsulated or 200 gram insulation and gore-tex lined. I usually buy a size larger boot in winter for insulation. When snowshoeing or working hard like cuttign wood I find that I seldom have on more than one pair of socks inside my fairly lightly insulated boots and I am comfortable.

Just a few ideas which hopefully can help before you end up with wet boots and cold feet. Learn to work outside just on the one sid eof being cool rather than warm and you will have more latitude in your exercise range before needing to remove clothing including socks. Another trick isuse removing hats to help regulate body temp by vening off excess body heat, helps even with your feet.

It's almost impossible to keep our gear dry while riding, given we're a bunch of back country enthusiasts - snow gets everywhere. Powder skirts are the most useless thing's ever invented.

Anyway - I (we all do) wear thermals that are designing to wick moisture away from our skin while riding. I wear glove liners and we definitely have Apre' boots for when we are not riding (learnt that lesson last year when I decided gumboots and socks would suffice lol).

Moisture inside the tent was a big problem last year but will hopefully be avoided this time as we are using a genuine 4-seasonn mountaineering tent with lots of ventilation for air flow.

I might rig up a boot/glove dryer and figure a way to add warmth to the equation so we can put toasty gear on just before we go riding...I wonder if I can pull heat from my triple XM-L flood lights somehow :thinking: That would be very cool!

- Matt

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Get some of these & a small generator
http://www.peetshoedryer.com/product_go.html

I have a standard PEET boot dryer,,,it may have been my single best investment.


edit/add: I do alot of winter hiking, lots-o-miles every winter (no shoe shoes, just poles)
my PEET boot dryer not only drys my boots, but my gloves are on it equally as much.

It's key to have dry boots & gloves,,,,truly invaluable if you do alot of winter stuff
have a backup hat too....}

We actually do have a portable genset (a very good one in fact) but unfortunately all our Alpine regions here in Australia are National parks and generators are prohibited

Not for animals and environment mind you - but for the peace of mind of any other campers. If we go deep enough and find ourselves all on our lonesome then we'll probably fire it up and hope a ranger doesn't pass by. That's a fine I'd be keen to avoid.

- Matt

^

Its hard to get something for nothing when trying to dry/warm gear during the winter.
There really is no magic potion

Solar setup or deep cycle battery for the PEET??

I want a magic potion

Turns out where we are headed this year might result in a base camp below the snowline. So moisture won't be as bad....but still horrible. Still - should be easier to dry stuff around the fire, or at least warm them up in the morning before a day of heavy riding.

I might just rig up a blower and PVC tube to get air circling as this apparently does an OK job. I'll know first hand in 2 weeks.

- Matt

^

Matt, what's that red'ish light in your Sig.... is that an optic in it? (hard to see<)

orbital said:

^

Matt, what's that red'ish light in your Sig.... is that an optic in it? (hard to see<)

Click to expand...

Cheap DX Stainless Steel 18650 light, upgraded 1400mA 3 mode driver, neutral XP-G and a McClicky in the tail. Cerakoted in safety orange with a carclo clear narrow single XP-G optic. Blue GITD ring (obviously can't see that in the pic). I have it swapped out for a frosted medium optic at the moment. Oh and a ukmidnite custom anodized McGizmo Long clip.

The light was bought for $25, the work I did on it adds up to over $100. A complete waste of money but I love it lol. Sits on my bedside table for sneaking around the house without waking the Mrs up

- Matt

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Using the concept of rising air like in the PEET dryers,
maybe you could use some metal piping with PVC attached to the ends for the boots.

~~Using the heat from a bonfire, allow the warm air to rise up and pump naturally into the boots.
Obviously, you need the PVC attached far away enough as not to melt it to the metal pipe.

..........making some kind of apparatus utilizing warm rising air from a bonfire & piping to the boots.

LOVE the drawing haha. I think my brother and I are going to get onto building something this weekend. We will likely experiment a little bit. I think if we build a tube system that supports all the boots and gloves, and use a 12V PC fan to suck air into the tubing system we could place it close to a fire to suck warm air into the tubes. It'll be such a minor temperature difference that it won't melt anything but at the same time anything above ambient will help dry the boots.

Actually that sounds like a good idea.

- Matt

I ran into the problem of my boots being frozen solid on a November trip to the High Sierras. I figured out that filling two 1 liter Nalgene lexan bottles with boiling hot water and placing one in each boot thawed them out in about 30 minutes. I placed backpacker's towels in each boot to absorb any thawed moisture. You can do something similar. You might want to use newspaper or something else cheap and disposable to absorb the moisture.

Hooked on Fenix said:

I ran into the problem of my boots being frozen solid on a November trip to the High Sierras. I figured out that filling two 1 liter Nalgene lexan bottles with boiling hot water and placing one in each boot thawed them out in about 30 minutes. I placed backpacker's towels in each boot to absorb any thawed moisture. You can do something similar. You might want to use newspaper or something else cheap and disposable to absorb the moisture.

Click to expand...

Thanks man - it looks like we'll do a combination of many things. I pulled all my gear out of storage last night and check my boots...put them on for the first time in nearly 12 months and man they are comfy

Amazing how bad moisture and the cold can make things feel!!!

- Matt

how about getting a spare set of liners for your boots?

Wear one set, dry one set.