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Edit: It turns out battery-powered heating in clothing actually is used on Mt. Everest: Hotronic makes battery-powered heated insoles that are used by Everest climbers, for example. Battery powered jackets and other types of clothing are also common, but the models I checked only provide warmth for a few hours (e.g. this jacket, which runs 3-10 hours on a ...
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Hiking blisters are from friction. When things shift, your sock is more likely to stay with your boot than your foot as the two fabrics (or leather and fabric) will catch each other. This leaves the sock moving against your foot, which causes friction. When you wear two socks, specifically a smooth liner and a wool hiking sock, the outer sock moves ...
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Here is an article that quantifies the heat loss effects of cotton, polyester and polypropylene: Rossi et al., Dry and Wet Heat Transfer Through Clothing Dependent on the Clothing Properties Under Cold Conditions, International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics (JOSE) 2008, Vol. 14, No. 1, 69–76.
Experimental Summary
Here is a rough summary of ...
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Firstly there's the weight issue - as Paparazzi commented, batteries are heavy!
Then there's temperature - battery performance drops considerably in the cold
And finally reliability - if your electrical circuit goes, you will freeze unless you have properly insulated clothing...
so why bother having the batteries at all?
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Humidity
Keeping clothing dry in normal weather can be challenging, but high humidity or precipitation regions can make this even more difficult.
That's because humidity is really a "relative" measure and means the amount of water vapor that the air can hold at a given temperature before condensation.
The condensation can occur in the sky as rain, near ...
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The short answer is, it varies. The three factors that most influence the UV transmission factor of clothing are kind of obvious:
Material: Some materials are better at absorbing UV than others; for example, the paper cited below suggests that polyester absorbs more UV light (particularly UVB) than cotton.
Weave: The thicker and more tightly woven a piece ...
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Your legs aren't as sensitive to temperture extremes. Right now it's winter here and I'm walking around outside with a regular shirt, a wool sweater, and a wind breaker on my torso. Inside I take off the windbreaker an sweater. However, inside or outside, I'm wearing the same single-layer pants and it's not a problem. My legs don't feel hot inside or ...
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To be honest I was dubious about getting something that I thought was gimmicky, but my son’s Scout troop was selling custom Buffs to raise group funds so I ended up buying one.
A Buff is just a tube of lightweight, stretchy material.
I’ve found them useful in three particular situations:
They are thin, so can be worn like a hat under a bicycle helmet for ...
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Yes it is possible to sunburn through clothing. Clothing does block some of the Ultraviloet radiation but not 100%. A lot of outdoor recreation clothing is now marketed with treatments that gives additional UV protection.
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Gloves or Mittens?
All things being equal (fabrics, thickness, and insulation), mittens are warmer than gloves. Mitts trap body heat by keeping your fingers together and reducing evaporative heat loss. In frigid temperatures, a layered mitt system is the best choice for warmth. Layers dry faster than one heavily insulated piece, and let you swap out wet ...
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Yes, there have been studies on how much various fabrics insulate when wet and dry. I remember Dr Murray Hamlet mentioning these statistics in one of his lectures on outdoor survival in the cold.
It's been a long time, but I think cotton looses something like 80% of its insulating properties when wet. I may be off on the exact number, but I definitely ...
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They are basically measures for the quality of the down fill.
The 90/10 part refers to the mixture of down and feathers. As down contains nearly no rigid structure, one adds some amount of feathers to give the whole filling some more stability. The example of 90/10 means 90% down, 10% feathers and seems to be quite a typical mixture. I'm not sure about the ...
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One thing you can look into are long-legged thermal underwear - this wouldn't effect how you look on the outside as they go under your clothes and create an insulating layer to help keep you warm. Women can get away with this in everyday life with a nice pair of tights. So for city life, as you stated, this should mean no difference in your every day ...
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Although black clothing absorbs radiation from the sun more than white clothing, this is somewhat offset by the fact that it also emits it more efficiently. Good absorbers are also good emitters. If you're standing in dark shade and the objects in your environment are cooler than the temperature of your clothing, then black clothing will theoretically cause ...
