HYPOTHERMIA & COLD INJURIES
11 min · Free lesson · written lesson, video in production
After this lesson you can spot hypothermia early - in yourself and your group - and you know the field response: stop the heat loss, handle gently, insulate everywhere, and feed the furnace.
The Technique
- Hypothermia rarely announces itself. It arrives as the fumbles, the mumbles, the grumbles and the stumbles: clumsy hands, slurred decisions, a rider going quiet and falling behind. The person with it is the last to know - you watch your mates, they watch you.
- Early stage, still shivering: act now and it stays a story. Out of the wind, wet layers swapped for dry, insulated from the ground, hood up, and sweet warm drinks if they are fully awake. Get them moving gently if they can - muscles make heat.
- Serious stage, shivering has stopped, walking and talking failing: this is an emergency. Handle like glass - rough movement can stop a cold heart. Wrap everything including the head, insulate hard underneath, get help moving toward you, and do not rub limbs or pour heat on the skin.
- The burrito wrap is the field standard: sleeping mat down, then bag or blankets, casualty inside in dry layers, vapour layer outside, face clear. Two people wrapped together beats one wrapped alone if gear is short.
- Frostbite: white, waxy, numb fingertips, toes, nose, ears. Get them warm against skin - armpits, groin - and never rub, and never thaw tissue that could refreeze before you reach shelter. Thawing hurts; refreezing destroys.
- Prevention is a system, not a jacket: eat before you are hungry, drink before you are thirsty, vent before you sweat, layer down before the climb and up before the stop. Sweat-soaked base layers in wind country are how strong riders get cold.
- Know the exhaustion-cold spiral: tired riders stop making heat, cold riders make worse decisions, and worse decisions make tired riders. The turn-around time you set at the trailhead is the tool that breaks the loop.
Common Mistakes
Reading "stopped shivering" as "warming up". Fix: it is the opposite - the body has given up making heat. Escalate immediately.
- Hot water bottles or exhaust heat straight onto cold skin. Fix: warmth goes to the core, wrapped and indirect - burns on numb skin are free in the backcountry.
The Drill
The layer rehearsal: on your next cold ride, call your own state out loud every hour - hands, feet, core, energy - and make one adjustment each time before you need it. Awareness practised warm is awareness available cold.
Severe hypothermia and frostbite are hospital problems - the field response buys time, it does not fix them. Learn the handling on a real course with cold-environment scenarios. This content is general guidance, not medical advice.
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