By Rick Ryckeley
Fayette County Fire & Emergency Services

The dictionary definition of hypothermia is a condition of abnormally low body temperature. Most men will say this explains why ladies have such cold feet. Women will say that hypothermia could be the condition that makes all men's hearts so cold.

But after last weekend, I have found another definition for the word. Hypothermia is going with a fourteen-year-old to the north Georgia mountains, and camping in a tent during the first week of December.

On the car trip up, my son and I talked about the normal stuff: hiking, camping, mountain bears, and fishing. At the base of the mountain road we were surprised to see one of the people that I work with and his girlfriend. They were both equipped with over $2,000 worth of mountain bikes, helmets, special bike shoes and backpacks. He said that he had a 25-mile course already picked out and they would see us on the other side of the mountain.

We put the truck in four-wheel drive and started for the camp site. There was still an hour before sundown when we reached the site at the top of the mountain. My job at this point was simple: set up the new tent. The boy's job was to make and start the campfire. He said, "At aviation camp we learned six ways to make a campfire."

One hour later I was still trying to set up the tent, but at least we had a nice fire to keep us warm. It was about this time that my friend came peddling by. He said he was having a great time and only had ten more miles to go. His girlfriend did not say anything as she peddled behind him. The look on her face said she was going to find a new boyfriend that was not so into mountain bikes.

With an exposure to cold, the body tries to compensate by shivering, increasing the cardiac output and increasing breathing. This will produce additional heat tying to make up for the heat lost from the body surface due to the cold and wind. Normal core temperature is about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit so when core temperature drops below 95 degrees, you will be in a hypothermic state. Between 95 and 97 degrees is considered mild hypothermia.

During the winter many outdoor activities will find us in this mild state. Shivering is one way your body combats this heat loss and producing heat; vasoconstriction is another. Vasoconstriction occurs throughout the entire body at the same time. It's the body's way of shrinking the diameter of the blood vessels in the fingers, toes, and on the surface of the skin to retain heat. This keeps more of the blood near the major organs of the body, which keeps them functioning correctly.

But by doing so, fingers, toes, and the surface of the skin do not have enough blood to keep them warm. This is a major drawback that many a snowball fighter has had to contend with (cold fingers are but a small price to pay for hitting your big brother in the back of the head with a giant slush ball).

With the sun down, the tent up, and a blazing campfire going, the next thing was to cook dinner. (A personal note: baked beans, sleeping bags, and a small tent don't go together.) Before we turned in, the boy wanted to knowwhere the bathroom was. I took him outside the tent and said, "Way over there someplace." He said with a surprised look on his face, "Yeah, right, Dad. There's nothing out there but a bunch of trees and woods. Where is the real bathroom?"

On his way back from the "bathroom" he stopped of at a tree near the camp. "Dad, this sign says that we are in the middle of a wildlife area and the rangers have been having trouble with the bears coming into camps. We need to hang up our food at night and burn any paper wrappings. If a bear comes into our camp we need to wave our arms, yell, scream, jump up and down, and throw things to scare it away." I told him that if a bear comes into camp tonight that he can be assured I will be doing all of the above.

The next morning we set off to fish the streams for mountain trout, and I was telling the boy all along the way to be extremely careful while fishing off of the banks. I said, "The water's very cold this time of year and you don't want to slip and fall in." For two hours I asked him to be careful, but he did not listen, and you guessed it: Dad fell in.

People with hypothermia will generally exhibit shivering, "goose bumps", stiffening muscles, un-coordination, disorientation and confusion (I have felt this way before, during, and after many a test in college). Re-warming of a person with severe hypothermia should not be tried unless travel time to a medical facility is more than 20 minutes. Most patients who die due to re-warming do so from ventricular fibrillation and need to be in a hospital prior to this type of treatment.

What can be done safely? Remove all wet clothing carefully and cover the patient keeping them warm and protected from the cold. When uncontrolled shivering stops and the patient shows signs of re-warming, only then give warm fluids by mouth.

That night there come up a bad cloud. The wind howled, the rain poured, but we were warm and dry in our little tent. The boy woke up a couple of times to sounds, he thought, of bears coming into the camp. Assuring him that it was only the wind he went back to sleep. I did likewise knowing that we were fairly safe inside the tent; I remember reading somewhere that bears don't like eating tents.

The next morning the rain stopped and the wind had died down. I unzipped the tent flap to put wood on the fire when an arctic blast of 38-degree mountain air hit me in the face. I then did what any dad would do: I zipped up the tent flap, woke up the boy, and told him to put wood on the fire.

After a breakfast consisting of cold beans and pop tarts heated on rocks around the fire, fishing began again. With fishing poles, corn for bait, and waders on we took off down the river. Waders consist of rubber boots with plastic paints connected to them that come up to your waist. Basically, we had boots with trash bags for pants which enable us to wade in waist deep water and not get wet. The boy fished up stream and I crossed the river.

We fished for three hours, keeping in constant contact with our new two-way radios. We didn't catch anything, but had lots of fun talking on the radios. Walking back to camp for lunch, I crossed back over the river, stepped on a moss-covered rock, and fell in again. With my rubber boots and trash bag pants full of water, I sloshed back to the warm camp fire the boy had ready (all that money spent on aviation camp that year was sure coming in handy).

We went fishing for the next two days, enjoying the mountains and being with each other. The boy caught a crawfish and I caught a cold, but a fun time was had by all. Next spring he wants to go camping in the Okefenokee Swamp. Guess I need to read up on first aid for snakebites before we go.

As my mountain bike riding friend once said, "Remember that all snakes are considered to be poisonous until proven otherwise by autopsy." I concur.

[Rick Ryckeley is employed by the Fayette County Department of Fire and Emergency Services. He can be reached at saferick@bellsouth.net.]

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