No Tongues on the Metal, Please

Brrr: What to Do When It’s Freezing

By Amy Linn, 12-04-09

	Hairy weather. Flickr photo by Robert Thomson.

“When your Jeep spins lazily off the mountain road and slams backward into a snowbank, you don’t worry immediately about the cold.”
-- Missoula author Peter Stark, in Outside magazine.

Freezing weather—the type of sub-zero temps slated to hit Montana over the next few days—can really take a person by surprise. Anyone who’s read writer Peter Stark’s magazine piece about nearly freezing to death, or read his fine book Last Breath, knows all about how the cold can sneak up on the clueless.

“The cold remains a mystery, more prone to fell men than women, more lethal to the thin and well muscled than to those with avoirdupois, and least forgiving to the arrogant and the unaware,” as Stark puts it. For more fodder, just browse Jack London’s To Build a Fire.

If you’re still not impressed, consider this:

-- Hypothermia, which happens when a person’s core body temperature drops below 95 degrees, kills about 700 people every year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The Forest Service says it’s the leading killer of outdoor enthusiasts.

-- Symptoms include constant shivering, slurred speech, weariness, weakness, clumsiness and confusion—a nasty mix for people who need to make survival decisions.

-- Most people who die of hypothermia are male, “which might reflect a difference in risk-taking behavior between males and females,” says the CDC.

-- The majority of hypothermia fatalities happen in three states: Alaska (no surprise there), followed by Montana and Wyoming.

To avoid getting anywhere even remotely close to freezing to death, try this:

* Keep an emergency kit in your car. Include a flashlight, batteries, water, snacks, a sleeping bag or blanket, and a compact shovel, for starters. If you’re stranded, stay in the car, crack a window slightly, make sure the exhaust pipe isn’t covered with snow, and run the engine a few minutes each hour for warmth.

* If you’re outdoors, stay dry. Wetness—from sweat, weather, or that stream you just fell in—cools your body temperature. Wind speeds up the process, so use good gear, keep warm and avoid moisture.

* If you’re trying to reach a wilderness destination and there’s hypothermia danger, bag it. Stop before exhaustion sets in, eat high-carb snacks, put on the spare set of warm clothing you brought, and turn back.

* Skip the whiskey. Imbibing when you’re cold inhibits the natural mechanisms your body uses to produce heat.

* Hug your honey. When it comes to making heat, two bods are better than one.

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