Sunday, December 14, 2008

Back to the arctic

A brutal little shuffle today, with H and Jasper the Wonderdog. Piercingly cold and scouringly windy. The missing piece of gear for me in these conditions was my Turtle Fur neck gaiter, which, pulled up to my eyeballs over the ear flaps of the Outdoor Research Peruvian hat that I do have with me, does the trick. H was missing a similar piece of gear. Buffs just don’t cut the Minnesota mustard. Jasper, however, was fashionably attired in a body-length wrap of naturally curly doodle fur that kept him feeling warm while looking super-cool. He did regret his lack of shades.

As of an hour or so ago, the temp here was 1°F (-17°C), with a windchill of -21°F (-29°C). Tomorrow’s high is predicted to be -1, with “windchills approaching -30.” Sweet B and I will definitely not be going out for our morning or afternoon constitutionals. Too bad, because we both really enjoy our walks, and we’ll be logy and grumpy without them. Weatherwise, it will be good to get back to balmy New England, where all they’re dealing with is a catastrophic ice storm.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yep - a neck gaiter is a critical piece of gear. Need to block all of the places where hot air can leak out using leg gaiters, balaclava, gloves with gauntlets.

Mark Alvarez said...

Great blog, Philip.

I have some OR mitts, as featured in your current post, and out here I'm using some old but wonderful Patagonias.