Andy, this is tremendous information. Thanks for highlighting Paul Ramsden’s work and further making it accessible. I’ll share this with others. The Explorer’s Club, among others, can make this even further accessible.
I’ve been following your contributions for years, including your content for rope-soloing, Cold Wars, and Psychovertical. I appreciate your struggle with self-promotion.
Massively important information here Andy, often overlooked or plain body-swerved (particularly by the stove manufacturers, as you rightly point out). My personal experience of the creeping death of CO dates to the late Cretaceous, sharing a snow hole with my old man after he'd just done his ML in the late 1980s. He was keen to spread the knowledge and I was a teenage sponge for any and all of the info and mountain skills, to take into the hills with my dirtbag pals and show off like. It's his fault I ended up as a mountain dreamer, climber, soldier, fly-fisherman and tragic gear-freak, cheers Dad.
Any road up - a winter crossing of the Lairig Ghru was called for, the steep and deepening snow offering the exciting prospect of learning about avalanche detection, walking roped up, nav in whiteout conditions, ice-axe arrest drills and a bivy in a snow hole to top it off. Magic.
All went well, as nobody died or got swallowed in an avalanche - I discovered how difficult contouring (let alone accurately) in a blizzard is, in drifting deep snow and a bitter gale, how hard it is to eat a frozen Marathon bar, and the foam cushioning on my third-hand Barrufaldi goggles started crumbling away, at the worst time ever, naturally. Gear side-note: I recall wearing a royal blue wooly balaclava helmet thing that was itchy, Ron Hill trackies, a smelly Helly with a t-shirt on top, a holey Arran jumper and a top layer of mixed surplus kagoule and overtroos. And a green daysack from Tiso's on Rose Street. I did have proper boots and walking crampons, but you get the picture.
So to the snow hole. We started a bit late on the digging, took a while to find a good safe spot, but teenage me was on burrowing duty and hoiked away with Dad's avalanche shovel, digging like a Jack Russel after a rat, so made up time there. All settled in for the night in our weird little white narrow cave and I got really cold, really quick. Perhaps the metabolic reality kicked in but I was freezing and on the edge of hypothermia I think. No drama, full change of clothes, instant NATO-standard tea, boiled sweetie and can of soup on the stove, backup stove deployed to provide area heat. Sorted.
Until the next morning. I had an absolutely shite night's sleep (of course, I found out - a survival bivy is just that) and the headache which had been hovering the night before came back with a vengeance as the stoves went on for brews to accompany a HotCan of Beans and Sausages (remember them?!) and instant Scott's Porridge Oats for brekky. I remember feeling confused and a bit ill and I made for the rucksacks covering up the entrance so I could throw up outside. Once I'd broken through the bag barrier and fallen into the drift outside, the relief was instant. The cold fresh air was like a slap to the gob. In hindsight, that was CO poisoning and a valuable lesson learned. I don't know why it affected me more than Dad, perhaps as a wiry teenager I was more metabolically highly strung: I felt the cold quicker, and complained of a headache and nausea, but for whatever reason I knew something wasn't right. Perhaps Dad just didn't whinge, as his generation was trained to do.
Reading your article reminded me of something though - and perhaps this might become part of the toolkit to avoid CO poisoning, particularly while cooking in a shelter at altitude. I did my PPL many, many years later - and it was whilst learning to fly I discovered that aviation has had its own share of CO poisonings, leading to LOC and a smoking hole in the ground - hypoxia being the other silent killer. On the cockpit coaming containing the instruments, in every one of the little old aeroplanes I learned to fly in, was a stick-on CO detector card, with an orange spot in the middle which would go dark in the presence of CO. Nowadays you can get them made of plastic, and they're cheap as chips. Maybe sticking one into the roof of a snow hole hanging from a screw, or hanging one from the top of any sealed shelter could be a bright idea:- drill a wee hole and string it with a loop of paracord or 4mm accessory cord (Fun factoid: CO is 3% lighter than air). Maybe this is worth experimenting with, no requirement for batteries (which go flat, or just refuse to work in the cold) or spendy technology to spark out just when it's needed most. KISS and all that.
Anyhoo, that turned into a big long diatribe.
Keep up the good work Mr. K, I think you're interesting and fucking funny, so there.
That's a very important issue, seems obvious but is often overlooked. Carbon monoxide is not a joke. I almost went to the other side taking a hot bathtub in an old, cold tenament house flat that i was living in while studying in Kraków. The bathroom had ice on the inside of cracked window panes and the gas heater exchange element froze solid while we were out on christmas holidays. I had to melt it down with my campingas stove to get the water flowing. When it finally did, I plunged into a filling up bathtub, laid back and relaxed. It felt really nice, I felt relieved and loosened up and I remember thinking to myself that I could drift away and take a nap. Then it finally hit me, that it's not just a nice hot spa, but an ultimate portal had opened and I'm about to depart. My adrenaline pumped up, I jumped out at once, naked, and rushed to the living room like a madman. We've had friends over, so it's a fun story on their side. We called the fire brigade and even after minutes of all windows open they still could detect elevated CO. I was lucky and everything seemed ok, but for the next half a year I experienced problems I never had before: sudden anxiety and panic attacks, breathing difficulties, heart palpitations and arythmia. It all want away after a full Tres Monts Mont Blanc traverse on foot – I guess the body re-calibrated again and the brain got it, that I am in fact OK. I believe this must have been caused by the incident.
I’ll put some effort into sharing it and you with others.
Andy, this is tremendous information. Thanks for highlighting Paul Ramsden’s work and further making it accessible. I’ll share this with others. The Explorer’s Club, among others, can make this even further accessible.
