Spending days or perhaps weeks exterior in a spot that will get lots of rain, you shortly study that there’s nothing extra essential than staying dry. It can even really feel like there’s nothing extra inconceivable. When you spend all day paddling or climbing within the rain, then arrange camp within the rain and begin a fireplace within the rain and cook dinner dinner within the rain and go to sleep to rain drumming in your tent, water appears to permeate every part. It’s sufficient to make you crawl into the closest mattress with some popcorn and Netflix and watch for a greater forecast.
But don’t do it! I’ve lived and guided in three of the wettest locations on earth-the east aspect of Hawaii’s Big Island, Southeast Alaska, and Fiordland National Park, New Zealand, which get get 126, 152, and 264 inches of rain a yr, respectively-and it seems you could be sort-of dry and even semi-comfortable in a spot the place your boots develop mould should you don’t put on them for every week. (True story.) A number of of my favourite methods:
1. Maintain sacred socks
This is a pair of toasty wool socks that stay in your sleeping bag and by no means come out. They are for one factor and one factor solely: sleeping. No matter how moist and gross your different socks are, resist the urge to stay your sacred socks into your boots. If morning dawns and the one different factor you must put in your ft are sopping, half-frozen rags that scent like rubbish, so be it. Your ft will thanks later.
2. Use Gold Bond
Heaps of it. The within your tent ought to appear like a snow globe after your night powdering ritual. Bonus: It masks the scent of moldering gear.
3. Keep your waterproof-breathable gear clear
You’re carrying armloads of duffy cedar to start out a fireplace and clambering over mossy logs and getting splashed with salt water? That appears like enjoyable, however once you go residence soak your Gore-Tex in some Tech Wash. Dirty waterproof-breathables doesn’t work in addition to clear. Also, it doesn’t matter what your producer claims, they lose their effectiveness over time. Don’t take your circa-1996 jacket that appears all classic and funky in Colorado with you to New Zealand. Invest in a brand new waterproof-breathable.
4. Know your methods
This is true in any setting, however particularly in moist ones. You don’t need to be digging round in an open bag making an attempt to trace down your headlamp when buckets of water are pouring from the sky.
5. Wear a lighter round your neck
Ideally, your methods can be so dialed that you simply’ll by no means be soaked to the pores and skin. Duct tape a lighter to some p-cord and put on it as a necklace, and also you’ll have the one instrument you want for emergency heat readily available and dry always.
6. Never depart a dry bag open
Even if the solar is shining and there’s not a cloud in sight. NEVER. You will open and shut roughly 682,000 dry baggage a day. You could have goals about opening and shutting dry baggage. This is okay.
7. Ziplocs are a woman’s greatest pal
Well, mine anyway. When I used to be guiding, I’d put my most essential gadgets, like my journal, in a two-gallon ziplock, which might then go inside a light-weight Sea to Summit dry bag, which might then go inside my big NRS dry bag. It by no means received moist. On a Grand Canyon river journey, I received lazy-it was the desert!- and put my DSLR digital camera inside a single dry bag. Then I flipped a raft and my digital camera was ruined. The solely half that stayed dry? A spare lens stuffed inside a Ziploc.
8. Wear your hood
Wet hair can keep moist for days. Wet = chilly.
9. Compactor trash baggage are simply pretty much as good as dry baggage for a brief journey
Not any outdated trash baggage will do-spring for the compactor ones. Line your backpack with one and gooseneck it on the high, or use them inside your large dry bag for compartmentalization and further waterproofing. You may even stick them inside you boots for dry(er) ft.
10. Learn to arrange a really excessive tarp
You can have a fireplace and cook dinner dinner beneath it. You can be glad.
Rain is freaking stunning, so get out and luxuriate in it. Unless you reside in Southwest Colorado, as I do now, by which case rain is the one good excuse you’ll ever have to look at Netflix and keep in mattress.