Winter hiking, backpacking, camping, and alpine climbing can create challenging conditions for keeping your hands and feet warm. And for your feet, you also need to not get blisters. I've used the Lorpen T3+ Inferno Expedition and the T3+ Trekking Expedition socks for several winter seasons, now, and the full video offers my long term review of what are the best winter socks I have ever put on.

The water you need to bring on an outdoors adventure is a product of the activity - like a backpacking trip, a hike, or a mountain climb - how hard you are working, and the climate. But climate is also determined by altitude and higher altitudes demand more water. Find out how much more in this video.

Going on a backpacking, multi-day climbing, mountaineering, hiking, or a camping trip during the dry, winter months can lead to split fingertips. The dry air and other conditions of winter just make it more likely. Those wounds can make using your hands painful. The full video shows how I help prevent those splits from happening as well as how I deal with the injury if I don't follow my own advice well enough!

There is a lot that goes into your consumption rate of fuel for your camping stove: altitude, air temperature, temperature of your water, moisture content of the surrounding snow, the stove efficiency, itself, burner size, wind speed, the list goes on and on. So, here is a rule of thumb for taking the right amount of fuel with you when you will be melting snow for water on your expedition.

The boys wanted to go on a "mini" expedition, complete with backpacking, camping, moving camps, and a mildly technical climb to a summit. But as the trip started, I received notice that one of my climbing friends and mentors was succumbing to cancer. As My trip ended, I received notice that she was gone. It struck me as fitting that, while all of this was happening, the lessons she taught me were being passed on to my boys. I dedicate the full version of this short film to Deb as a testament to a life well lived, full of impact which will carry on.

I enjoy camping, hiking, backpacking, and alpine climbing, and I enjoy doing all of these things in all seasons. It is always a challenge to find clothing layers that can handle the different activities and conditions I face. The full video is a review of the Outdoor Vitals Ventus Active Hoodie. Can it handle all of the variables I throw at it?

The consequences of a lead climber fall when ice climbing are simply too high to let ego get in the way of safety. When you need to take a rest, and you can find good ice, go ahead and take that rest. Here's how.

If you are going to get into alpine climbing, you need to be able to handle the variable conditions which mountains present to us. So, beyond snow and rock, one may need to contend with ice. You may love ice climbing, like my kids and I do, or you may grudgingly pursue it, but it is a necessary set of skills to have for mountaineering. Last video, we talked about good footwork. The full version of this video demonstrates how to make efficient swings and combine all the individual techniques into a full movement sequence.

If you have big, double boots for cold mountaineering as well as shoulder-season alpine climbing boots that are considerably smaller, you will have extra strap material from your crampon attachments whenever you put those crampons on your smaller boots. Here's what I do with that extra tail to keep it securely out of my way.

If you are going to get into alpine climbing, you need to be able to handle the variable conditions which mountains present to us. So, beyond snow and rock, one may need to contend with ice. You may love ice climbing, like my kids and I do, or you may grudgingly pursue it, but it is a necessary set of skills to have for mountaineering. Because all technical climbing starts with good footwork, in the full video we go over the basics of proper footwork for ice climbing. Next week's video will cover using ice tools and the complete sequence of movement.

The biomechanics of winter climbing are different and strain different muscles due to the equipment we have to wear. If you are into ice climbing, alpinism, or mountaineering, don't let your calves be the muscle endurance shortcoming that keeps you from the top.

Sitting in the snow and adjusting your crampons to your boots is hard to do with winter gloves and is a good way to make yourself cold. That's why I pre-fit my crampons to my boots before I ever leave the house for every ice climbing, alpine climbing, or mountaineering trip. This opens up all of the options to move heel and toe bails and fine-tune the crampon fit to maximize the likelihood that the crampon will stay on as well as the performance of the crampon for my climb. The full video shows how I go about pre-fitting crampons for each of the three crampon types: full strap, step-in, and hybrid.

When I'm done with a winter trip, maybe a little wet and a little cold, I want to get out of the wet gear and into some dry things. That's where this very cheap piece of equipment comes in, making it easy to store my wet things. It's big enough and tough enough to handle climbing equipment, axes and crampons, snowshoes, and boots for the whole family.

One half of our seven-year-old twins, Connor, and I went on a winter training hike as he progresses towards his first winter ascent of a Colorado 14er and starts to ready himself for true mountaineering. Hiking and scrambling on snow makes everything just a little bit harder, so it was nice to see his determination and sense of accomplishment. Unlike most of our videos, this one isn't instructional; the full version is just a short film to celebrate the joy my family and I find in the outdoors.

Cold weather brings condensation inside your tent, and condensation brings frozen water to your sleeping bag. The more days you are out, the more of a problem this becomes. Airing your bag out in the sun can evaporate the moisture and keep your bag lofted and insulating well.

My twin seven-year-olds love mountaineering, climbing, hiking, and camping. But making sure we have all the right gear for winter trips comes with larger consequences for getting it wrong. The full video is a load out of what we take for a winter day-trip in snowy, cold conditions

Having done a full video on attempting to avoid getting cold hands in the first place, what can you do if you end up with cold hands, regardless? Here are four ways to get your hands warm, and you can actually do all four together, if need be. My family and I use these techniques regularly on our hikes, climbs, and backpacking trips in the wilderness.

Being someone who goes to high and cold places on mountaineering, winter backpacking, and backcountry winter camping adventures, I need a sleep system that can handle severe temperatures (below 0 Fahrenheit or below -18 Celsius) but also not full up my pack and break my back with weight. The fill video shares my personal journey from nearly 4.5 down to 3.0 pounds (1.4 kg) for a winter bag and sleeping pads along with the gear changes I made to get there.

Too much snow can damage a tent be overweighting the tent poles. But getting snow off your tent can damage it, too, if you aren't careful. See why I put duct tape on my snow shovel so that I can better clear snow off my tent when winter camping.

I've seen extreme temperature ranges in the winter. So, when I head out for a winter climbing, backpacking, hiking, or camping, I need to have the right clothing layers. And the same clothing that works for 50 degrees (10 Celsius) doesn't work for -35 degrees (-37 Celsius). And if I always have a down jacket and rain shell, then the difference in clothing needs to be made up by the baselayer and midlayer. The full video provides my four favorite baselayer and midlayer combinations I use to adjust to progressively colder days in the winter.