The hardest part of an Arctic travel day, besides toilet duties in a wind, is the first 20 or 25 minutes. You’ve changed from your heavy camp clothes into thin travel clothes, but you haven’t warmed up from exercise.
Slipping your feet into boots that have sat in the sled all night at -50˚ is particularly excruciating. Then, once you start hauling the heavy sled, your fingers typically go numb. It’s not the numbness of frostbite — that feels different — but the circulation in the fingers slows down. A physician I once traveled with suggested that lactic acid may build up in the fingers during this time.
It takes 20 to 25 minutes to warm up at the start of the travel day. Photo: Jerry Kobalenko
Screaming barfies
In a little less than half an hour, the exercise of manhauling has warmed you up sufficiently that you begin to feel your fingers. As you do, the circulation speeds up again — a process my doctor friend called reactive hyperemia — and the hands are in agony as the built-up lactic acid is reabsorbed. Ice climbers call this the screaming barfies.
This first half hour is so unpleasant that once you have warmed up, you don’t want to go through it again until the following morning. At the same time, you need to stop once in a while to eat, drink, pee, and maybe stretch the muscles a bit. Some people like to do this every hour; I prefer every hour and a half or two hours.
A quick break. Photo: Jerry Kobalenko
If your break lasts too long, you lose your exercise metabolism and have to start from scratch. That means another 25 minutes of numb fingers, followed by the screaming barfies. It may vary from person to person, but I’ve found that seven minutes is the longest break I can take and still stay warm. It makes for quick rest stops, but it’s possible to do everything within seven minutes.
You quickly throw on a warm parka. (I keep mine on top of the sled, under the bungee cords.) Pee, drink. The liquid should be neither too cold nor too hot, so you can glug it down quickly. Occasionally, you have to stuff food into your cheeks and chew it as you begin to manhaul again.
Theoretically, you could wear extra layers for those first 20 minutes, until you begin to get too warm, but I find that inefficient. You have to stop, remove the harness, de-layer, put on your outer layer again, then the harness. It’s much faster just to endure that first 20 minutes or so, then keep going all day, following the Seven-Minute Rule when you need a break.
If you want to sit down on the sled to rest or stretch your back muscles, don’t do it for long. Photo: Jerry Kobalenko
