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If you're hiking in the winter, this is going to be a possibility you're going to have to consider - you could get caught out in the cold, you may have no other option but to lay your sleeping bag down in a patch of snow. You need to follow a few basic guidelines to keep warm:
1) Eat food before you go to sleep - it will cause your body to make more heat.
2) Wearing extra layers of clothes is obvious, but you should also put any spare, dry clothes you have inside the sleeping bag if you've got extra space. This reduces the amount of spare space inside the bag that your body is heating.
3) For the guys, it can be a good idea to have a container in your sleeping bag to urinate in. If it's really cold, then getting out of your bag is going to cause you to lose heat, and it's going to be a pain in the rear. Obviously, don't use the same one you're going to drink out of later. Many backpackers who hike frequently in the winter will carry a separate water bottle for just this reason.
4) If you can find material such as leaves to put under your sleeping bag and over the snow, do so. It will insulate your bag a little bit from the cold. Not much, but every little bit helps. A better option is to bring a sleeping pad with you.
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