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This is simply a question of the increased surface area of gloves which will therefore increase temperature (heat flux) exchange. Same reason why foxes have smaller ears as further away they are located from the equator. This reduces the heat flux of polar foxes and in this case keeps the body temperature higher. Compared to gloves mittens are therefore ...
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Some general rules:
layer system also for the hands is a good idea but those gardening gloves won't work pretty well
better use inner liner gloves (wool or even a softshell glove) and a warm mitten as the outer layer
to avoid cooling off use hats (again use a layer-system) including a warm winter hat which covers the ears (also see this about heat loss ...
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There are a lot of unspecified variables involved here... type of socks, fit of the shoe/boot, type of shoe, conditions you are hiking in, etc.
But in general, double-socking may offer the following which may help prevent blisters:
reduced friction - assuming one sock is a thin slick liner sock which tends to stick to your foot while the outer sock ...
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Make a big fire. This may sound silly and couterintuitive, but the reason is pretty simple.
If you make a small fire you need to put your stuff pretty close to it to have any chance of drying it in a decent amount of time.
And if you put clothes or boots near the fire, then you concretely risk to burn them.
While if you make a bigger fire, your equipment ...
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A lot depends on the climate, on your budget, and on how much you sweat on the move.
Pros and cons of merino
Merino is the king if you want to prevent odour and most people find that it's the most pleasant against the skin. It wicks quite well but holds around 25% more water than synthetics and takes around 50% longer to dry. Another issue is abrasion - if ...
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There's a reason desert cultures almost all wear coverings from head to toe.
Three main things to consider:
Protection from the sun's harmful rays.
Air flow for convection cooling
Moisture retention (you heard that right) for evaporative cooling.
Despite the convention, "cotton kills," in the desert those same properties (slow drying, water retention) are ...
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Despite the convention, "cotton kills," in the desert those same properties (slow drying, water retention) are useful for keeping you cool by slowing down the near instant evaporation experienced at such high heat and low humidity. Your goal is to make that moisture work as long for you as possible.
Since "water is 24.5 times more conductive than air," (...
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I'm not sure why pants don't receive the same attention but the layers are available.
You can easily find base, insulating, and shell layers.
Olin's answer gives some good reasons layering pants may not seem as common. In reply:
(2) There are full-side-zip pants for mountaineers (crampons) and wide-opening pants for skiers/boarders and regular boots.
(...
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Nylon, among other synthetics, is an ideal material for clothing for most outdoor pursuits for several reasons. I will use the example of cotton as the traditional fabric for comparison:
Durability: Nylon itself can come in several varieties, some of which are more durable than others due to different weights and weaves. The fabric can handle abrasion, ...
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Besides being the manliest thing you could ever wear outdoors:
Durability
Have you ever had a flannel shirt, or pair of pants? If you have, then odds are you still have them. They are extremely abrasion resistant, and won't melt or burst into flames if a hot coal from the fire lands on them. There's a reason why lumberjacks favoured flannel shirts, and it'...
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Correct size. That might sound obvious, but consider also width and height (of the instep). Each make is a bit different, so there's a need to try on many before you find one that fits really good. For all-day trips get boots one size larger than your usual office shoes are.
Vibram sole
If properly maintained, leather upper is much more waterproof and ...
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Sleeping with the socks on your torso is the most effective method I have found, and it does not require anything you wouldn't already have. For this, you just:
Take socks off
Put them inside your shirt, under all layers of clothing. They should be touching your skin.
Sleep
Wake up in the morning with dry socks.
This works with a lot of things: socks, ...
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As other people have mentioned mittens are warmer in almost all circumstances, a large part of this is that your entire hand is keeping the inside warm rather than each finger trying to warm itself individually.
Where they fall down is when you need to take your hand out of the mitts, everything from taking photos to having something to eat becomes a chore ...
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This depends on the actual type of clothing and mostly on the wind speed.
The wind evaporates moisture from the body. Since evaporation is a cooling process and absorbs latent heat away from the body, the person feels colder. Skin always has moisture on it. Just like a tree transpires, the human body is constantly having water evaporated from it. Wind ...
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