Experience teaches you which details matter and which details merely appear to matter. Unfortunately, experience usually arrives after you’ve spent several hours measuring the wrong thing.
Many years ago I conducted a series of controlled experiments to determine which insulated water bottle parka performed best in winter conditions.
Looking back, I am not entirely certain what I hoped to accomplish. I do know that I was asking the wrong question.
At the time, determining which bottle parka worked best seemed like a perfectly reasonable question.
It takes a great deal of time and fuel to melt snow into water. The longer I could keep that water from freezing, the more efficient I could be. Several commercial products were available, along with a variety of homemade solutions. A reasonable person would have selected one and moved on. I wanted to know whether one was genuinely better than another so I designed an experiment.
The procedure was simple. Fill a one-liter bottle with boiling water, place it inside the test subject, and put the assembly into a freezer maintained at eight degrees Fahrenheit. At prescribed intervals, measure the remaining liquid water and record the temperature, then repeat the process with the next contender. By the end of the experiment, my freezer had hosted an assortment of bottle parkas, wool socks, homemade contraptions, and, at one point, an entire sleeping bag.
The sleeping bag performed exceptionally well. That was not entirely surprising.
The homemade bottle parka also performed surprisingly well. Constructed from a section of closed-cell foam sleeping pad and several generous applications of silver duct tape, it looked exactly like something assembled by a mountaineer with too much spare time and access to sharp objects. In fairness, that is precisely what it was.
The wool socks performed reasonably well too, although the experiment permanently stretched them into a shape suggesting they had endured a difficult life.
When you’re preparing for a trip, every detail feels important. You study maps, inspect gear, compare equipment, and convince yourself that selecting the optimal water bottle carrier might somehow determine the success or failure of an expedition. Then you actually go outside. After a few hours of climbing in wind, snow, and cold, the things that matter become obvious. Stay warm. Stay hydrated. Make good decisions. Keep moving.
The difference between twenty-four ounces of liquid water and twenty-six ounces of liquid water after eighteen hours in a freezer occupies a remarkably insignificant position on that list.
I don’t regret the experiment. In fact, I remember it fondly. Partly because it answered a question I genuinely had. Mostly because it reminds me of the strange things outdoor people do when they are unable to be outdoors. The mountains were several states away, the next trip was still weeks off, and apparently the best use of my time was stuffing water bottles into a freezer and pretending it was science.
In the end, they were all good enough.