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Ten degrees winter camping threshold ❄

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I find my winter camping gear is good down to roughly about ten degrees. Colder then that things get potentially dicey.

  • My stacks of sleeping bags are comfortable down to around ten degrees, any colder and my feet and hands start to feel cold at night.
  • It seems like my truck’s starting battery and load from thick oil increases at below ten degrees, leading to somewhat sluggish starting after a night of opening and closing doors.
  • My propane heater throws off less heat below ten degrees, the camp stove cooks slower and the lantern is dimmer due to propane and condensate starting to conjeal in the lines and regulators.
  • House / Accessory Battery voltages drop leading to them tripping out due to under voltage much more quickly.
  • Much greater risk of the propane heater or stove malfunctioning due to conjealed lines from condensate and jelled propane, plugging up regulators and propane lines.

I’ve camped a few degrees below ten degrees but it’s not pleasant and leads to more headaches then it’s often worth. But above ten degrees generally things are smooth sailing with the gear and set up I have.

Sunset Time Over Next 30 Days

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In some ways this graph is actually more interesting on how I did... also sharing on my github. Basically, I took New York State, broke it into 1 km squares which I took the centroid of, calculated the sunset time for the 113,506 points, burned them into the raster values, then contoured the rasters in 5 minute intervals. And a bunch of hacks around time zones and time of day it make it work. I won't argue this code is elegant but works well.

Github - Sunset in Next Month

Sunset Time Over Next 30 Days

Christmas is History

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The lights of Christmas are dimmed, as yet another holiday season transitions to the cold hard realities of January.

The calendar reminds us that the darkest days of the year are beyond us, but it seems like we really aren’t making that much progress. The Christmas songs have been taken down from the radio, and the Christmas lights are rapidly being dimmed and extinguished every night, as we proceed towards New Years.

Ashokan Reservior

Next comes January. A very cold and dark month, although every day gets a bit longer. Today marked the first twilight at 5 PM in a while, every day will get a bit longer. The weather may still get a bit colder, but we all know what is next in distant future — spring.

Untitled [Expires August 24 2024]

I generally am not a fan of the long cold nights of darkness, when I usually stay in town and try to conserve money for next year’s adventures. But it’s part of living in Upstate New York during the long bleak winters.

Snowmobile Tracks