Maine-iac Posted July 14, 2008 Posted July 14, 2008 As it seems the Oregon is in a bit of a heat wave; or at least it seems like it (95 currently), just wondering what is the coldest temperatures that people have experienced? Lets hear from some of you hardmen who are always posting TRs. Quote
Maine-iac Posted July 14, 2008 Author Posted July 14, 2008 I had had a few weeks/days in different winters where temperatures were in the -20s and at least 3 days of -30 degrees. I think the lowest I saw the mercury was -32, and that is not including wind chill. Throughout all of that, I was delivering newspapers. Quote
ScaredSilly Posted July 14, 2008 Posted July 14, 2008 I have spent a few days in the backcountry of Yellowstone and dealt with -50F temps. Quote
carolyn Posted July 14, 2008 Posted July 14, 2008 -40 while waiting for the bus shortly after moving to MN (not with windchill). Thats when I realized I needed to invest in a REAL winter coat. I would say one of my coldest experiences was climbing in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. I took a two day ice climbing class and added a few extra days onto my trip because they were having an ice festival. I couldnt afford the lodging, so I camped on the shore of Lake Superior. Mind you this was sometime in Jan. By the second to last night I couldnt feel my toes, so the nice folks who owned the lodge let me sleep in an unheated cabin. I couldnt tell you the temperature, with or without windchill. All I know is everyone thought I was insane, including someone who recently got back from Everest. I was too new and too broke to understand. I caught on by that third or fourth night. Any guesses to the temp along Lake? Ive adapted well to the cold after that experience. It's now the heat/humidity I have a rough time with. Carolyn Quote
denalidave Posted July 14, 2008 Posted July 14, 2008 -55ish on the north side of Denali in late April. Anything exposed was instant frostbite. Brrr, longest night of my life! I froze my ass off in my -20 down bag, poly pro liner, bivy sack & all my down/fleece clothing! Quote
musky333 Posted July 14, 2008 Posted July 14, 2008 -47 wind chill for 5 hours carrying a 65 # pack up and down the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River in western Wi. last winter while training. Quote
Buckaroo Posted July 15, 2008 Posted July 15, 2008 -40F during Jan on Blanca Peak CO. High desert plains. -40F during Arctic front in Banff, ice climbing. Slept in truck, ice on inside of windshield. Trans shifts like glue. Had to put cardboard over radiator to get engine warm enough so heater would work. Tried to sleep in heated bathroom at campground but ranger ran me out, back to the freezing truck. Winter climbing in Banff people take a Hibachi to the trailhead, put under the oil pan to warm the engine for starting. I've heard Siberia gets so cold that tires crack if you hit a hard bump. Anti-freeze doesn't work, you have to drain and fill the coolant every time you drive. Even metal gets cold enough to be brittle. Quote
Bug Posted July 15, 2008 Posted July 15, 2008 I don't know what the temp was but spit cracked before it hit the snow, pee froze in little icicles that fell over and made tinkling sounds (origin of tinkling?), and I took a pot of boiling water off the fire, poured two cups into my cup, put the pot back on the fire, and there was a crust of ice on the cup when I picked it up. Dry Fork Divide, 7000', Bob Marshall/Scapegoat wildreness boundary, Montana, Dec 27, 1976. Quote
Argus Posted July 15, 2008 Posted July 15, 2008 In college I delivered pizzas and it was -70 for a week straight with the windchill. I didn't shut my car off for the entire week. I made bank since noone would leave their house. The following day it "warmed up" to 0 and I was running around in a t-shirt. It's amazing how the body can adjust. Quote
dan_forester Posted July 15, 2008 Posted July 15, 2008 delivering papers in Minnesota one weekend when the temp was -40 F, -79 with windchill. That was in 1985 or 1986. I never want to experience such bone-chilling cold again. Quote
wimsey Posted July 15, 2008 Posted July 15, 2008 On a dogsledding trip in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota in 1996, we had 5 days that never got over -20 F. We're not sure how cold it got as our thermometers bottomed out, but a nearby govt weather station recorded -60 F, the coldest official temp ever recorded in Minnesota. Someone's personal thermometer in the area went down to -74 F. I've also been out in -20 F with 40-50mph winds, which was considerably less pleasant. Probably the worst is days and days of +28 to +35 wet snow, sleet and rain. Quote
JoshK Posted July 15, 2008 Posted July 15, 2008 My most memorable cold weather memory was -30C with a breeze and a light snow at Bow Lake Falls off the Icefields Parkway in the Canadian Rockies. I belayed in complete painful shivering hell and watched with horror as Ravens 60m below picked open the drawstring and buckles on our packs, ate what they could and scattered the rest all over the approach ice. It was truly disheartening. The aftermath, however, is what provides the memory. After finishing that pitch, we descended, put back on our skis and headed back across the lake asking ourselves why we even left the hostel that day. We drove back to Rampart Creek, discussing the fact that Audi deserves a reward for the sheer ass heating power of their seat warmers. Our mission: to get the wood fired Sauna so hot that the metal chimney would give off a glow that night. We spent nearly two hours walking between the room and the sauna (myself decked head to toe in down gear for the 10 minute task, being the pussy that I am) throwing more wood in to the stove. When we deemed the sauna good and ready, we headed out to it with a full bottle of Southern Comfort. Every so often we'd have to go outside (via its two door airlock system) and insta-chill for 30 seconds, enough to make one run back inside the human-cooker. The temperature differencial of 70 or 