When I was younger I used to do a lot of ice climbing, I wore fingerless gloves and a pair of the marvellous Dachstein mitts which were attached to my sleeves by short lanyards: I could shrug them off very quickly when I needed to hold frozen rock or ice (sometimes tight enough to leave fingermarks!) but wore them when using the ice axes. When I was seconding on a stance whilst the leader negotiated a steep and complex pitch, sometimes taking more than an hour, this combination kept my hands comfortably warm. The worst thing was the seated stances, eventually the cold inevitably crept through to my nethers! It seems to me that if you discount the explosive bursts of activity whilst moving up, there are parallels between sitting on a stance guarding the leader and sitting operating on a summit in winter. Any climbing shop will have at least one ice specialist in the staff who can be tapped for advice on current technology for keeping warm.
Mind you, my Grandmother (one of the less straight-laced Victorian ladies) always used to say “cold hands - warm heart!”
Yes Eric you are right, Nalgene bottles are the best hot-water bottles.
On our trekking tour in Nepal this year, we had very cold temperatures at our glacier camps, nearly -10C even inside the tents. But I felt very comfortable with my Nalgene bottle filled with boiling water. I didn’t want to risk flooding my down-sleeping-bag, so I put the bottle in a watertight bag. Such a hot-water bottle kept my feet warm for a couple of hours. Friends were not so lucky, because they had only Sigg bottles with them: First they scalded their feet with the hot aluminium bottles, then the bottles lost the heat quickly.
On the other side, I would not carry 2 liters of hot water up to a summit just for warming my fingers, at least you should also have a tea bag and some sugar in your rucksack
PS I have no commercial interest in Zippo hand warmers!
I know it’s been a while since I posted here, but I didn’t realise that the SOTA reflector could now be freely used to help point traffic towards our own personal business interests!
My work comes via word of mouth so sadly I don’t have a brand to promote here.
In reply to G4ERP:
The only problem I found with these charcoal things is they didnt last long, went out, more so as they age and were never in the right place!
Ive been doing the following, trying different “examination gloves”, the ones I use at the moment are nitrile ones(some like PVC I find cold), they are thin pull tightly over the hand, yes you sweat in them which forms a layer under the glove and helps to insulate. Then I put on a second pair over the top. I do this before I leave the car and wear thinsulate etc gloves to get to the top/coming down. I find this gives me a fair bit of time operating and still able to press the buttons on the 817:)
As alot of you describe once the cold is in the hands Ive had it and suffer dreadful pain so its worth not getting to that point and pack up … running round the top of the hill during the activation is a good idea before you chill:)
Robert GM4GUF
PS Dont come up Tinto to get a prostate examination, I am not a GP :o)
I finally found some gloves that work really well. This was an early Christmas gift for a high-altitude activation (OE/TI-158) so I wouldn’t run into a dangerous situation as before.
I got a pair of snowboarder’s mittens with some extremely functional liners:
In many cases, the liners are enough. They’re quite warm and provide lots of dexterity – easy to operate a paddle and even write log entries.
Just a quick thought about mountain safety rather than radio operation;
Think very carefully about using lined gloves in conditions where they may get wet.
If you take them off, they may be impossible to put back on.
Personally I find a combination of thin fleece gloves for most conditions & Dachstein mitts over the top when things are bad works well. I have some waterproof overmitts but have only used them a handful of times in the past 30 odd years.
That’s an excellent observation - and not one that I have ever seen written down before. I have an old pair of Thinsulate lined woollen gloves and once they get wet they are almost impossible to get on again. It has never been more than an annoyance but as you point out, it could be more serious.
Thanks: it may well be that brands differ in performance. I have tried this sort of handwarmer before and found that the heat output soon fell to quite a modest level. I am pretty impressed by the Zippo and, yesterday I took a Gelert Charcoal handwarmer for a test. Although it lasted only about 5 hours, the heat output was impressive; much hotter than the Zippo. A bit trickier to light though.
Got the Zippo handwarmer for Christmas and I’m very happy with it. Used it in a near-SOTA situation (in a pub garden!) - lasted about 5 hours on half a fill. Wasn’t in the pub the entire 5 hours - honest.
The heat seems very subtle to me though - I’ll have a better idea of how it performs in real-SOTA situations shortly.
Seems to me that it’s related to the amount of air it gets. In the bag it’s subtle and lasts ages, take it out, the air gets to it and then it has a burst of heat. That burst doesn’t seem to last long though as the cold then gets to it.
I like it because it’s a bit like a shiny friend… and that’s going to be a nice feeling half way up some snowy hill on me jack!
Used my Zippo on Kinder Scout SP-001 today. The heat was subtle rather than intense (as Rob suggests) but was most welcome all the same. I guess it runs at about 40-45 degrees C.
A disaster at the end of the activation though, where to warm my hands after packing up on the summit I took it out of my pocket and out of its bag. It appears that the strong wind and temperature around zero were enough to cool the case of the Zippo so that the fuel stopped evaporating. Of course, it then went out. I suspect that relighting a Zippo in cold conditions outside might be quite a challenge.
The way that they work is quite interesting. There are several things to take into account. My next experiment will be to make an insulated pocket for the fuel tank.
I have yet to decide what conditions are best for the catalytic reaction. Some sources on the web suggest that more oxygen is best whereas others suggest exactly the opposite.
I would have taken the charcoal warmer to compare but despite searching I could not find the spare sticks. Inevitably I found them as soon as I got home again.
