[at-l] The perils of cotton

[Charles Copeland" <charles@uswnet.com (Charles Copeland)]

Weary,

When I camp or hike in cold weather I wear blue jeans, t-shirts (the 60-40
kind) and flannel shirts.  If it's really cold I wear either cotton or poly
thermies underneath.  If it's really, really cold then I wear wind pants
over my jeans and a windbreaker or jacket.   I carry VBL things (blanket,
sock liners) just in case I get really cold or really wet.  This is the way
I've always done it and it's worked for me.  However, I enjoy the cold
weather immensely and since my college days, the temperatures don't bother
me much.

However, my wife bought me some kind of non-cotton pants that the legs zip
off of and I wore those once last summer.  They were interesting.  My son
and I do wear fleece jackets (the artificial
made-from-recycled-2-liter-bottles kind) but he only wears
polartec/polyester/plastic clothes in the winter.  All he's ever heard (from
his peers) is that "cotton kills".  I tell him that cotton *can* kill but
its mostly inexperience that kills.

I am also a bit more careful about my clothes (especially emergency things)
since OBs snow hike last year.  I probably learned as much from his trip
reports about handling extreme cold as I had learned on my own from all my
cold-weather hikes put together.   I'll be hiking in NC next month (with my
Scouts) looking for snow - hopefully we won't freeze!  Last year the low
temp was about 15 degrees and we did ok.  Unfortunately there was no snow.

Charles