Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Freezing Camelbak at Night

How do you prevent your Camelbak hose and bladder from freezing overnight? Or for that matter, freeze hiking? I know they have the insulated hoses but there has to be another method.

Cody

If you are talking about night hiking, you blow back the water in the hose to reservoir and keep the bite valve near body to keep ice from forming. You should consider a 1-liter Nalgene bottle in a insulated sleeve, in severe conditions. The insulation sleeve for the tube is just above useless in the 20s.

If you are talking in camp at night, just empty it. I don't like putting these thing in my down sleeping bag.

Good advice, thank you. Heading up to overnight Whitney sept 24 and lows at night are dipping in the mid 20s. Was a bit concerned about that happening. My line froze once for me on Baldy but it was a day hike and eventually the line cleared. I guess my best bet will be to empty the bladder and pump in the morning. I guess sleeping with the filter in my sleeping bag is the way to prevent it from freezing. Or not filter....

Cody

For camping in freezing conditions, I've had good results thus far putting it in my pack and leaving it in the tent with the water blown out of the hose back into the reservoir.

For hiking - blowing it into the reservoir has always worked for me (down to ~9*F on the summit of Whitney once)

Heck, Prestone anti-freeze works wonders....ooops...that be for cars and trucks.



As for those Nalgene bottles...

Be sure the cap is secured tightly and make sure you have the bottles upside down in your pack or in your tent. Water freezes from the top down.

You may want to consider sleeping with your Nalgene. That is as far as I am going to go with this one folks.




Being a homeowner, I have foam plumbing tubular pipe insulation to keep my water line from freezing. They come in various sizes and I have used them on my Camelbak hose. I secure the insulation to my Camelbak using duct tape at both ends and use strips of duct tape in the middle for a good snug fit. Yes, it is weight, but it does work.

Best prevention is keeping the line clear as mentioned earlier.

This is one of the reasons why I don't own a camelbak. While they are useful for hiking, the cold mountaineering stuff they just aren't reliable. Frozen water is just extra weight. Then again, nalgenes are suseptable to freezing also.

Here is what I do:

To keep the water accessible (I don't drink nearly enough if I have to dig through my pack to get at it) I have a water bottle parka, and it clips to my shoulder strap and straps around my hip strap and stays. The rest of my water is placed in my pack, close to my back and surrounded by my warm clothing.

The Nalgene caps will freeze on if it's cold enough, this is where an ice axe can come in handy (done this one on Shasta). We'll leave it at that.

At night I used to sleep with my water bottles, it worked well for years. That was until I got a down bag and then the water bottle compresses the down and creates a heat sink. So now what I do is place the waterbottles between my pad and my climbing partners pad. Even in sub zero temps the temp between the bags stays pretty warm, and it even limits the mountain bromance a bit.

I've heard of the water upside down stuff a bit and it makes a bit of sense (the water pressure decreases the freezing temperature) the part you have to watch out for is the ice build up between the threads.

I've stopped using my Camelbak bladders when hiking on most Sierra Nevada trails, and use a .75 liter Camelbak bottle, with a Steripen for purifying water. Reason? There are enough water sources available to make regular re-supply quite easy, with the possible exception of the upper portions of the MW trail. A full Camelbak bladder (2 or 3 liters) weighs a lot, especially if one is trying to reduce the amount of carry weight.

Yes, sleeping with the Nalgene is a good idea, especially in full-up Winter conditions. I keep the Nalgen bottle in an ensulated sleeve and fill the bottle with warm water before retiring for the night. (The Camelbak bottles with the flip-up drinking spouts can and do leak sometimes, such as after altitude changes.) I also keep a pee-bottle in my sleeping bag, with an easily recognizable lid...for reasons that ought to be obvious...ha ha.