Quote Originally Posted by TxAggie View Post
This is where clothing selection can Med into play. Avoid anything cotton like the plague. Pretty much everything should be synthetics or wool when you're actually in the wet stuff.
If multiple days of rain, keep wearing the wet stuff and keep your dry set for sleeping. Your body needs to recover from all that cold at night, and introducing any type of additional moisture into your sleeping environment wastes energy needed for warmth and recovery.

My $.02.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Completely agree. I've done a few multi-day hikes where a couple days were solid rain. No matter what rain gear you bring, after all day out in it you will be wet. Either from rain, or sweat, or just the damp air. If you are out in cold weather and using down sleep gear there is no way on earth I would get that wet trying to dry out clothes. I go crazy on protecting my down from getting wet in the pack, I sure don't want to make it wet while I sleep. If I know I'm dealing with a couple of days of rain I bring more extra clothing than normal and reserve one outfit for evening and sleep time only. I bring some fire-starting gear that will help make getting a fire going easier than just matches. A small bag of cotton balls with Vaseline on them is great but realistically it's darn hard to get a fire started in a woods soaked by days of rain no matter what so I just assume that I'm unlikely to be doing that at the end of a long, cold, wet hike.

I wear synthetic gear only on the trail (hate wool). If the rain quits I'll be dry again in a few hours just through normal activity. That's actually my drying technique if the rain has stopped for the day. Put the wet gear on and use it. Go for an evening stroll on the trail if it's close to dark rather than just sit and be damp.

But water and down should never meet. It makes me nervous just needing to rely on it when it's cold and rainy because it's badly compromised even if it just gets fairly damp.

I second the notion also of bringing the biggest tarp you can. Cold rainy days suck worse if you are pinned down with no room to move all afternoon or evening at the hammock.