Best Ways to Stay Warm When Camping

When camping, you should prioritize on staying warm. Whether you are hunting, skiing, fishing or enjoying the beauties of nature, all of your objective should take a back seat to just staying warm - especially when it comes to preparation. Here are tips on how to stay Warm When Camping.

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Avoid Packing Food that could Potentially Freeze.

One thing you might not think of when you start packing for a trip in the wintertime or for a high altitude trip is that certain foods you might be able to take with you on a summertime trip won't cut it in the winter. This is because foods like canned goods and even eggs will freeze. You will have minimal contact with cold food hence high chances of staying warm.  You can insulate your foods if you wish, but you can also simply take along foods that won't freeze - such as freeze-dried meals or other packaged meals that you can cook in the package in boiling water that you make from melted snow.

Eat Plenty

Now that you have the knowledge about what types of foods you can take to keep you warm, it's important to remember that you need to take a lot of food. While you might not be hungry all the time on a hot summer trip, your body will burn tons of calories just trying to keep warm, so pack more food than you think you'll need. This is especially true if you'll be doing activities on your camping trip like hiking or skiing that will require your body to burn even more calories.

An additional benefit, to eating hearty meals, is that your body will actually generate more heat on its own simply through the process of digesting and metabolizing the additional calories.

Don't sleep directly on the ground or on a cot.

Even if you have a four season tent and a good portable camping tent heater, you won't want to sleep directly on the floor of your tent with your sleeping bag. You also don't want to sleep on a cot, which will allow air to circulate all the way around your body, drawing out heat and making you feel even colder. Instead, invest in an insulated sleeping mat that you can roll out and put your sleeping bag on top of. Avoid those big, plush air mattresses without built-in insulation as they will simply transfer the cold temperature from the ground directly to you. A foam pad or one of the many specially designed insulated sleeping pads is what you want.

Use a Tent Heater with Built-in Safety Features

Using a portable heater will help keep your tent warmer in the wintry weather, so you don't have to worry so much about sleeping in below-freezing nights. Ensure that you know how to use your heater tent heater before you leave, and then turn it on a few minutes before you head to bed each night so that your tent can be toasty warm while you slide into your sleeping bag.

Layer up!

Warmth is about layers, and the benefit of layering is that you don't have to carry bulky jackets and trousers that you will struggle to fit in your backpack when the weather heats up a little or you do enough to work up a little sweat when you are doing things around the camp-site. Layers allow you to regulate the body temperature and avoid dangerous conditions like hypothermia. For example, if you're camping in the snow and chopping wood. The sweat that can build up while you're working may freeze and become dangerous to you. The benefits of wearing layers are that you can take them on or off as required.

Bring in cooler conditions

The best camping gear to bring in cooler conditions will have to be adaptable and more importantly convenient to carry so you will take it along on your trip. For clothing, one of the best things to pack is a set of thermal underwear. These are extremely light, dry quickly and wick moisture away from your body so you won't be walking around in your own sweat for the day.

Down jackets

A good fleece or down jacket are the next items that you should consider bringing along. These are extremely warm for their weight, and the down jackets can be packed into a small bag and used as a pillow or cushion. These jackets can easily fit under a soft shell or raincoat and are ideal for travel. Fleece jackets need to be treated with some care as most of them are synthetic they can easily catch fire so be sure to keep your distance when you are roasting your marshmallows.

Keep your head and ears covered

Most of the body heat is lost out the top of your head, so it is very important to keep your head and ears covered. A simple face mask or stocking cap will do the trick. If your coveralls have a hood, then this will not hurt either. Just be careful not to restrict your hearing because you never know when your trophy might try to sneak up on you.

Carry yourself a flask

A flask can help in keeping your sauce hot while you're preparing your other ingredients for cooking. All you need to do is use your flask as the container of your warm sauce and seal it while you are still cooking. One of the problems in the camp is that not everybody gets to enjoy warm meal. Some eat late, and they have nothing left but cold food. To ensure that everybody can enjoy the warm food, gather everybody before you serve the meals. The next time you go camping, you don't have to worry about cold foods for you now know how to keep them. Warm food will help you stay warm.

Now that you have some of your clothes sorted it’s time to consider other gear for the campsite and your own sleeping quarters. For the ultimate in luxury and convenience, camping heaters are the way to go. These can range from small portable versions you can use inside your tent to larger ones for outdoor use only. Camping heaters allow for immediate heat that you can regulate a feature that can be lifesaving. As for your sleeping bag, buying a good silk sleeping bag liner is going to make your sleeping bag suitable for temperatures up to 15 degrees.