[at-l] Re: Kids and the only cold weather tips i know

[sloetoe@yahoo.com (Sloetoe)]

--- emma eyeball <tarbubble@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Anybody got good cold weather tips???
> > We're thinking 3-7 days, between 0* and 40*F.
>
> layering, but you know all about that.
### Phew! Yes, that and Old Navy fleece... Actually huge guilt
there, cuz I think all of Old Navy's stuff is not from the
PolarTec mills. Good company (Malden Mills) that I would like to
support. But I need to go home and emphasize this as I'm looking
over the boys' equipment, and see if they're properly outfitted.

> i read you should eat a lot of fats in cold weather,
> especially before going to bed.  apparently the body
> generates more heat while digesting fats.  the book i
> was reading suggested a handful of nuts.  seeing as
> how the Inuit survive on seal blubber, it seems to
> make sense.
### But you can go WAYYYYY overboard. I did a year ago: I went
out for 11 days in XMAS->NewYears period. I planned my menu from
the bottom up: doing caloric requirements and meeting it through
diet/menu, rather than doing the menu and seeing if it would
suffice for what I was doing. BOY did I screw up. I ended up
carrying three weeks worth of food (my guess) instead of 10
days. Here's what I did wrong:

1) planned for basal metabolism + cold weather margin + miles
per day.
2) planned for high fat content instead of taking regular diet
and *adding* fat.

The metabolic overlap for a hiking trip was tremendous:
basically, when you are hiking, and your efforts are keeping you
warm *and* are getting you down the trail, you don't *need* a
buttload of fat (I bet 2/3rds of my calories came from cheese,
sausage, NuttyBuddys, Gorp's Cashews, Pringles, PB/honey/corn
flour balls, etc.). Picture me on day 1.5, with a winter load
(90 liter pack stuffed to the gills, running 55 pounds for 10
days), mouth chipmunked out with high-fat food, looking at my
pack and suddenly doing a Homer moment, realizing that I had
three WEEKS worth of food, instead of 10 days. DOTE!

OK, now, how's that translate to kids? (And I write this to
chant it to myself 14,000 times so I don't forget it.)
1) Kids' fuel tanks are small, so fewer "big" meals are a no-no.
Lots of small snacking is what will keep us going and/or warm.
2) Kids' endurance/patience is not an adult's, so if you're
counting on motion to keep you warm, and you're hiking with kids
in cold weather, and they do the stop-n-start pace of children,
you're ALL going to freeze. Put on the clothes and pull out the
fats.
3) RELYING on the fats may NOT be a good idea: if you don't have
the usual suspects in the diet, carbohydrate-wise, you're going
to feel like CRAP, and not want to hike (and therefore, you'll
freeze, fats in hand). (Hmmmm, maybe I should say "OVER-relying"
eh?)

I guess the bottom line for me is that I have to plan the
regular hiking diet for me and the boys, and then add some fat
that we ordinarily wouldn't take much off: more cheese, more
pepperoni, more pb, less fruit roll-ups and kool-aid and Jolly
Ranchers. And more clothes. That should do it.

4) Forget hot meals for Breakfast and Dinner: get up and get
moving. Eating a NuttyBuddy and then stopping for Breakfast
Number 2 (Hot SlimFast/Milk) after getting some good steam up is
a lot warmer than waiting around camp for water to boil... And
having "dinner" for lunch (stopping in the "heat" of the day),
then munching a cold dinner whilst in your sleeping bag at
night, is a much nicer way to go.

Hooo-boy. Maybe it's time the boys carried their own stoves...
Hot chocolate, and now the Spiced Cider that SAm's Club and
BigLots sells...

> and insulated mugs, of course.  it's a near-miracle
> how quickly a little bit of hot liquid cranks my
> internal temperature up.
### YYYYESSSS!!! That's where those hot SlimFast's come in.
YUMMY! (But we'll probably use UN-insulated squeeze bottles,
keeping them in an inside pocket and sipping as we go. Just over
Thanksgiving, I walked a good 45 minutes in 20*F temps with
liter of SlimFast in my pocket [that took me barely ten minutes
sheltered-by-a-large-rock to heat, start to finish].)

> probably nuthin' you didn't know already...
### Yeah, me and Homer....

Sloewhencoldtoe

=====
Spatior! Nitor! Nitor! Tempero!
   Pro Pondera Et Meliora.

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