Peeing in your tent and other ways to make winter camping tolerable

“Bad decisions make for great stories.”

I think I read that on a boardwalk T-shirt one summer, and it warmed my heart. On the weekend after Thanksgiving, though, I was cocooned inside a sleeping bag for work near the confluence of a creek and river in Western Pennsylvania, thinking my bad decision was just dumb. The Inquirer does not make me sleep in tents. I do this to myself.

Summer seemed so far away on that night — temperatures dipped into single digits — and I knew if I unzipped my sleeping bag to use the bathroom, I’d never get warm again. That’s a good segue into my advice for winter camping and hiking: It’s perfectly fine to pee in a bottle in your tent.

Life in the Philadelphia region means four months of steady cold, along with brief spells when it’s worse (like right now), and for many people, that’s when hiking and camping end. But only being a three-season outdoors lover is like eating a cheesesteak with no cheese. You’re missing out on the whole experience and, even better, the trails are less crowded and there are no biting insects.

“It is a great time of year to get out because there’s heightened solitude and quiet and the woods are a real tranquil place in the winter,” said Brook Lenker, executive director of the Keystone Trails Association. “I find exceptional value in that.”

The key to spending time outdoors when it’s freezing, is proper gear. It’s vastly more important in winter than any other season.

“There’s a saying that goes ‘there’s no such as bad weather, there’s just inappropriate gear,’” Lenker said.

Outdoor gear, particularly winter wear, isn’t cheap but if you buy quality items, they can be a lifetime investment. Lenker says layering is key, particularly wools and synthetics, as opposed to cotton. “Puffer” jacket technology has advanced light years in the last decade, getting thinner and warmer, and there’s even heated vests and pants on the market, though you shouldn’t depend on batteries to keep you warm.

Lenker says it’s best to see how you react to the cold and layer those body parts in particular. I learned this the hard way, last month, while rucking along Lake Wallenpaupack in frigid temperatures as ice was building up on my mustache: there’s a reason people cover their faces in Duluth. I turned around after 10 minutes.

“I find my hands get really cold. They’re really sensitive. So I like to wear a tight, thin glove beneath a heavier mitten, that way when you take the mittens off to use your hands, they’re still covered,” he said.

Lenker also recommended trekking poles with the ability to punch through snow, crampons and microspikes for better traction. He also said winter hikers often tend to disregard hydration.

“You can actually get dehydrated in the winter pretty easily because you’re still exerting yourself and the air is dryer,” he said.

Another thing to be mindful of in winter, Lenker said, is hiking with dogs. I learned that lesson too, near Lake Wallenpaupack, when my pit bull, Wanda, protested walks. I bought her a pink, flannel dress that weekend, but she needed booties for her paws.

If a trail is steep, challenging, and wet more often than not, in the summer, it will be more difficult in the winter. Lenker said the waterfall trail at Ricketts Glen State Park, in Luzerne, Sullivan, and Columbia counties, is a good example.

The trail’s wildly popular with hikers in the summer but downright dangerous in the winter and limited to people with crampons, ropes, and ice axes. Other trails in the park are open for snowshoeing, a calorie-burner you definitely can’t do in the summer.

Winter hiking, Lenker said, should be about getting out rather than major challenges.

“The point is getting out, even it’s a short hike on a flat retail,” he said. “You’ll be getting fresh air, sunshine that’s in high demand, and you’ll feel better about yourself when you’re done. Generally speaking, there’s no good reason not to do it.”

One eternal piece of advice when hiking in Pennsylvania, outside of summer, is to wear some safety orange. There are a lot of hunting seasons in the state.

Ricketts Glen, possibly the crown jewel of Pennsylvania state parks, is where I first camped in winter. I had to dig out a pit in the snow to pitch my tent and spent a February night there listening to coyotes yipping to one another in the cold.

Many of the campgrounds operated by Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources scale way back in the winter and campsites are limited. Ricketts Glen’s vast campground had just a handful open when I camped there. Most private campgrounds are seasonal.

In November, while writing about hunting camps, I spent two nights at Clear Creek State Park, in Jefferson. Nearly all of the park’s picturesque (and warm) cabins were full of hunters and there was only one other tent set up in the campground, besides my own. That tent had a wood-burning fireplace inside it. It was a weekend of hard lessons, particularly in a sleeping bag rated for three seasons, winter being the exclusion.

Winter camping, like hiking, is all about the gear, but since you’ll be spending extended time in the elements, that gear and layering is even more important. I asked my colleague Bill Bender, an avid hiker and camper, what he thinks is most important for overnights in the cold. It’s all about the sleeping bag, he said.

“I would spend the money for a bag rated 30 degrees lower than the lowest expected temperature,” Bender told me. “I’d throw in a sleeping bag liner that can add an additional 10 degrees of warmth. They’re great.”

I didn’t do any of this, of course, but on night two, stuffed every piece of fabric I brought with me — jackets, an insulated hunting suit, my heated vest, shirts, dirty clothes, and a unicorn blanket I bought my daughter at a truck stop, into the sleeping bag with me and was relatively toasty all night.

There’s no need to suffer as I approach 50, I tell myself, and that’s why I’m now contemplating one of those tents with a fireplace, even a tiny travel trailer. Outdoorsman Mark Campbell, of Lancaster County, shares the same philosophy: he likes camping in winter, particularly at French Creek State Park in Berks and Chester counties, but he tows a heated camper there with his truck.

“I used to make fun of people who camp like I do,” he said. “But I get the solitude of winter camping and I stay warm.”

My only problem that weekend at Clear Creek was the bathroom. Unzipping the sleeping bag would waste the warmth I’d built up. Luckily, I had an empty 28-ounce Gatorade bottle in there with me.

“Embracing the pee bottle, and shrugging off the societal baggage that goes with it may just be the step you need to take toward true on-trail enlightenment,” Backpacker Magazine wrote last year.

Peeing in a tent isn’t as simple for women, but there are funnels you can purchase.

As for number two, that’s a bridge too far in any season. I’m not that enlightened. Go outside and remember to dig a cathole if you’re not near an actual toilet.