I think when we lived in Denver ( Westminster) the coldest it ever got was about 5 F, wind was a different matter though, and in five years there were about three amazing blizzards. Our family used to do nordic skiing at the YMCA of the Rockies Snow Mountain Ranch Center near Granbya lot and we would rent rooms many times each winter. . It gets miserably cold there. They have a night skiing track there and it was so cold our skiis would not slide even with the hardest wax so we went in the warming building, outside they had one of those large circular thermometers that read -55 F, we asked the girl worked there ( we were the only skiiers there tthat night if the temperature was correct and she said she didn’t think so because her car would still start.
Record cold in Michigan was in 1934 when the thermometer hit -51F in a small town not too far from me. Way before my time, so glad I missed it.
Not abnormal to see the occasional -30 to -33F in January/February. My old house taught me the hard way to leave the faucets trickling when the temps go negative. One year I had the drain line from my kitchen sink to the septic freeze. That was fun.
Outdoors, nose hairs instantly freeze if your face isn’t covered and at night, the trees make their displeasure known by loud popping and crackling sounds. Even my house makes popping noises in extreme cold, caused by expansion and contraction.
Just 80 days until the Spring Equinox. 
I’d love to see photos! If you have them on your computer just drag them from your image files onto your desktop. I usually open a “new file” and give it a name and drag them into that so it’s easy to find.
Then in this forum choose the “reply” icon like you did to post your message and while in the box that opens, click on the little frame with the tiny mountain and sun in the middle of the icons above the text space. it will open a window that allows you to “choose files”. Click on that icon and it will send you to your desktop file listings where you can locate and choose the photos you want.
Click on one photo file (or more than one by holding down the “shift key” while choosing multiples) and then click the blue “choose” button at the bottom right of the file list window. It will send you back to the small “choose file” window.
Once back there at the “choose file” window click on “upload” and your photos will be copied onto your reply as soon as you post it.
I’m looking forward to the Vernal Equinox as much as you northerners are and ours is a lot closer than yours, weather wise.
It’s winter now
since souls-tsk, tsk
frosty displeasure
in wind-whipped brisk
they jaw for thaw
from chill that shocks
then March in mud
with equal knocks
and three months marched
past an equator
rose fair in height
tropic dictator
to melt resolve
while clay feet bake
souls-tsk again
to dream their flakes
was there fleece back then…the 80’s?
Yes, there was. Helly Hansen was making poly fleece for North Sea commercial fishermen as early as the mid 70’s and Royal Robbins was selling a fleece that was more like berber pile in the late 70’s. It was warm but tended to be scratchy on the non-pile face and pilled badly. Patagonia’s Synchilla was the first heavily marketed soft poly fleece. Malden Mills (who makes Polartec) was already making fleece by the early 80’s but Patagonia partnered with Malden by 1985 to develop the Synchilla version and their iconic “snap tee” pullover.
The mid 70’s to mid 80’s were the heyday of new “technical fabrics” coming into the outdoor gear marker. Improved poly-fills began to replace down and Goretex took rainwear and lightweight tents to a new level. I was working in the outdoor gear biz in the middle of that era and went through a lot of training from manufacturers about the new materials.
Polypro thermal base layers hit the market in the mid to late 70’s too (most coming from the European ski industry companies), but I found out the hard way that though it was great for XC skiing it was NOT a good choice to wear on construction jobs. I had a polypro long sleeved shirt on one day while drilling big conduit entries into a the top of a steel electrical panel using a 2 1/2" hole saw. I was working under where I was drilling the hole and a few of the red hot shards fell onto the sleeve, instantly melting the plastic threads and sticking them to my skin. The British Navy made the same discovery when some of the navy troops that they had equipped with polypro longjohns saw action in the Falklands War on a ship that took enemy fire. Some of the troops got nasty burns, much more extensive than mine, when their skivvies melted onto them. The newer polyesters are not as flammable (and don’t develop the odorous “permanent fonk” that the polypro was prone to with extended use.
Yes. I still have and use an Early Winters pullover from around 1978 - 79. It’s nylon not polypro and is harder on the outside and fuzzy on the inside. It was about that time that I started using the polypro base layers for x-country skiing and also bought my first Goretex parka. Good times.
Wool and other fibers have been around a long time.
Manmade fibers really start to smell after a few days in the bush.
I would rather smell like a wet sheep.
Yeah, I’m still a big fan of wool and have welcomed the new processing methods for like SmartWool that make it machine washable. For a while in the late 1970’s the outfitter I was managing sold wool longjohns with a high angora rabbit fur content. Very plush and luxurious and ultra warm. But you had to hand wash with cold water and hang to dry away from heat or they would shrink to infant size.
I’ve worn all wool or high content wool socks year round for 50 years now. There are some nice synthetics but nothing beats wool for retaining its springy cushioning texture and moisture transport capacity when wet. This is as true in Summer as in Winter.
I used to get real Army and Navy wool uniform clothing at the surplus stores – the thick wool navy pants with the 11 button flap fly front were the best winter camping pants. And I had a pair of vintage cherry red Woolrich hunting pants, dense wool with knit cuffs with brass ankle zips to keep snow out of your boots and a high rise back waist, suspender buttons and double fabric seat and knees.
