98.8F

This post will be a combination book review and random things I learned from CMC Hiking I course. I just got done with a book called "98.6 Degrees: The art of keeping your ass alive" by Cody Lundin. As you can tell one would probably not share it with younger children. Other then some of the language it is very good. It covers a wide range of material in a good amount of depth, tells you what parts you really should practice and which you should get further training to be able to do.

The critical point that I took away is that there are two things that you really need to do. One is regulate body temperature this includes staying dry and warm in the cold and cool (possibly wet) in the heat. A couple of things that help with this is dressing properly for the weather. This usually involves layers and none of your clothing involving cotton. For example I got a very good deal on dry fit shirts from Target and Sports Authority. They are of the "Champion" and "Under Armor" brand. Also got a polyester jacket for insulation. The last item to be used on the outside is the previously posted rain jacket. For pants I only have a thin pair of nylon pants and rain pants. This is good enough as one doesn't loose very much heat through the legs.

For hot weather you are looking at the dry fit shirts and are now worried about sun burn. Some clothing is SPF rated and you should be able to trust it. Others are not rated and might be just as good (it costs about $5,000 per fabric/color combination to have tested). If you want to take an educated guess that the fabric, hold it up to the light and then start lightly pulling on it. If you can see through it, you can be burned through it. It was mentioned in this book as well as the speaker from GoLite that in dry hot climates cotten might be your best friend during the day as it does pipe off heat very well. Granted because deserts are so dry they tend to get very cold at night so one really needs to have another plan for when the sun starts to go down.

He goes into a *lot* of detail of how to regulate tempature in the first few chapters of the book, which turns out to be very informative.

Considering your emergency packs you really want to have things that can keep you warm/cold. A space blanket is great for this because it reflects heat. That means wrap it around yourself to keep your heat in, or put it between you and the Sun to keep heat off of you.

Also consider that when wandering around when you are hot (say in 100F weather) or cold you rapidly lose intelligence. To the tune of about 25% for moderate heat.

Another thing mentioned in the book repeatadly is to stay hydrated. A very nice feature of water is that it helps to regulate temperature because it doesn't heat or cool very quickly (high specific heat). The other reason is that when you have lost just 2% of your body weight in water you are bout 25% less intelligent. This effect combines with the above mentioned heat loss, so if you are hot and thirsty you are about 50% dummber then when you are sitting on your couch well hydrated.

In short regulate your tempature and drink lots of water.