Wind will beat you before rain ever does

Quick answer: Pick your site by where the wind will hit, not by the view. Pitch low with the narrow end into the breeze, carry a thin wind shell, and treat any gap, saddle or ridgetop as a funnel.

Rain is loud. That's its whole advantage. It drums on the fly, it shows up on the radar, and it makes you feel like you're in a fight, so you gear up for it. Wind doesn't announce itself. It just takes your heat a little at a time, flattens the tent you were proud of, and blows out the stove you needed to make dinner.

Most people who get into real trouble on a cold night out weren't soaked by a downpour. They were tired, a little damp, and sitting in a draft.

Why moving air is the bigger problem

Your body wraps itself in a thin layer of warm air. Still air leaves it alone. Wind strips it off, and your skin starts paying for the replacement all night.

The National Weather Service wind chill chart gives you a feel for it. At 40°F with a 20 mph wind, exposed skin loses heat as if it were 30°F. That's the difference between a cool evening and one where your hands stop working at the zipper.

One honest caveat: wind chill describes what happens to skin and to a warm body. Your tent poles don't get colder than the air. But you aren't a tent pole. You're the warm thing in the wind.

Add dampness from sweat or a light drizzle, and wind does the evaporating for you, pulling heat out with the moisture. Rain alone is survivable in a decent jacket. Rain plus wind is where people start making bad decisions.

Pick the site by the wind, not the view

The best-looking campsites are often the worst. Ridgelines, open saddles, lakeshores and summit flats all have the same selling point: space and a view. They also have no windbreak.

Here's how to read the ground before you drop your pack:

• Look at the trees. Trees leaning one way, or branches growing only on one side, tell you the prevailing wind in a glance.
• Find the lee. The downwind side of a ridge, boulder field, thick stand of trees or a big rock outcrop is quieter. Camp a good distance back from the base of a cliff, though, because wind can curl over the top and spill down.
• Avoid gaps. A notch between two hills or a gap in a tree line squeezes air and speeds it up. A pass is a wind tunnel with a trail through it.
• Remember altitude. Wind generally picks up as you climb. A calm trailhead can turn into a gale at the pass two thousand feet higher.
• Check the forecast point. Pull the National Weather Service forecast for the actual spot on the map, not the nearest town. Look at gust numbers, not just average wind.

Calm air has its own catch. Cold air sinks and pools in low spots at night, so the sheltered hollow can be the coldest place around. The sweet spot is usually mid-slope, behind something solid, with a little elevation above the creek bottom. If you want more on picking a spot you can leave quickly if things turn, pick a campsite you can bail from in forty minutes.

Pitch it like the wind is coming

Even a good site needs a smart setup.

Point the narrow end into the wind. Most tents are tapered. The low, narrow end should face the breeze so it slides over you instead of catching the broad side like a sail.

Pitch low and taut. A tarp that sits a hand-width off the ground in the wind-facing corner will stay up all night. One pitched high for headroom will flap itself loose by two in the morning. Headroom is a luxury. Staying put is the point.

Use every guy line. Those little cords in the stuff sack aren't decoration. Stake them out, angled away from the tent at roughly the same angle as the pole. A tent with half its lines tied is a tent with half its strength.

Anchor the stakes. Thin wire pegs pull out of loose soil. Y-shaped or V-shaped stakes grip better. In sand or snow, bury a stick or a rock-stuffed stuff sack and tie the line to it. That's called a deadman, and it holds when stakes won't.

Put your door away from the wind. Opening the door into a gust is how you lose a sleeping bag down a hillside.

And a note on that ground under your pad. Wind is half the heat-loss story, and the cold earth is the other half. The ground steals your heat before the air ever does, so get the pad right as well.

Your stove hates wind more than you do

You can't eat if the flame won't stay lit. Wind steals stove heat, wastes fuel, and turns a ten-minute dinner into forty. Cook in the lee of a rock, your pack, or a low wall of your own gear.

A windscreen helps, with one firm rule: never wrap a screen tight around a canister stove. Trapped heat can overheat the canister, and that's a real way to start a fire or hurt yourself. Screens suit stoves with the burner separate from the fuel. For a canister stove, use natural shelter and keep the flame low.

Don't cook inside the tent to dodge the wind either. Fire risk and carbon monoxide are bigger problems than a slow dinner.

What to carry

You don't need a new kit. You need one thin layer you probably skipped.

• A wind shell. The thin nylon kind weighs next to nothing, packs to the size of a fist, and blocks wind better than a thick fleece that lets it straight through. Over a damp base layer it's the cheapest warmth you can buy.
• A warm hat and a neck gaiter or buff. Heads and necks leak heat in the wind. A buff weighs almost nothing.
• Gloves or mitts, even in shoulder season. Wind finds the knuckles first.
• Extra stakes and a length of cord. Two or three extras have saved more than one night.

For the full list of what earns its weight, the ten essentials and why veterans still carry them covers the baseline.

The trade-off, and the exceptions

Wind isn't always the enemy. A light breeze keeps bugs off and dries a wet tent. In summer, a breezy ridge can be the difference between sleeping and slapping mosquitoes all night. Sensible people pick the exposed spot on purpose.

And rain still matters. A cold downpour on top of a soaked jacket is serious. But a rain problem gets solved with a tarp, a good shell and dry layers in a pack liner. A wind problem gets solved before you ever stop walking, by where you choose to stop.

Leave the site the way you found it

Sheltering from wind tempts people to build things. Resist it.

• Don't stack rocks into a wall and walk away. If you move rocks for a windbreak or to anchor lines, put every one back.
• Never cut live branches for cover. Use what's already on the ground, or just use your gear.
• Check fire restrictions, and skip the fire on a windy night anyway. Gusts throw embers, and dry country goes up fast. Cook on a stove and keep it simple.
• Pack out every stake, cord end and scrap. Wind scatters litter faster than you'd think. Do a slow loop of the site before you leave, and pick up something that isn't yours too.

A good camp is one the next person can't tell you used. Pick the lee, pitch low, carry the thin shell. Then sleep warm while the weather does its worst somewhere above your head.