Outer Wear For cold weather

READING what your gear can do and falling in the water and finding out are two different things! I test everything I have...sometimes by design sometimes by accident. Today was one of those days! 

Today I headed out to the woods near my house for some hiking and fire starting. Instead I ended up testing the insulating properties of all of my layers by falling in a creek which was much deeper than I surmised! Here are the results! 

Half soaked!

The aftermath

I wore an acrylic beanie by Turtle Fur®, a neck gator by Creek Stewart®, Carhart® canvas vest over a Patagonia® insulated shirt over Fjallraven® wool sweater over a polyester base layer. Pants were Prana®. Wool socks and Merrill® waterproof Moab Boot. Thinsulate insulated waterproof leather gloves. 

Attempting to ride my fat bike through the creek which I thought was about 12" deep, I found myself in 18" of water with too much drag to get out and I fell over sideways into the drink! My boots were full, right side of body completely soaked up to my right shoulder. 

Here are the results:
Boots though soaked through the wool socks continued to keep my feet warm and if I had dumped them out and wrung out socks I could have continued hiking as I have done this before.
Pants were worthless as they were too thin. Quick drying in summer, they were like quick-freeze on my legs in the cold and would have been a problem. With a base layer underneath of wool or poly I would have been ok, As is, I would have had to seek shelter and remove them, wring them out to dry and cover my legs with one of the outer layers like the shirt-jac after wringing it out. 
Base layer and Wool sweater were AWESOME. My core did not feel cold nor even wet, as those both wicked and insulated while wet. If the sweater had been soaked, removing it and wringing it out and replacing it would have kept me fine as long as I was out of the wind.
Shirt-Jac was wet and not really insulating even though it has a poly-fill insulating layer. The cotton-poly outer layer held water. I would have removed it. 
The vest would insulate as it had a thick sherpa lining and when wrung out would have insulated but the canvas outer layer held water and was heavy and would have taken forever to dry. 
Gloves continued to insulate my hands though soaked through.

Take-aways:
I had: Wool base layer top and bottom ALWAYS. 
I had: Wool socks.
I had: Thinsulate or wool gloves both work as I have completely soaked wool gloves as well. 
I had: Wool Sweater is my go-to mid layer. You wring it out and it insulates and does not feel wet. I find that fleece mid layers to me continue to FEEL wet against my skin. 
I did not have base layer bottoms.  My pants sucked heat from my body immediately and did not block wind.
I did not have: A wind-proof and water repellant.  That would have been way better than the Patagonia and Carhart combos with insulation but canvas natural fibers like cotton-poly outer. My wool sweater was ready to insulate even wet but it wouldn't cut wind and I had nothing for that except in my trip bag over my shoulder. 

​

WHY WERE SOME OF MY LAYERS INADEQUATE/POSSIBLY DANGEROUS??
 I DID NOT PLAN TO GET WET!!
​ I was going for a walk in dry cold conditions where my layers would normally have been sufficient. 
I proved the fact that  
MOST PEOPLE WHO END UP IN WATER even in summer, DO NOT EXPECT TO BE THERE! ​

​We need to dress for the conditions that COULD OCCUR, not what we expect. Cold water can be a killer! If I had been far from home, I would have been OK. I had my trip bag over my shoulder with shelter, space blankets, fire starts and materials, signaling, etc. But I was not prepared clothing wise for what I would encounter and as a result my hike would have been interrupted by temporary survival tactics instead of continued thriving in the conditions.

​Always Dress to stay alive! ​