What do you wear to stay warm underground?

[Ian Ball]

The 'Little Dragon' was a chemical reaction powered air way heater popular with mountain/cav rescue a few years ago, I can't imagine it isn't popular still though I can't see much about it on the web.

Combined with Pitlamp's suggestion of a pipe down the shirt it's doubly effective.

 

[aricooperdavis]

There?s some interesting commentary about this in the article on airway warming here: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/fdocuments.in/amp/document/equipment-for-airway-warming-in-the-treatment-of-accidental-hypothermia.html

There's a fantastic quote in that article, detailing how one particular study was conducted:

"Table 1: Results from a pilot study investigating mistakes made by operatives in a cold room. [...] The subjects climbed into an arctic type sleeping bag in the cold room when they became too miserable to continue with the experiment."

 

[Boy Engineer]

I laughed at that too. Sounded too much like doing PE at my school.

 

[mikem]

The Little Dragon is rarely seen nowadays, for reasons explained here:
https://forums.outdoorsmagic.com/showthread.php/10982-treating-hypothermia-in-the-field

Info on 2nd version:
https://smwcrt.org/way-out/WayOut/issue7.html

 

[paul]

A useful resource on Keeping Dry & Staying Warm generally in the outdoors which has some relevance: https://www.outdoorgearcoach.co.uk/publications/keeping-dry-staying-warm/

 

[paul]

Combined with Pitlamp's suggestion of a pipe down the shirt it's doubly effective.

One of the things I miss about having retired the old Fisma generator and carbide light was the instant warmth of putting the nice warm generator inside my oversuit when feeling chilly.

 

[aricooperdavis]

The Little Dragon is rarely seen nowadays, for reasons explained here [...]

I think that AW is still a valuable tool in the field, not because it attempts re-warming (which is practically impossible in a cave environment in the UK), but because it limits further hear loss.

I buy the argument that in severe hypothermia rewarming in this way is problematic, and I understand that such a tool can't realistically do any significant re-warming, but I've yet to see good evidence that using AW in the field as a tool to prevent further heat loss is harmful, or even undesirable.

Happy to be shown otherwise though!