UKH

Short of committing murder (and by god I’ve considered it), how do you all cope with snorers while sleeping in huts/tents/vans etc?

My current tactic is to drink several measures of whisky and to stuff my ears with as many silicone ear plugs as possible. Sometimes this is not enough and the bassy rumble still manages to penetrate. I have considered taking a housebrick to bed with me, either to stove my own head in or to pitch at the loudest snorer in the room but I fear the laundry bills may prove prohibitive. 

A friend said that if they ran a hostel they’d ask on checkin if you snore and then put all the snorers into one room. They seem to be able to sleep through it all. Sounded like a good idea to me. 

A particularly loud snorer I encountered took pride in declaring to a packed dorm room in the Naranjo de Bulnes hut in the Picos de Europa that he was a terrible snorer before emptying the entire room when he came good on that pledge. It was so loud I found myself laughing uncontrollably in desperation before kipping on a picnic table.

Anyone have any success stories with coping with noisy sleepers?

I once used a very bright focused beam torch to shine at a bed snorer and wake him. I thought, if I'm going to be awake all night, the culprit snorer isn't going to sleep through it.

My wife snores, sometimes to the point where she wakes herself up.

I'm on strong, soon to be class c, medication. I sleep through it just fine, though I suspect that isn't the easy remedy you were after.

T.

I may be one of your perpetrators - I was woken one night in a hut by a German reaching over my wife to thump me really quite hard to try and shut me up.  B*stard!

All I can say is I don't do it on purpose, and if anyone has any tips to reduce snoring then I'm - ahem - all ears.

I focus on my partners familiar snore and use it as 'white noise' to block out other background snorers.

Seriously the only way you will get a good night's sleep in the company of a loud snorer is to separate yourself from them as far as is necessary to get some quiet. Or drug yourself - alcohol works but isn't nice when you eventually wake up.

Bad snorers have potential serious health problems. They ought to go and get medical advice.

Losing weight is supposed to be an effective remedy.  

I know you don’t do it on purpose. And I have sympathy and gratitude for those that recognise it and try to alleviate it. 

But unfortunately the sound of someone taking up the tarmac with a pneumatic drill just isn’t one that lulls me blithely off to Bedfordshire. 

Would it be completely fantastical to have a snorers room in venues big enough to accommodate? At big events with groups of mates hiring out bunkhouses etc that’s what we’ve done in the past!

Be the snorer!

I hiked the Milford Track in NZ over the weekend and wardens at each hut suggested that snorers take their mats out of their rooms and sleep in the communal area. Everyone was in their beds by 10pm and it was pretty warm so it worked out well!

Sadly though, being a snorer doesn't make putting up with other snorers any easier!

Don't blame the snorers, it's your own fault for being such a light sleeper. I mean who in their right mind expects a shared dorm to be a peacefully quiet environment?

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I’ve spent a lot of my life in mountain huts and dorm rooms and I’ve found saying ‘turn over’ to the snorer (in whatever language they might understand) can be pretty effective. If you’re a light sleeper then you should always pack some earplugs for dorms. 

If snoring was something that could be remedied by a quick word with your GP there wouldn't be any serious snorers in the country. 

You expect a bit of snoring in a dorm seeing as a significant proportion of the population do snore. If you drink enough whisky, then you'll definitely turn into a snorer too!

However if I knew I was a bad enough snorer to disturb people,  through earplugs, then I wouldn't go sleeping in large shared dorms. It's quite selfish to knowingly subject everyone else to a sleepless night. One of our club members is a particularly bad snorer. Fortunately he appreciates this and sleeps in the sitting area of our club hut. 

Seems rather unfair. What makes you think snorers are immune to being kept awake by other snorers? Just get some earplugs.

Mrs Num Num is like a Cindy Doll, when she lies down her eyes shut.

And about two minutes later the place sounds like a sawmill. 

