Tips for outdoor during the dark winter?

Question

The dark winter is approaching on the northern hemisphere. At my latitude (67½°N), the sun sets at 15:00 by now, and a little more than a month away the polar night will start. So far, I'm virtually not doing any outdoor activities between October and February, due to the dark, cold conditions. But I still crave for the mountains!

How can I still enjoy outdoor life when daylight lasts only a few hours?

Some thought:

• Headlights, but last only a short time
• Full moon, particularly with snow-cover, should be quite bright. Bright enough for longer trips?
• Any other thoughts?

Answer 1

Carry a low lumen headlamp and a brighter torch (flashlight). Use a long lasting, low lumen headlamp for basic activities and only use the torch when you really need the extra light. This is the headlamp I use (and we read, play cards, etc. in addition to hiking after dark). It's the Petzl Tikka Plus 2.

For torches, I recommend looking into Fenix products. They offer very good lumen/duration/weight trade offs. Yes, Fenix tends to be quite pricey, but my experience is that no one else offers the same lumens and duration for the weight.

Full moon is not something you want your life depending on (and it would). Cloud cover can shut down the moon pretty quick and for long periods of time.

Answer 2

"How can I still enjoy outdoor life when daylight lasts only a few hours?"

There is a plenty of ways: orienteering (on skis/snowshoes), skiing and multi-day ski trips, training in emergency/rescue operations.

A certain change of mindset is required to keep outdoor activity an night, because it provides some challenges:

It's harder to see, what you are doing

So take a good headlamp, take an emergency set of batteries for it and take a spare headlamp if you are going solo. It's easy to set up a tent or collect wood in headlamp light. It's harder to do ropework, but it's definitely doable with some practice. So this is a merely technical issue, which one can adapt to. But also

It's harder to see the environment

The real problem is you can't see the environment outside of your torch beam and you can't see too far anyway.

This means that you can't travel on difficult unknown terrain. I mainly mean steep slopes, rocks, drops, ... So you can walk and you can drop a rope, but you don't know where to go and what you'll find at the end of the rope (or two ropes down).

What you can do?

1. Choose easy terrain, that you can predict will give you no surprises. Like hills instead of mountains.
2. Or know your terrain beforehead: either you have visited this place before or you have studied it when there still was light (useful for training sessions).
3. Don't try to cross hard unknown landscape, except in emergency.

A good map is a must, it will provide your brain a lot of information you usually get from you eyes. That's a fundamental difference between day and night orienteering.

Anyway, don't be overconfident. And expect to have you speed something like 2 times lower.

It's harder to find and rescue

If you are going to remote areas, take a friend or two. If you brake your leg it'll take much longer for emergency guys to get to you and to find you. It takes ages for a large group of people to find an unconscious man even in a tiny 1 km * 1 km forest at night.

And if you are lost and start to worry/panic, he will help you calm down (or vice versa);)

Starter's kit

• Take a day skiing trip along a known track
• Take a two-day trip like this
• Join an orienteering competition or organise your own
• Plan a short 2-3 day trip on some easy and not too remote terrain
• If you are planning a summer mountain trip with you friends, organise a training for them in a known place

TL;DR

You can do a lot of things at night, but acting in a dark world is fundamentally different. Adaptation is required and a group of friends is required too.

Still sitting near a bright fire and chatting with you friends after a long day (night?;)) of cold and dark adventures is one of the best moments you can get.