A Slight Miscalculation

Tasmania has had a really cool winter this year but the last couple of weeks have been relatively mild.

I decided to head up to the Rodway Range in Mt Field National Park and spend a night out. I usually trust the website windy.com for my forecasts as it uses 5 different weather models (including the one that the BOM uses) and is generally very accurate. All of the models indicated a relatively mild night with the coldest temperature forecast being -1°C.

I would normally use my winter sleeping bag at this time of year but as it was forecast to be so mild I thought I would get away with using my summer bag, aMont Helium 450 (actually a 500 as it’s an XL).

I should have known better….

It was a very benign and sunny day as I walked up onto the range and found a level patch of snow for my campsite at around 1370 metres altitude.

Close to sunset I got a hint of what lay ahead…it was already -3°C. Shortly after sunset it was -4°C and falling…

There wasn’t much wind but with the way the temperature was dropping I decided to wear some clothes in the sleeping bag, along with myMont Guide Hoodie Primaloft jacket. A good move as it turned out.

I had my trusty Garmin Tempe digital thermometer  hanging outside the tent and at approximately 6 am I checked it’s reading on my watch. A minimum of -9.5°C! Currently -8.8°C.

Now the Helium 450 is rated to -7°C for a warm sleeper and at just shy of 67years of age I would have thought that I feel the cold a bit more than some others but remarkably I was at no time cold, just cool and I actually slept fairly well.

But next time I’ll take the Spindrift 

Geoff Murray
Mont Ambassador