Artic-weather help needed

[dra_uk]

Hello,

I'm new here, but I hope you won't hold it against me! :wink: I've come over on the recommendation of the good folks at BB.com as they thought you lot might be able to give me some advise.

My wife and I are going to Finland on a dog-sledding holiday and a need some information about water bottles. I've been getting differing opinions, and I want to confuse matters further, so please jump in! (For some reason when I brought this up on BB.com it descended to a discussion about vodka freezing - I'm not entirely sure how that happened.)

Some people have said to go for an insulated aluminium flask, and others have suggested the army surplus route. We want to be bale to drink while on the sleds, so we know to keep the water near our bodies, but I still don't know what's best to keep it in. I think we have pretty much everything else sorted out, so any help you can offer on this matter would really help.

All the best,

Dan

[AntarcticFire]

If you want to drink on the go, Camelbak make a couple of insulated hydration backpacks you could use.

Something like this:
http://www.camelbak.com/rec/cb_prod.cfm?catid=6&product_id =175&selector=true

The insulation should prevent them from freezing, but I couldn't say for sure as I've never used one! :-D

[alick]

Hi Dan, here's what I would do, though I haven't actually tried this combination out in the conditions you may meet:

If you're out sledding, I'd guess you might be out for quite some time at a stretch, so even an insulated hydration pack might freeze. I'd try and keep my water INSIDE my jacket, close to my body like in the inside mesh "bottle pockets" that duvet and shell jackets by mountain hardwear have.

Wearing them close, I'd use the small 0.5 or 1 litre platypus bladders. Possibly one in each inside pocket. These should be more comfortable than a hard metal bottle. You could put a drinking tube on one of them too. And an insulating sleeve if you needed it, but most of the tube would be inside your jacket so shouldn't freeze so easily.

Between the 3 most popular hydration systems, the MSR dromedary has the reputation of being much the strongest. Camelback are very popular, easy to fill with good accessories, platypus are much the cheapest, but are the only ones to come in small sizes as well as large and don't make your water taste of plastic.

I'm very envious ! hope you have a great time.

[Viking]

I would use a small bottke that i could carry with me, platypus or nalgene and then have thermos and a bigger bottle in a small backpack or in the sledge both filled with water.
Do not use any metal mugs, spoons or bottles. Every kid living here knows why :-D