What's your favorite sleep aid/tips/tricks to improve sleep while on a climbing trip?

Nodin deSaillanwrote:

Unisom plus a slightly boring podcast.

enormocast?!?

No one has yet mentioned the old school antihistamine, chlorpheniramine (chlortrimetron).  Benedryl works too but not as well.  With a 4 mg chlortrimetron, a tiny yellow pill, my husband can only take 1/4 pill or he sleeps for 10 hours.  And he is not a good sleeper.

BTW, I take this for allergies, not to sleep.  My bestie Daphne says if there was an Olympics for Champion sleeping, I'd get the Gold metal.  She hates this about me.

In spite of what others have said, drinking a lot of beer around the campfire works like a champ for me.

Not mentioned - at home, a hot shower - but on the road or in the backcountry, baby wipes.  Getting the slime off your body and putting on a clean set of cloths and sleeping in a clean bed is pretty helpful.  

If you're sore, stretch and massage it out as best you can before bed - with help from partner or some device(s).

Ambien is addictive and dangerous - and so are NSAIDs you may use to ease muscle soreness.  Once in a great while on a trip several time zones away - maybe - but as a normal part of your outdoor routine - pretty dangerous.

Pretty much all sleep aids, including Melatonin, result in getting less recharge from your sleep - so doubly unproductive to rely on often - but sometimes a lighter chemical induced sleep is better than no sleep - for a night or two.

This will sound dumb. But what definitely helped me with that was doing the van thing for a while followed by a good stint of sleeping in the boulders

1. A good pee bottle – being able to pee without all of the hassle of getting out of the tent or snow     cave or even the van makes these interruptions less likely to interrupt your sleep cycle or that of your partner.

2. Ear pugs – they help with a lot of issues like wind while in a tent, and also your partner using their pee bottle.

3. Ibu – yes, bad for your health overall, but if you are on a route, you need to sleep as well as you can and this helps.  I wouldn't be doing anything like benadryl that can leave you with a dullness  early in the early morning.

4. A fully dialed in layering system.  Take it seriously and know ahead of time what you can take off or put on without fully exiting your bag.  Warm pile tights and good thick, dry socks help as a start.  A medium weight balaclava, etc...

5. Caffeine pills for when you wake,  so that you are not worrying about making coffee or waking up earlier than you need to for that nonsense.

6. Fully pack everything you can for the climb before you go to sleep.  This helps with getting going fast and also with reducing anxiety and worrying about what you need and how you need to pack it for the climb, so you sleep better.     Always have extra bottles already filled with treated water for the climb before you go to sleep.

7. A good alarm  watch around your neck so you are not worrying about whether its time to wake up or not.  If it is on your wrist you might not hear  it.

8. Keep your headlamp on around your  neck so that you are not searching for it if you need it.  If you can deal with minor issues without fully waking up, you get more  sleep.

9. Practice.   Learning how to sleep well in uncomfortable situations is something you get better at by doing it.  If you haven't learned how to do it before you are on a big climb where you need to sleep, you will be at a disadvantage.      

10. Poop before you lie down.  Also  know exactly how you are going to poop in the morning and what you need to do to make it happen on schedule – again this takes  practice.  (Nicotine pills taken while I am still in the bag along with the caffeine pills help me make the poop happen on time.)  If  you don't learn how to poop on schedule you will do it in the wrong place and the wrong time and you will have to shed and then re-up layers and a harness which will all slow you down.

In addition to all the good tips above,  try sex. 

Find a partner so annoying that they wear you down by the end of the day… high annoyance factor also decreases transition time at belays and makes you climb a bit faster.

Find a system that helps keep you warm, but not too warm.  A small, lightweight fleece blanket between you and the sleeping pad helps keeps you warm without risking overheating.

And bring your home pillow if car camping.

I have a lot of trouble sleeping, not just in the backcountry. To absolutely ensure a good night of sleep I’ll usually take a Benadryl or Zquil right before my last meal and then 50-70mg of melatonin 45 minutes before I plan to sleep. Often I’ll skip out on the Benadryl/Zquil though. On the other hand, if I’m at high altitude I may take 2. I also keep another few pills of melatonin easily accessible in case I wake up in the night and can’t fall back asleep.

Added disclaimer: do your own personal research before doing anything I said above! 

Krimpit thee Frog here wrote:

Regarding melatonin:

"In adults, the standard dose used in studies ranges between 1 and 10 mg, although there isn’t currently a definitive “best” dosage. It’s believed doses in the 30-mg range may be harmful." 

Then again I usually take 1000mg of ibuprofen when I need it which is above the recommended amount so take it with a grain of salt I suppose.

1mg is what I have with my coffee in the morning!

