It’s a conversation we have round about the same time every year …. how do we dress for being a ranger at night in Autumn and Winter.
We own some decent outdoor clobber but it’s not designed for long periods stood either still (eg flying a drone or observing wildlife through a TI) or limited to a small area – e.g. generating hardly any additional heat to keep warm.
And then we’re off at pace to some kind of incident. Then perhaps another standing around period (e.g. waiting for a drunkard to disassemble a tent and extinguish a fire), then it’s back up a hill or down a valley to see what’s next on the to do list.
And every year when the first cold nights come we ponder. We sat getting warm with a brew in the Norfolk Arms last night browsing huge down jackets and heated gilets and the latest bestest thing.
And (for me at least) getting a warm indoors is a double edged sword as eventually you have to go back out there and acclimatise to the cold.
And as well as being usable from stood doing nowt to high exertion the layers need to be durable too as walls, fences, crags, vehicles and stuff get in the way.
And same for feet. How do you get the warmth for standing still on stone for an hour but then the grip and support to wade through a bog, hack through woodland and scramble up a crag ?
Anyway, we’ll probably ‘make do and mend’ as usual because tbh between us we’ve tried nigh on everything
*Except dry-robes. Obvs.
Numbers wise the -3.2c with windchill last night was about what it got (inc windchill) at night last January (remember the snow ?). Albeit in my 29 nights out on foot back then there was a still air temp of -9.8c recorded.
We get a bit obsessive recording temps with our Kestrel monitors.
Being a little bit cold is good i think. Getting too cold and then hot and then sweaty and then very cold repeatedly really really isn’t a good thing.
Sort your clothing systems out. Carry spares. Enjoy the cold. Embrace the dark.
I’m amazed every year how often we few rangers stand around under the most stunning night skies and choruses of wildlife noises with not another human around.