Secret Bivi Tricks

[Dru]

spooning with the s

[j_b]

there you go. you knew the answer all along. spooning with a partner with high metabolism is the key. forget the bivi gear.

[specialed]

Dru said:

No stove, we are eating horsecock etc. and hauling I think about 3-4 liters of water each for 2 days.

 

Not to diss on the cock, but I've been way into the Twight GU thing recently. Eat Gu every 45 min. and maybe a bar or two all day, then at night eat to recover - HC and cheese and shit. My stamina is way better this way b/c it requires less water and less energy to digest GU and the occasional bar and keeps the blood sugar at optimum levels. Your bivy plan sounds good though.

[Bug]

I have bivied with less. You will be fine. I usually just take pile coat, pants and gortex shell for walls. Sometimes I got cold like the time my partner disappeared into a blizzard on the first pitch of the north couliour on Middle Teton. But it was usually enough.

[Led_Hed]

In the past year I've bivied on two routes. One bivi was planned, one was not. On the unplanned bivi (february 26th-N. Cascades) I was w/o a sleeping pad or bag of any kind. That sucked. The only pair of socks I had were the thick damp wool ones that I had been wearing all day. That sucked. I had no stove and couldn't get a fire lit. That sucked. I had food but not the fatty kind. That sucked. I had no shelter of any kind (only gore-tex bibs/jacket). That sucked. I had a balaclava, insulated hood and thin beanie. That saved my bacon. I had a Pat. DAS Parka. That rocked. I didn't sleep a wink.

 

On the planned bivi (april 22nd-Red Rocks, NV) I had a down jacket. That rocked. I had fatty meat sticks. That rocked. I had a pad. That rocked. I had a balaclava but an uninsulated hood on my down jacket. That kinda sucked. I had an emergency space blanket which worked OK (get the biggest one you can find if you go that route). But the biggest discomfort factor was the place we stopped. It was a slanting ledge and no matter what you just couldn't get comfortable. I would really gun for a ledge that looks good on the topo and strongly consider stopping short at a good spot if you're unsure of bivi sites above and it's getting toward dark. On the planned bivi I still didn't sleep more than an hour or so. What ever happens I'm sure you'll do fine but think hard about the possible/likely conditions where you are climbing. My winter unplanned bivi was in the Cascades. My planned bivi was in the desert SW. So the ingredients will be much different if you're talking about a Rockies climb for instance. But I'm sure this is obvious to you. Good luck. You'll come away with lot's of good beta for future reference. Hopefully you'll look like this ->

[RichardKorry]

I've found getting cold and getting comfortable enough to get

some sleep the biggest problems on a bivy. I've found bringing a

chemical hand warmer or two helps the morale when you are cold

because you have *something* that will warm you up.

Also, sleeping drugs help as well. My doctor prescribes some mild

sedatives that I take with along wee dram. Works great as long

as you aren't worried about hypothermia (depresses the metabolism).

 

[forrest_m]

Dru – a couple more ideas for you to consider, if indeed these questions are truly requests for information and not simply teaser ads for the upcoming trip report…

 

Be very cautious of committing to a bivy where you are suspending even a small portion of your weight from your harness, i.e. the infamous “slightly sloping ledge.” After a couple of hours, even on a 10 degree slope, your waist will be killing you, and you will want to go down in the morning. Smaller and flatter definitely beats bigger and sloping when it comes to ledge selection.

 

If you must hang, try the following trick: you are already planning to use your pack as a bivy sack, you can also suspend it from the anchor and then weight your feet as if you are standing in the pack (even though you are lying down). This will take the weight off your hip belt and is way more comfortable.

 

If you end up on a butt ledge, you will sleep a lot more if you rig up some sort of chest harness or sling under your armpits that will hold you upright. This can be similar to sleeping in the front seat of a car while leaning your head against the seat belt.

 

If you do find someplace to lie down, you may sleep better if you line the outside edge of the ledge with small rocks. This “warning track” will help prevent you from rolling off the edge.

 

As you’re shivering, remember the following two truths: 1) if you are worried about how cold you feel, you are probably not freezing to death (yet) and 2) the best climbing stories involve suffering, so be sure to take note of the things you can exaggerate in future tellings.

[Dru]

all the 40's climbers who were WW2 POW like WH Murray recommend controlled shivering as the best way to stay warm and pass time

[bDubyaH]

I thought you were supposed to play the time game.

Climber 1: "2.00 am?"

Climber 2: "Wrong"

Climber 1: "2:30 am?"

Climber 2: "Wrong"

If you get within 5 minutes of the actual time then climber 2 has to start guessing once a sufficient amount of time has passed. Loads of fun

Or there is always cuddling to stay warm.

