It’s near the end of October now and Bonnie and I both love cold weather camping. One of the big questions is, “Can we take a six month old boy cold weather camping?”
Answer: My ancestors lived in the cold for thousands of years so why not?
The first thing I did was to research the web using a “cold weather camping with baby” search string. As usual, I found some really good advice about cold weather camping mixed up with some information that was just wrong.
If you’ve never done cold weather camping and you think we’re crazy for even thinking about doing it with a baby you should probably stop reading here.
Having done the preliminary research here’s some (hopefully) good ideas that I’m going to put to the test. First – dress the baby much as you’d dress yourself for cold weather. Layer him up! I’ll be discussing this with Bonnie for more ideas, but my first hard and fast rule of cold weather camping is that you do not wear cotton. I’ll say that again. No cotton. Cotton kills in cold weather folks. Therefore we need to find some synthetic clothes for the Little Guy to wear. The first layer is synthetic and then a sleeper made from light wool or something like that. Then one of his little sleeper bags all stuffed inside of a bigger zero degree kids bag. Heat is lost through the head, so we need to make sure he has a good warm hat. Lay him between us on his own sleeping mat and he should be good to go.
Don’t think that we won’t test all of this out either. We set up my friend’s (Dave Maddox) tent yesterday to see how it does through a windy and rainy day. First of all, this is a North Face three person four season tent that is far superior to what I’m currently using. Thanks Dave, I have serious tent envy right now. Anyway, Bonnie, Ro and I went out this afternoon in the middle of the rain and hung out for an hour just to see what it’s like.
First of all, the tent itself is awesome. I must have one. I set up my little ultralight tent, which is now about ten years old, next to Dave’s and when I looked inside it was drenched! I’m glad I took the time to set it up last night otherwise the next time I was caught in a rain storm in it I’d have been miserable.
Second, it was warm enough that it doesn’t even come close enough to consider it cold weather camping (at least in my book.) 
Bonnie and Ro hanging out in the tent
We made some coffee, laid out the sleeping bags and talked about ways of keeping Ro warm when it comes time to do a real cold weather sleep out.
Other cold weather considerations for a baby. When you’ve got him on the toboggan and you’re pulling it through the woods and sweating your ass off guess what? The baby is just riding and needs to be dressed accordingly. Again, layers of synthetic clothing or wool, and a good hat and mittens are crucial. A little gem I found on the web that makes good sense: if you touch the back of the babies neck and he’s sweating, let him cool off a little bit, he’s too hot.
I can tell you from personal experience that if you get wet in cold weather you're about two seconds from getting hypothermic if the temperature drops and you’ve stopped moving.
