Zip it and you’re still gonna freeze

I felt the first shiver of doubt about my sleeping bag as soon as dozens of us rambunctious San Gabriel High School students arrived in Yosemite. It was March 1977, and as we piled out of the bus near Crane Flat, a rush of air pricked my face. Slinging on my backpack, I stepped into a serene diorama of trees and ground and sky powdered with soft snow. Flakes floated through a sequoia cathedral.

By the time I hiked to the cabin, still numb from the beauty of my first snowfall, my feet felt like ice chunks. With no time to thaw before lights out, I shucked off my boots and jacket but kept on the under-layers -- sweater, long johns, double socks and a knit cap -- before zipping in for the night. A wood-burning potbelly stove glowed from afar -- too far from the spot where my girlfriends and I bunked. I quaked in my sleeping bag.

Did I say sleeping bag?

Yes, it was a bag. No, I would not be sleeping in it.

When I first saw its bulky girth a week earlier, the bag had looked plenty warm. But then again, I come from a family that experienced national parks through car windows and within comfy motels. When my parents took me gear shopping for the school’s Yosemite Institute trip, we bought hiking boots, and probably the bag, at the everyman’s outfitter: Sears. On a budget, we picked a big, rectangular, one-size-fits-all number in brown. Little geese and ducks flapped across its red-flannel lining to create a waterfowl wonderland. A burly hunter could snuggle in and trap body heat, but it would have taken two of me to fill out the polyester casing.

The chill from my feet migrated up my body. I burrowed deeper. I flopped and turned and rolled into a fetal ball to kindle warmth. I experimented with friction, first rubbing my hands together, then running my hands over my arms, then I got the hips and feet moving, as if treading water. When I managed to do all three steps simultaneously I could feel a tingle of warmth creeping into my limbs. But it’s hard to sleep while exercising.

Seconds felt like minutes, minutes like hours. The flames in the distant potbelly dimmed. As the night wore on, my torment turned mental. I wondered how long it would be until sunrise. I wondered if the snow was still falling. With apologies to Robert Frost, “Hours to go before I sleep. Hours to go before I sleep,” kept echoing in my head, taunting me.

When dawn arrived, the suffering ended. At breakfast, I could wiggle my toes again. I was still an outdoors newbie, but I realized that wilderness wasn’t just about hardship. Later, dashing through drifts with friends under a full moon and listening in awe to ice boulders schussing down waterfall chutes, my love of mountains flickered alive.

Shortly after that experiment in cryogenics, I discovered down. Yet for years I borrowed bags until a boyfriend, a.k.a. Mountain Man, surprised me with a top-of-the-line mummy bag that, blissfully, can get too warm. Sometimes I sleep on top of it. These days, I’m even thinking of getting a second bag -- one of the inexpensive polyester models for Southern California summers, but not Sierra winters.