>>1972985>sleeping bagThe biggest key is to not breathe inside of it, and not pull it over your face - hard to do when it’s 0F out sometimes. Gradually though, it will start to take on moisture slowly and my bag was a little damp by the end of the trip. I did get a little blowing snow on my bag while sleeping in a leanto one night which didn’t help. All in all though, it stayed dry enough for 10 days, and only got wet near my face where I would exhale onto it.
>clothesThey’re going to get wet - you just live with it. I wore boxer briefs, and a smartwool 250 base layer top and bottom under goretex bib trousers and a goretex jacket the entire time. At the end of the day, I’d shed the goretex at camp and the base layers would dry with my body heat over 15mins or so while I was doing camp chores (boiling water, inflating sleeping pad, etc). Once I was dry enough, I’d put on my down puffy, and a pair of sweatpants and I was good to go.
>socksThese are the biggest issue I had, especially since my boot liners got soaked on day 2 and just never dried through all 10 days. If my liners didn’t get soaked and I wasn’t fording streams every day, I think my regimen would have been good, but there was just too much snow, ice, and water to deal with. I wore a smartwool liner sock, a plastic oven bag vapor barrier, and a darn tough heavy sock each day. They were wet at the end of every day, and thawing and putting frozen socks on each morning blew pretty bad desu. It makes the first 20 minutes of the day pretty slow and miserable until they heat up with your body heat. I did keep an extra heavy pair of smartwool socks dry for sleeping in.
>boot linersA two piece boot is essential if you’re going for more than a few days. Being able to put my boot liners into a dry bag, and sleeping with them each night so they didn’t freeze completely solid saved my trip. Sliding your foot into 60 degree wet boots sure as shit beats sliding them into 5 degree frozen boots.