The cruel thing is, it occasionally stops for a while, but just as you’re about to drop off into gentle slumber, it starts up again, with renewed nasal volume 

I find a podcast helps better than ear plugs, you can never fully drown it out to silence and you'll always be listening for it but if you have something else to focus on it can help. That and obviously a nytol or some strong anti-histamines.

Lie on your face. 

That's what I always say to my wife before she thumps me anyway. 

I take amitriptyline for migraines, which has a soporific effect allowing me to drop off easily. I do have to sleep with foam earplugs every night though - my fiancee snores and I have misophonia triggered by snoring; it's extremely upsetting. It makes a lot of things very difficult. I can't share dorm rooms and bunkhouses without taking a double dose of amitriptyline and listening to white noise through headphones on top of my earplugs.  

If it's a partner it's worth seeing if you can find the reason - they might need to lose some weight, or it might be something like sleep apnoea that needs addressing. You can look at different sleeping positions (I've seen the suggestion of making them wear a bra backwards with tennis balls in the cups to stop someone sleeping on their back, but that's fairly drastic). It could also be a light allergy to the pillow or bedsheets, causing a minor rhinitis effect or, as with my OH, constriction of nasal passages because of the shape of the nose; he aids this with a nasal spray before bed and it's made a huge difference.

For communal sleeping, coping strategies are all you've got. Download an album of rain on tent sounds onto your phone and get some good, and comfortable, headphones.

My snoring may be caused by underlying health issues but as I've been doing it for 50+ years I'd rather continue to live with them, thanks very much!

I was at a hut this weekend and it was atrocious. It was like a giant orchestra of snorers tuning up before a performance but never actually snoring to the same tune.  I don't know if this can be true but they seem to egg each other on as if there is a unconscious competition to produce the most impressive teeth clatteringly loud blast.

I can imagine trying to say 'turn over' to someone at night in a hut, in a language you're not too familiar with, could lead to some interesting situations...

I’m not a light sleeper. I’d say medium-deep...  You don’t have to be a light sleeper to be woken up by it, even with ear plugs.

 All the snorers in my life are able to wake up in the morning blissful unaware of any other people’s snoring having had a full night’s sleep.

Some good tips here though. 

I once slept through a car smashing into a wall next to our house but my fiancee's snoring can wake me up

No. 1 most annoying habit of snorers is obviously the snoring. 

A close no. 2 is saying ‘I don’t do it deliberately’ as if that makes any difference at all. Oh, well I guess that’s ok then. I thought I hadn’t had any rest all night, but it turns out that your failure to lay down and breathe like a normal human being isn’t deliberate, so I guess I’m feeling absolutely fine. 

I think the OP's point was that quite a few snorers are so loud, earplugs are useless. Anecdotally, most snorers I know seem to be able to sleep through anything.

These are what you need... Quies wax earplugs from Amazon... They're the absolute business, problem solved:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Quies-Plugs-Pairs-PACK-Personal-Care/dp/B00DDTAEO2...

It would be great if the known snorers could lay off the booze a little bit on Saturday night though when staying in dorms! It's well accepted that alcohol makes snoring worse. The worst offenders in my experience seem to be the ones returning late from the pub.

My partners worst offence was when offshore (strictly tea total) and waking someone in the next room.

TBH I wouldnt say his scoring is that bad, unless he had a cold (when everyone snores) or if excessively tired so falls asleep with his pillow at the wrong angle. 

I forget how many times I have heard someone complaining about others snoring keeping them awake, when I know that they have been snoring as well.

Of course, instead of consigning the (acknowledged) snorers to one room, it might be an idea for all the light sleepers to go into one room instead, rather than spreading themselves around any hut. I believe that far too many (supposedly) light sleepers really want a private bedroom just like home, where they are behind double glazing and at the back of their house furthest away from any traffic noise.

A tip I've had some success with is to try and get your breathing in time with the snorer.

The way I see it is they're already doing long and deep sleep breathing and that's what  your body needs to do.

Of course this doesn't always help but worth a try.