I’ve been following your contributions for years, including your content for rope-soloing, Cold Wars, and Psychovertical. I appreciate your struggle with self-promotion.
Massively important information here Andy, often overlooked or plain body-swerved (particularly by the stove manufacturers, as you rightly point out). My personal experience of the creeping death of CO dates to the late Cretaceous, sharing a snow hole with my old man after he'd just done his ML in the late 1980s. He was keen to spread the knowledge and I was a teenage sponge for any and all of the info and mountain skills, to take into the hills with my dirtbag pals and show off like. It's his fault I ended up as a mountain dreamer, climber, soldier, fly-fisherman and tragic gear-freak, cheers Dad.
Any road up - a winter crossing of the Lairig Ghru was called for, the steep and deepening snow offering the exciting prospect of learning about avalanche detection, walking roped up, nav in whiteout conditions, ice-axe arrest drills and a bivy in a snow hole to top it off. Magic.
All went well, as nobody died or got swallowed in an avalanche - I discovered how difficult contouring (let alone accurately) in a blizzard is, in drifting deep snow and a bitter gale, how hard it is to eat a frozen Marathon bar, and the foam cushioning on my third-hand Barrufaldi goggles started crumbling away, at the worst time ever, naturally. Gear side-note: I recall wearing a royal blue wooly balaclava helmet thing that was itchy, Ron Hill trackies, a smelly Helly with a t-shirt on top, a holey Arran jumper and a top layer of mixed surplus kagoule and overtroos. And a green daysack from Tiso's on Rose Street. I did have proper boots and walking crampons, but you get the picture.
So to the snow hole. We started a bit late on the digging, took a while to find a good safe spot, but teenage me was on burrowing duty and hoiked away with Dad's avalanche shovel, digging like a Jack Russel after a rat, so made up time there. All settled in for the night in our weird little white narrow cave and I got really cold, really quick. Perhaps the metabolic reality kicked in but I was freezing and on the edge of hypothermia I think. No drama, full change of clothes, instant NATO-standard tea, boiled sweetie and can of soup on the stove, backup stove deployed to provide area heat. Sorted.
Until the next morning. I had an absolutely shite night's sleep (of course, I found out - a survival bivy is just that) and the headache which had been hovering the night before came back with a vengeance as the stoves went on for brews to accompany a HotCan of Beans and Sausages (remember them?!) and instant Scott's Porridge Oats for brekky. I remember feeling confused and a bit ill and I made for the rucksacks covering up the entrance so I could throw up outside. Once I'd broken through the bag barrier and fallen into the drift outside, the relief was instant. The cold fresh air was like a slap to the gob. In hindsight, that was CO poisoning and a valuable lesson learned. I don't know why it affected me more than Dad, perhaps as a wiry teenager I was more metabolically highly strung: I felt the cold quicker, and complained of a headache and nausea, but for whatever reason I knew something wasn't right. Perhaps Dad just didn't whinge, as his generation was trained to do.
Reading your article reminded me of something though - and perhaps this might become part of the toolkit to avoid CO poisoning, particularly while cooking in a shelter at altitude. I did my PPL many, many years later - and it was whilst learning to fly I discovered that aviation has had its own share of CO poisonings, leading to LOC and a smoking hole in the ground - hypoxia being the other silent killer. On the cockpit coaming containing the instruments, in every one of the little old aeroplanes I learned to fly in, was a stick-on CO detector card, with an orange spot in the middle which would go dark in the presence of CO. Nowadays you can get them made of plastic, and they're cheap as chips. Maybe sticking one into the roof of a snow hole hanging from a screw, or hanging one from the top of any sealed shelter could be a bright idea:- drill a wee hole and string it with a loop of paracord or 4mm accessory cord (Fun factoid: CO is 3% lighter than air). Maybe this is worth experimenting with, no requirement for batteries (which go flat, or just refuse to work in the cold) or spendy technology to spark out just when it's needed most. KISS and all that.
Anyhoo, that turned into a big long diatribe.
Keep up the good work Mr. K, I think you're interesting and fucking funny, so there.
Cheers
Linky
https://www.pooleys.com/shop/sleepsafe/carbon-monoxide-detector-card-single/
https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/pspages/stdcodetectors.php
https://pilotshop.co.nz/collections/co-detectors/products/asa-carbon-monoxide-detector
That's a very important issue, seems obvious but is often overlooked. Carbon monoxide is not a joke. I almost went to the other side taking a hot bathtub in an old, cold tenament house flat that i was living in while studying in Kraków. The bathroom had ice on the inside of cracked window panes and the gas heater exchange element froze solid while we were out on christmas holidays. I had to melt it down with my campingas stove to get the water flowing. When it finally did, I plunged into a filling up bathtub, laid back and relaxed. It felt really nice, I felt relieved and loosened up and I remember thinking to myself that I could drift away and take a nap. Then it finally hit me, that it's not just a nice hot spa, but an ultimate portal had opened and I'm about to depart. My adrenaline pumped up, I jumped out at once, naked, and rushed to the living room like a madman. We've had friends over, so it's a fun story on their side. We called the fire brigade and even after minutes of all windows open they still could detect elevated CO. I was lucky and everything seemed ok, but for the next half a year I experienced problems I never had before: sudden anxiety and panic attacks, breathing difficulties, heart palpitations and arythmia. It all want away after a full Tres Monts Mont Blanc traverse on foot – I guess the body re-calibrated again and the brain got it, that I am in fact OK. I believe this must have been caused by the incident.