In the heart of winter, a van breakdown is the last thing anyone wants to go through. If you’re in Florida, it’s not a big deal. In Minnesota, the story changes dramatically, especially if you’re in a remote area of the country. Roughly 50% to 60% of the Upper Midwest is remote, rural countryside, and that’s just one large section of the United States.
If you enjoy the window seat on a plane flight, you’ll notice that the vastness of the U.S. is almost entirely covered in trees, open plains, rolling hills, and farmlands. It’s beautiful in a picture, but not so much when you’re stranded on Whiskey Springs or Booger Hollow Road out in the middle of Timbuktu in February.
Before we dive into the intricacies of winter survival, remember to always maintain your composure and stay focused. Do your best to avoid the frozen tundra of the north throughout the winter. The first and most important aspect of any survival situation is remaining focused, even when it’s colder outside than a cast iron toilet.
Essential Gear You Should Always Carry
Before we even contemplate a winter van breakdown in sub-freezing temperatures, let’s go over what you need to have with you at all times. Yeah, you’re in a campervan, and space is always an issue. But some things are necessities in the winter season, and some things aren’t.
If you have storage somewhere, it might be better to swap your road supplies as the seasons change—take what you know you’ll need and leave behind what you don’t need for the Spring.
I’ll start this little list off by saying that Merino wool is an absolute blessing in disguise. From socks to beanies, it wicks the sweat away while keeping you dry and warm. Trust me, you can sweat in the winter, and it makes cooling off that much worse.
Clothing and Comfort
- Merino wool apparel (socks, beanies): Wicks away sweat while keeping you warm, so you’re not freezing in your own moisture when the temps drop.
- Extra blankets (wool, fleece, or cotton): Layers are life when you’re sleeping in sub-freezing temps, especially if your heater fails.
- Electric blanket with a 12v plug: If you’ve got the power, these are a game-changer for vanlife warmth without cranking the heater.
Winter Survival Gear
- Thermal gloves, thick beanie, and ice scraper: Essential for de-icing your van, staying warm, and keeping your extremities functioning.
- Non-clumping cat litter or road salt: Instant traction for icy roads when you’re stuck—cat litter doubles as lightweight road salt.
- Snow shovel and tow rope/strap: Dig out of snowdrifts or help someone else out of a jam (maybe even score some goodwill coffee).
Safety and Tools
- Standard first aid kit: Cuts and scrapes don’t take a holiday, and frostbite or cold injuries need immediate attention.
- Simple tool kit: For quick fixes when something inevitably breaks.
- Reflective warning triangles, flares, and candles: Vital for making sure you’re visible during roadside breakdowns in low visibility.
- Jumper cables and a portable starter: Batteries hate the cold. Don’t be stranded waiting for help.
- Spare tire, pressure gauge, and chains: You don’t want to discover a flat tire—or bald ones—when the road turns into an ice rink.
- Smartphone, GPS device, compass with azimuth: Redundancy is key when GPS apps glitch or die in the cold. A compass doesn’t care about battery life.
- Axe, headlamp/emergency flashlight: Chop kindling for an emergency fire or light up your campsite safely after dark.
Essentials for Emergency Waiting
- Emergency food supplies and freshwater: Canned goods, protein bars, and at least a gallon of water per person can save your life if you’re stuck.
- Thermal hand warmers: These can keep your hands or even water bottles from freezing solid.
- Reflectix windshield covers and thermal blackout curtains: Trap heat, block out the cold, and prevent that ice-layered windshield morning nightmare.
- Portable propane heaters, electric heaters, or catalytic heaters: Keep the frostbite at bay—just ensure proper ventilation to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning.
Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Fortunately, most of these things are manageable even within the confines of a van. Also, many of the items on the above list should be in your emergency kit anyway, so you’re used to having it along for the ride.
The Usefulness of Your Essential Gear
Obviously, getting caught in a wintry wonderland will leave you bereft of solar power in most cases. Use solar power when you can and have fully charged backup batteries on hand. Freshwater supplies will freeze if you don’t keep them stored in the center of the van, away from the windows and doors.
The same goes for your food supply, which needs to consist of high-energy snacks. If there’s one thing cold weather does efficiently, it slows you down. Reflective warning triangles and flares are essential if you’re flagging down traffic or stuck on the side of the road in an ice storm.
Assuming a “winter van breakdown” includes losing most of your power, catalytic heat sources are phenomenal luxuries. If you’ve ever been in the military, you’re probably familiar with MREs and the chemical heat packs that come with them. This chemical mixture is the source behind thermal hand warmers and portable heat devices.
The heat they produce within the confines of a campervan is fairly solid. Reflectix and blackout thermal window covers and curtains drastically reduce interior heat egress and cold transfer from the outside. I always highly recommend the Garmin inReach Mini 2 as a land navigation device for emergency GPS location.
All of the above-listed tools are fairly self-explanatory, though it’s highly advisable to remain inside with everything shut unless it’s absolutely necessary to leave.
Immediate Actions to Stay Safe and Warm
Whether it’s in the middle of winter or a balmy spring day, a van breakdown on the highway is problematic. You must get it off the road as soon as possible, especially if you are situated around a curve or just over a hill.
From 2016 to 2018, 566 people were killed, with over 14,000 injuries, when an immobilized vehicle on the side of the road was involved, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
In the winter, with icy roads and visibility issues, it’s paramount that you get your van away from the road and traffic. Once that’s accomplished, the real work begins. Unless necessary, remain inside the van. People are heaters as well, and your body will give off heat even if you are sitting still.