In all seriousness, I’ve done literally zero research into what’s safe. I just have experimented a lot and found what works for me. I used to travel between the US, EU, and Asia for work at an unhealthy frequency and found that this is what I could use to “beat the jetlag”, so maybe my body has built up a bit of a resistance.

I don’t think I’ve actually ever seen a 1mg pill bottle either, usually 5mg or 10mg. Taking 70 pills to go to sleep at camp is kind of a funny thought though.

Added a disclaimer to my original post :)

Any book of the Old Testament sends me off to sleep pretty quickly.  Of course, it can also give you nightmares.  Seriously, though: hippie lettuce (not sure which strain b/c I don't touch the stuff myself).  Good friend uses it for pain relief and sleep purposes -- nothing else works nearly as well for her.  The only downside is the smoking part.  I think some experimentation with small doses of edibles might pay off.  I sometimes use half of a Tylenol PM.  No drowsiness the next day for me.

comfy sleep setup and 5mg Wana edibles. Enough to go to sleep, not too much to feel groggy. 

Not a doctor obviously but I'll note:  seems a lot of people prefer non-prescription sleep aids over a prescription (such as Ambien) based on a belief that the non-prescription sleep aids are less harmful.  That's not necessarily correct: long-term use of Benadryl is associated with increased dementia risk.  Is it more / less dangerous than Ambien?  I don't know, but to me, it's significantly less effective (I don't feel any results from Benadryl, so I don't use it), and it def has its own risks.  Likewise, I've taken a lot of melatonin under the theory "it can't hurt," but I don't know that it helps at all for me, and if it does, not much.  That's consistent with the studies that I've seen.  I don't use Ambien frequently at all, but I have taken it a few times before alpine climbs, and it's worked well for me.

Sleep issues are common but complicated, it's surprising to me how little "we" (society) really understand sleep and sleep problems.

I prefer Xanax. While technically an anti anxiety, 1mg really knocks me out. Don’t drink alcohol with them though. 

Try harder. It's hard not to fall asleep when you're truly floored from giv'n er

I sometimes have the opposite experience and become "too tired to sleep" after super long, strenuous days. It's definitely frustrating to feel entirely exhausted and wide awake at the same time. I thought this was a decently common experience, but based on other comments maybe it isn't?! When I get the exhaustion-insomnia I usually listen to an audiobook that I've previously read/listened to (so it is familiar & low-attention). It doesn't necessarily put me to sleep, but it makes being awake less frustrating and puts me into a sort of low-power state.

If I go out to my ranch with a good guard dog there will be nobody for miles. I sleep very deeply there although if the coyotes sing then the dog wakes me.

But I don't mind and love to listen to them.

My favorite is waking to bird songs like when I was a kid.

Although back then I couldn't just step out of the camper and cap off a hundred rounds at steel targets before the water boils.

But the birds always come back, although I can see how others don't object to how remote my  bivy is.

Sleep on the floor. Takes a few weeks for the break in period, but after that I find I can sleep just about anywhere. 

So glad to have drawn out such a good conversation. Thanks all for chiming in. 

I'm woking on fixing my sleep in general for long term health and am willing to take some short term measures to correct the ongoing negative pattern. On Tuesday night, I took hydroxyzine HCL 25mg, a prescription drug I got when I had a massive infection from a poison oak breakout. That knocked me out for 10 hours. Yesterday, I picked up Sominex (Diphenhydramine HCI 50mg) from the drug store, and, with just half a pill (25mg?), again got a solid 10 hour sleep in. I needed that because recently, I have had a string of poor sleep that made me feel very off. I might just try to go with only Melatonin tonight before going out to the mountains tomorrow to see if the good pattern stays with me without any antihistamine.  

I have been wearing silicone earplugs and eye mask for years every single night. I almost feel "naked" without them now. My favorite is Children's Soft Silicone Earplugs from Walgreen. A friend cried that she'd never wear earplugs to sleep in case of burglary intrusion, and I told her that would be when I especially wanted the earplugs -- I want to sleep through it all. Ha, to each their own...

Cat.wrote:

I sometimes have the opposite experience and become "too tired to sleep" after super long, strenuous days. It's definitely frustrating to feel entirely exhausted and wide awake at the same time. I thought this was a decently common experience, but based on other comments maybe it isn't?! 

I'm with you, Cat -- it is common. In my circle of friends who are into endurance sports, this is commonly experienced. I have had many of those frustrating nights. Long distance cycling (road cycling or mountain biking) tends to get one into that state more commonly. In a total exhausted state (e.g. after a 24-hour climb-a-thon), one can indeed fall asleep fast, but then she'd wake up too soon and too frequently. That's my experience anyway.