Dressing for extreme cold

Janet Carr

Dec 8

It took me a long time to get used to dressing for extreme cold but now I have it down to a fine art.

In South Africa it gets cold in winter, but it is a different kind of cold. The houses are built to keep cool in extreme heat, and there is no central heating. This means that when it is cold outside it can be even colder inside, particularly in old houses. People therefore do not wear heavy coats or jackets outside as it can be up to 27°C during the day in winter. At night and inside, though, it is cold so people wear thick woolly socks and heavy sweaters and jumpers. The toilet seats are sooo cold if you get up in the night. It can be up in the 30's (Celsius) during the day, but then plunge to zero at night.

Here is a family member getting ready for bed in her mom's house. She has winter sheets on the bed, a duvet, three winter blankets, a heavy crocheted quilt, socks, slippers, thermal underwear top and bottom, winter pyjamas, a scarf , hat and a very hot water bottle.

DSCN0417 copy (1)

When I stay there I wear the following (all at the same time) in the evenings

2 thermal long sleeved t shirts
2 regular long sleeved t shirts
a thick woolly jacket
a dressing gown
thermal long johns
pyjamas
socks
slippers

and on the bed I sleep in

flannel sheets
two duvets
three blankets
with a hot water bottle (sometimes two)

In Sweden on the other hand, because of excellent central heating, it is always warm inside apartments, offices, buses, trains, stations. You can wear just a t shirt and shorts. Sometimes I find it too warm inside so our thermostat is set to 19°C/66°F. We have district heating (our garbage is burned to generate our heating and hot water) with radiators in each room that are universally set by the co-op, but can be individually turned to a lower temperature. At night I sleep in a t shirt and turn the radiators way down Otherwise it is too hot for me to sleep.

Outside is another matter. If you have a warm jacket and gloves/hat you are good to go. When the photograph above was taken it was -17°C/1°F and all I wore was underwear, jeans, short-sleeved t shirt, boots, jacket and scarf. I should have had gloves but had forgotten them, so I put my hands in the special little thermal pockets in my down jacket. This Peak Performance jacket has been going for at least ten years and is perfect for very cold weather. Because Stockholm is quite far south, I generally only wear this jacket during extremely cold spells. Because everything is centrally heated, shops and buses get very hot if you are bundled up for any length of time..

Icy surfaces are far worse for me than the cold. Newly-fallen snow is not a problem. The big issue arises when the snow has melted a little become uneven from people walking on it. It then freezes into treacherous ice. It is literally like walking on an ice rink. The municipality uses grit to allow for grip but they are not always fast at doing it it. So loads of people slip and fall during the winter. Sometimes the municipality hands out free clip-on crampons in very icy weather, to try and reduce the cost to society of the falls.