[sobo]

Had an unplanned bivy with a buddie several years ago. All day we had been blessed with sunshine, then the afternoon thunderboomer arrived, a lightning strike on the adjacent peak, then a hailstorm as we summitted, then snow began to fall as we descended. Got lost on the descent, night fell, and we got headwalled in the dark. We set up our bivy on a ledge at the top of a ~150-foot headwall with about as much butt room as your average couch.

 

Sometime during the shivering night, as we fought over the space blanket, I mused poetic while watching the clouds obscure the moon through a scraggly larch.

 

sobo: "Ya know Phil, if it rains again we're dead men."

Phil: "Thanks for the fucking weather report!"

 

Ahhh, that was a fun night...

[Beck]

a strong second for the adventure medical kits emergency bivy in the funky yellow stuff sack, at eight ounces a very durable (mines seen two patient packagings on Rainier and a trip to the Bailey Range as well as multiple nights out as bag or ground cover), multiple use 'space blanket', it even has a nexus type now woven prushed wicking interior, a foot vent, and side opening, that makes it about 5,000 percent better than a mylar space blanket and only costs about twenty bucks....mine lives in any daypack i bring, winter or summer.

 

this is the stuff of space blanket hall of fame!

[layton]

There's only around 6 hours of darkness this time o' year. Surely you can shiver for six hours? Fuck all that crap.

Here's the Mike Layton Light and Sleepy Bivy System:

A Jacket and Hat

You Backback and Backpad

The Rope

Fatty oily snackies

Sleepin' pills

Flask of Fav Liquor

Pack of Winstons

 

if that doesn't let you sleep or at least keep you entertained, concider one of these items:

 

Deck o' cards

Tiny MP3 or Minidsk player

Gameboy

or

1st few pages of Finnagen's Wake

 

These items weight next to nothing.

 

Your other option in the Mike Layton system is to screw all dat and just stare into darkness and suffer.

[Squid]

iain said:

pour olive oil over absolutely everything you eat. Gives you an extra 5°F of warmth at night, I swear.

I tried this trick once, and was quickly rechristened "Assfire." Next time I'll shiver through the night.

[iain]

where do you think the extra warmth comes from? got something against forced-air heating

[Beck]

...layton has a good point..... if you haven't spent summer nights out shiverring, you forget about the obvious time wasters, although i leave the music behind, booze, cigs or other flammables are quite nice. food, a good LED headlamp, some distractionary items ,all good...

 

one of the reasons i reccommend an emergency shelter for any long day or definite overnite trip, is the possibility of injury and resulting shock/ hypo therm compounding accident... tread tramp was out with no shelter after an accident recently crushed his ankles, ands it is in this circumstance! that a bivy could save or lack thereof, could waste lives... good thing Tread came out okay.

 

i've spent a few genuinely hypothermic nights out on bivy, and it could have killed me... if you guys have ever wandered around in a hypothermic stupor, feeling you were warm, looking for a spot to lie down in a rainstorm in the middle of the night, you have been there... i would have loved a weather "shell" on THOSE bivies like the two items i mentioned earlier...

 

if you can bring a candle stub, you'd be amazed at how much heat you can get from one candlepower, if you can get out of the wind... not so much so on a ledge but crashing after an epic at treeline afterwards and still 15 miles from the car.

[Off_White]

I think the best trick is a faulty memory, whereby past suffering seems not so bad in retrospect, leading to a willingness to wind up in that situation again.

[JoshK]

Off_White said:

I think the best trick is a faulty memory, whereby past suffering seems not so bad in retrospect, leading to a willingness to wind up in that situation again.

 

Yah, I think this is a requirement in general. If I could remember what I've done to myself some of those times I would surely not do it again.

[sobo]

JoshK said:

Off_White said:

I think the best trick is a faulty memory, whereby past suffering seems not so bad in retrospect, leading to a willingness to wind up in that situation again.

 

Yah, I think this is a requirement in general. If I could remember what I've done to myself some of those times I would surely not do it again.

 

That's why, whenever I'm going thru a sufferfest, I tell myself and my partner, "This sux. This really sux. Just remember how much this realllly sux 'cuz next week at the pub we're not going to remember how much this really sucked."

[Dru]

although i never bivied on the route the question was originally about cause we bailed after 7 pitches, i must say the recent biv on talchako convinced me a can of biftek is the way to go

 

you can eat it with a piton and then use the can as a pot to brew soup in!

[Alpinfox]

 

What the hell is Biftek? Sounds like some newfangled epoxy.

 

[Dru]

you will find out the next time you buy some cheap canned food in canada

[chirp]

Great recipe for Biftek HERE

[Lambone]

FYI- your Nozone is going to get holes in it....

[specialed]

The Mike Layton "drug cocktail" bivy: tobacco or cannabis, six shots of whiskey, sleeping pills.

[Dru]

FYI- your Nozone is going to get holes in it....

 

my nozone has fewer holes and tougher fabric than my 12 year old bivi sac