Water for winter camps when there's no snow

As we all know, when the temperature drops below zero water freezes. And that can be a problem for winter camping if there's no snow to melt. Fill your water bottles at night and find them blocks of ice in the morning. Insulate them from the ground, wrap them in spare clothing, turn them upside down so any water can still be accessed. These all work to some extent. But they can all be awkward, inconvenient, and inefficient. Much easier to just let the water freeze and then melt the ice.

I do this in two ways. Firstly I fill my pots at night and then put them on the stove in the morning. I don't carry big pots though so this doesn't give me that much water. So I also carry flexible water carriers with wide openings. If these freeze overnight I just break up the ice by bashing them with a boot and then shake it out. This doesn't work well with rigid bottles! I have two flexible Platypus containers I use for this, the latest being the Water Tank.

Of course you can carry an insulated flask and fill this at night. I often do. But again it doesn't hold that much water. Or you can leave your tent and go and collect water from a nearby source if there is one. On a freezing stormy morning this isn't very appealing though. I much prefer to have hot drinks and breakfast without leaving my sleeping bag. Plenty of ice is the way to do that.

The picture was taken in the morning at my camp on the Moine Mhor in the Cairngorms earlier this month and described here.