I’ve even paddled in cold weather using my 100% natural wool Dachstein gloves, knitted oversized in Austria and then boiled down to make a felt-like but flexible windproof knit. If I was going to be stranded in the wilderness, these are the only gloves or mittens I would want to have with me. Wool also doesn’t catch fire like synthetics and cotton – just self extinguishes. No fears in cozying up to a sparking campfire. I also used to wear Army surplus wool work shirts and pants when I was doing jobs that required welding when I worked construction.
Speaking of those wondrous mittens I am pleased to see they still make Dachstein wool knitwear. Amazing stuff. And they have broadened the line from the standard bluish grey and cream “ragg” tweed. I still have my 40 plus year old pair of their heaviest 4-ply grey Arctic mittens – I could probably handle dry ice with these on but they are too thick for handling a paddle. I did use them ice climbing on that -40 degree trip to the White Mountains. They were $35 a pair back in 1976, which was nearly a day’s net pay for me, so I crocheted a yarn “idiot cord” to attach them to myself through my coat sleeves so I couldn’t drop them. ( Our mom called them “idiot cords”, a method of keeping “idiot children” from losing their mittens all the time.) I failed to do that with the red pair of lighter mittens I bought later and have lost track of them. Still have the grey gloves but they need to have one fingertip darned – not a wear or moth hole, the knit got cut when my pocket knife slipped while slicing chunks of hard salami during a ski tour snack break. Thickness of the gloves probably kept me from cutting myself.
If your honey has chronically cold hands, a pair of these (maybe in Valentine’s Day red!) might be a welcome gift. They have really expanded the color range. Their classic mountaineer’s sweater is also ridiculously warm – I bought one used back in the early 80’s and used to ski in it. But I could not claim that it shrunk when it got too tight through the torso 20 years later (my bad.) Passed it along to a skinny guy who ran ultra-marathons.
I also wear wool socks year round. I’ve got Merino t-shirts for our colder weather and some Smart wool hiking socks that refuse to die.
One thing I discovered about blended yarns when you are buying wool content socks: try to avoid anything with nylon content. The problem with nylon is that it doesn’t stretch like wool. So as a sock stretches, the nylon fiber core in the yarn acts like a cutting wire against the wool fibers that surround it.
I first noticed that on my own and on customers’ early classic Ragg wool socks back in the 70’s – they were 85% wool and 15% nylon but over months of wear the heels would “go bald”. All the wool fibers would get worn away by friction and the cutting effect of the monofilament until nothing was left but a mesh of the nylon threads. Nylon spandex or other stretch nylons don’t do that since they give with the springy wool.
One of my favorite sweaters is a Royal Navy officers wool sweater I bought while serving with some Brits. Several of us wore them at sea on US ships and a few years later the USN adopted a similar (though not the same quality) sweater. A couple decades later I am long retired and still swear by those RN sweaters when a Navy blue wool sweater is suitable for wearing. Great warmth and the joy of wearing comfortable wool…not scratchy wool. PS - those sweaters are a bit tight these days.
Willowleaf, attached are photos of some of my paddles on the Fjord at Pangnirtung on Baffin Island, as promised.
coldest at -65F. I’ll get to the connection to paddling after an initial cold story.
In 1975 I was sent to Eielson AFB, outside of Fairbanks AK for 45 days as part of a K-135 tanker task force to support reconnaissance missions around the Arctic Circle. A few hours before we left home base we learned that a KC-135 had crashed shortly after take off on their mission. We proceeded to fly and arrive many hours later, along with an accident investigation team on board. I recall clearly that it was -57F when we landed. Due to the crash investigation, all missions were grounded for the next couple of weeks. Turns out that the crashed aircraft had a maintenance problem that needed to be repaired before take off and the crew was not supplied with the usual external heater during the wait. They were delayed at the parking spot for at least two hours sitting there in the -60F cold. Hydraulic seal leaks were a very common problem in those temperatures, especially with planes temporarily sent north from southern climes. Shortly after repair they did take off, but the landing gear failed to retract and the crew failed to fly the aircraft properly. They entered a pre-planned turn, but loss of lift due to still down gear caused them to auger into the Tanana River. We believe it was due to thought processes and reactions having been affected by the hours of extreme cold soaking.
For the first week we were there, the temperature hovered around and below -60F and never got above -40F for the first 8 days. Bored to death, I decided to do some hiking in the 3 hours of barely useable daylight available in late December. The Alaska oil pipeline project was nearby under construction at the time. I donned all of my cold weather gear and headed out in the thick ice fog toward the construction area, 1.5 hours to hike out, 1.5 hours to get back to warm quarters.
Fast forward 34 years to the first ever Yukon 1000 mile canoe race on a much warmer day. We had recently paddled across the Arctic Circle on a +90F degree day. It does get that warm there. From the bow seat on an unusually long straight section of the river I noticed 4 black dots on the horizon above the river. Soon I identified them as a flight of F-16 fighter jets directly approaching us. I waved my paddle overhead as a greeting (my son was a F-16 pilot, but not there). As they reached us they each hit the afterburners for a “burning climb” straight up over us. Later, after the race ended on my drive back to Whitehorse I stopped at base Flight Operations to thank them for the show.
Thanks so much for posting those – amazing landscape.
What did you use to skin your kayak?
To cover the kayak frame I used 10oz tent canvas and Weather Guard house paint X3 coats. Didn’t leak a drop!
Do you still have that boat? I’m a big fan of skin-on-frames myself. I have one hand built rigid frame (pegged wood skeleton with urethane coated nylon skin) and 4 folding aluminum and fabric versions in the current fleet.
No, I gave it away when I left.