Hypothermia

What you need

• Shelter from wind and wet
• Dry layers and a hat
• A space blanket or a bivvy
• Warm sweet drinks and food
• Warm bottles if you can heat water

How

1. Watch for it in the other person, not in yourself. Shivering, fumbling hands, stumbling, slurred words, going quiet.
2. Get them out of the wind and out of the wet first. That does more than anything else you will do.
3. Strip the wet clothing off, dry layers on, hat on, and get them off the cold ground.
4. Wrap them and cover the head. A space blanket outside the insulation holds the heat in.
5. Warm sweet drinks and food if they are awake enough to swallow. No alcohol.
6. Add heat from outside: body heat, warm bottles at the armpits, the groin and the neck.

Watch for

Notes

Cold plus wet plus wind is the killer, not the number on the thermometer. Ten degrees and rain has put more people down here than twenty below and dry.