80C (or somewhere around there I would guess?) made every 30 second trip outside a life-changing experience. After an hour or two a group of four other climbers arrived toating a one gallon freezer bag of Canada's finest national crop. Hours flew by as we swapped stories, fueled by booze and greenery. I'm sure the air inside the tiny wood hut was getting my non-smoker friend high as balls by this point. During a run outside for a piss I established that the mission had been accomplished. The chimney of the sauna glowed a dark orange. The next morning my partner and I were so completely and totally obliterated by the hangover we decided to call a "rest day." One of the climbers from the group of four found himself in a similar shit-canned state and the three of us spent the day comiserating and hanging out in the hostel's common room. Eventually we rallied and took a little scenic car tour to check out some conditions, and even managed a fifteen minute hike down to Sunshine Falls. It was...fun. :-) Quote
Joe_Poulton Posted July 15, 2008 Posted July 15, 2008 -25 plus unknown windchill, open bivy (well my legs were in my backpack) at 13,000 on Grizzly Peak Colorado in February 2006 Quote
sobo Posted July 15, 2008 Posted July 15, 2008 -40 plus unknown windchill, winter camping in a freak arctic blast in the hills outside of VA Tech. All the beer froze in the cans, the only thing we had to brink was a fifth of Jack Daniels. The next morning, while trying to start the stove (in the tent ) it exploded and burnt the tent to the snow almost instantaneously. It was pretty funny after we got out of our bags, got dressed, and got the f#%& out of there. -40-something at Huntington's Ravine, NH, ice climbing over a Christmas break back in the day. The ice was so brittle, it shattered with every stick and I never thought I'd get the hell off Pinnacle Gulley that day. Once we got up to the Alpine Garden trail, we took off our crampons for the trudge over to the Lion's Heads slide. The wind was so freakin' fierce that it blew us across all of the frozen ponds on the AG bench. There was nothing we could do, cuz there were rocky spots between the frozen lakes, and we didn't want to wear our crampons across the rocky parts, nor did we want to put them back on to cross the frozen parts. So we "sailed" from shore to shore across the bench. I'm just glad it was a tailwind that day. I think the wind was like 80 mph or some shit. It gets really windy up on Mt. Washington. Add to that it was so whited-out that we had to stay roped up and "swing a radius" from cairn to cairn to find our way to the start of Lion's Head. The wind was so fierce that you couldn't hear each other when you hollered that you had found the next cairn, so we ended up yanking on the rope real hard to signal the follower to come up. We both ended up with more than a few faceplants from that strategy. It was a freaky day. I was never so glad to be back at the harvard cabin as I was that day. brrrrrrrrrrrrrr... In my younger years, I delivered newspapers in Idaho Falls, notorius for its deep drifts, cold temps, and stiff winds. Spent many an evening in the dark and -30s trudging along from house to house. I had 120+ customers. It took a long time in the winter... Quote
G-spotter Posted July 15, 2008 Posted July 15, 2008 -40C in Jasper. Too cold to climb, but we tried. Ow. Quote
wfinley Posted July 16, 2008 Posted July 16, 2008 There's an ice climbing spot up here notorious for always being cold - Caribou Creek. It's about 2 hours from Anchorage so one weekend we opted to camp up there in order to get an early start the next day. It was winter solstice weekend and despite having a -20 bag I spent the night curled in a fetal position shivering with my dog inside the sleeping bag shivering as well. The next morning it was so cold that when I put on my backpack and clipped my plastic buckle it exploded into about 10 pieces. Seconds later I tried to clip my chest buckle and it also exploded; we tried to climb that day but our tools bounced off the ice. I have no idea how cold it was... but cold enough to where I now only camp after March 1st. Quote
mkporwit Posted July 16, 2008 Posted July 16, 2008 (edited) The coldest temperature I experienced was the stare I got when I told my wife that despite having a three month old at home I was planning on going climbing pretty much every weekend in August... Beyond that... -30 plus some crazy windchill on a winter climb of Mt. Washington, NH. Edited July 16, 2008 by mkporwit Quote
KaskadskyjKozak Posted July 16, 2008 Posted July 16, 2008 The coldest temperature I experienced was the stare I got when I told my wife that despite having a three month old at home I was planning on taking going climbing pretty much every weekend in August... Quote
sobo Posted July 16, 2008 Posted July 16, 2008 The coldest temperature I experienced was the stare I got when I told my wife that despite having a three month old at home I was planning on going climbing pretty much every weekend in August... You tend to live life on the edge, don't you? Crazy mutha... Quote
mkporwit Posted July 16, 2008 Posted July 16, 2008 The coldest temperature I experienced was the stare I got when I told my wife that despite having a three month old at home I was planning on going climbing pretty much every weekend in August... You tend to live life on the edge, don't you? Crazy mutha... I tried to live on the edge... but as her icy stare chilled me to the bone my balls withered and I cancelled my climbs... Quote
KaskadskyjKozak Posted July 16, 2008 Posted July 16, 2008 The coldest temperature I experienced was the stare I got when I told my wife that despite having a three month old at home I was planning on going climbing pretty much every weekend in August... You tend to live life on the edge, don't you? Crazy mutha... I tried to live on the edge... but as her icy stare chilled me to the bone my balls withered and I cancelled my climbs... wuss! Quote
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.