The van is insulated and will help trap your heat and any heat you artificially generate inside. Go to work expanding your van’s insulative capabilities. Hang the blackout curtains and place the Reflectix on your windshield. Pay close attention to your ingress points throughout the van and focus your insulation efforts there.
Conserve your energy sources. It’s great to have them, but they will run out in time. If you have a power source, use it for your thermal blankets, but only until you’re comfortably warm within. If you’re wrapped in blankets, avoid using finite heat sources to make yourself feel more comfortable.
How to Signal for Help Effectively
Even if your winter van breakdown occurs in the middle of nowhere, that doesn’t mean you can’t attract the attention of others from a distance. Flares, highly reflective materials, and mirrors are very useful visual indicators of distress.
Devices, such as the aforementioned GPS, are often designed with emergency location features. But if you just have an Android or iOS device, they are designed with similar mechanisms. For instance, iOS devices come with emergency SOS on iPhone 14 or later. This includes satellite communication when a cellular signal is spotty or ineffective.
- Swipe down from the top right corner of your iOS device
- Select the cell symbol
- Select ‘Satellite’
- Select ‘Emergency SOS via satellite
Certain button combinations also enable SOS features for Android and iOS phones. On the iPhone, you hold the power and volume down buttons and select ‘SOS Emergency Call.’ On Android devices, tapping the power button five times, followed by holding the red circle onscreen, does the trick, but not every Android phone is the same.
According to the Assistant Director of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, rescues have increased thanks to the SOS technology in iOS devices. It’s there. It’s useful. Use it.
If you must leave the van, it’s important to let someone know or leave signs of your passage for others to follow. That might not always be easy, but use what you can and remember that snow accumulation will eventually cover your sign if it’s on the ground.
Handling the Psychological Strain of a Winter Breakdown
A winter van breakdown may not sound like much to those who have never experienced it or a similar scenario, but it can strain mental and emotional well-being. Everyone handles stress differently. For myself, I store things in a mental box (Think Doctor Sleep without the ghosts and ghoulies) and move on, or I remain focused and active to distract.
Survival, regardless of the temperature outside, is an assault on our system, mentally and physically. Worse, your mental condition bleeds over into your physical condition. This is why a small mother can lift a car off her son or daughter in extreme situations.
However, harnessing those emotional triggers, like the example of the mother, is a positive aspect of mental and/or emotional stress. The human body will go through a jaw-dropping level of physical and mental trauma before the heart gives up. The problem with most people caught in frightening situations is they don’t realize those internal tools exist.
Mental and Physical Energy
‘Focus’ is your most important tool. Clear your mind of external interruptions, such as “What if no one finds me?” or “What if I freeze to death?” None of that matters until it does, so you’re free to focus on the most important aspects of survival. Think of your survival chances as a pressure meter with green, yellow, and red indicators.
The more you accomplish now, such as setting out flares, insulating your van, securing your food and water supplies, stacking up your blankets, etc., the more the needle creeps toward the green. Conserve energy, ration supplies, and focus on warmth. Every problem that presents itself is the next step toward lowering the needle—a problem to focus your mind on.
The center of the van becomes your base of operations, and you venture out as needed, but only as needed. Manufacture a series of tasks that must be done at certain time intervals. Remember, you may get hungry and thirsty, but with insulation and body heat, you’ll likely be just fine at the center of the van, covered in blankets.
Sustainability
Conserve your own energy as well, including your food and water, which will keep you going. This isn’t a buffet line at Golden Corral. To maintain nominal energy levels, a human needs roughly 1,600 to 3,000 calories per day.
This is why I always highly recommend stocking up on MREs if you like to boondock and live off the grid. A single MRE typically contains nearly a full day’s worth of calories. They’re small, compact, and easy to store, especially if you field-strip them. But if MREs aren’t your thing, consider alternatives like energy bars, trail mix, or dehydrated meals. These options are just as calorie-dense, require minimal preparation, and fit neatly into your limited storage space.
Take sips of water and avoid storing it outside of the center of the van to keep it from freezing. Don’t use all your flares (if applicable) at once or anything else that is finite. Take it easy and be patient—nothing lasts forever. A remote cold weather breakdown is a problem you need to solve, not fret over.
Preventative Tips to Avoid a Winter Van Breakdown
One of the best ways to avoid a situation is to prevent yourself from being in that position in the first place. In other words, don’t spend much time driving through parts of the country where sub-freezing temperatures, ice storms, and heavy snow are common throughout the winter months.
As vanlifers, it pays to plot your journies according to the seasons, just like birds that migrate south in the winter. Stick to the southern states and regions in the late fall, winter, and early spring. Reserve the late spring, early fall, and summer months for travel in the north.
If you must travel, map your routes to keep you as close to civilization as possible. Pay close attention to things you never really think about, such as tire PSI, fluid levels, and the age of those fluids. Don’t always depend on winter weather alerts.
The more you know about a given area, the better. If you are unfamiliar with the region, it can wait until warmer weather moves in.
Final Thoughts
There’s no sugarcoating a winter van breakdown in the middle of nowhere, especially when temperatures plummet, or a snowstorm is on the way. However, vanlifers are not powerless and certainly not incapable. In and of itself, vanlife requires a higher degree of adaptability.
As they say in the Marines, “Overcome, adapt, and improvise.” Those three words become the center of your entire world when you’re in a survival scenario. Fail to heed them, and you will really be in trouble. Hopefully, this guide will help you better prepare yourself for mental and physical adversity.
The better you prepare yourself and your gear, the better off you’ll be if such an event confronts you. Put together a kit, prepare your routes, and avoid region-specific, seasonal weather conditions. Such prep levels will help you throughout all of your vanlifer adventures, not just in the winter.
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