I remember on the Haute Route spending a night at a hut above Verbier when the town's mayor and three fat buddies were enjoying an evening of hospitality at the invitation of the hut warden. They were allocated the same room as an English guy and his Scottish champion skier friend, Isla somebody, skiing the Haute Route and shooting thousands of pictures on film for the next year's Salomon brochure. The mayor of Verbier and his pals had a very good meal with plenty of booze. Next morning the English photographer and his friend emerged looking very bleary-eyed indeed and went over to greet the mayor's party. In exaggerated English he said: "Good morning Mr Mayor! You and your friends slept very well last night, didn't you!  Lots of SNORING!" 

We were grateful we hadn't been in the same room.

I was at the Gatliff hostel on Berneray last year (it's a wonderful place) and one of the three dorms there, the one in the same building as the big communal kitchen, had unofficially been allocated as the 'snorer's dorm'.  It was quite busy while I was there though, and it seemed like the smart move to pay to use the communal facilities but pitch a tent outside above the beach to sleep in.

Sleep is cyclical, and our perception of time is a funny thing.  It only takes being woken a few times, at the wrong times, to make it feel like we didn't sleep a wink when in fact we did.  And it feels like we just laid there, wide awake all night when we really didn't.

The difference between a snorer and a non-snorer is that when you share a dorm room with a snorer you *know* that they're asleep.  It's perfectly possible for a snorer to feel like they didn't sleep a wink while also getting enough sleep to make everybody else in the room feel the same way.

Earplugs work fine for me, happily, for anything short of 'pneumatic drill'.
Which reminds me of a photo I took last year - best bunk house ever: http://deepsoup.f2s.com/UKC/knoydartearplugs.jpg

In some cases for sure - but my Mum is a prolific snorer and weighs less than 7 stone so I am not sure losing more weight is recommended there.

I frequently camp on my parents' lawn when I visit (where I can still hear her, but it is less intrusive), or failing that, sleep with noise cancelling headphones on.  I  have resorted to the latter more recently as my 4-year old niece likes to join me in backyard camping trips, which is fun for one night but also not conducive to actually sleeping.  I have no idea how Dad deals with it!

I enjoy writing mutant haiku about all aspects of climbing. Here's my not entirely serious take on a typical early morning in the hut of my local club, Wolverhampton, which boasts some particularly enthusiastic snorers...

Aubade
WMC Hut
Deniolen

blackbird and robin
swap leads in hot summer dark
scratching at my eyes

REM segues into DOMS –
yesterday’s crag and pub deeds
announcing themselves

too loud at this hour:
resigned to some consciousness
I grip my bed tight –

the fusty dorm shakes
as synchronized snoring teams
perform their routines:

seismic detectors
in Bangor begin to bleep,
old volcanoes stir –

North Wales’ fiery ring
gives a fearful sphincter twitch
until some sharp kicks

jolt all off their backs
and tectonic plates relax;
in silence at last

I’m free to conduct
a dawn chorus of my own:
bass muscle spasm,

tenor tendon tweak
and the soaring soprano
of hungover head

There is a throat spray you can get from the chemist - I snore and take it with me on trips. doesn't always totally eliminate snoring but definitely reduces it. 

When I walked the Camino there were a few traditional hostels with 50+ bunks in a single room. The ‘orchestra’ as mentioned above was fascinating. What I noticed was that different snorers had slightly different breathing rates so most of the time they would be out of step but every ten minutes or so they would be in phase together and there would be a RAAAARGH from all corners of the room simultaneously. This would then wake up loads of people and there would be a boing boing rattle from the iron bunks shaking as everyone turned over and grumbled to themselves. And then the pattern would restart.

One of the hostels had a matrimonial room for couples travelling together. It was still bunk beds so celibacy still ruled but supposedly it was lovely and quiet because every noisy snorer had a spouse who could poke them.

The friendship networks that grew amongst people walking at the same time grew into an effective information source for who snored.

I remember a particularly loud German snorer in the youth hostel in Florence. During the night it became apparent there were sufficient numbers of those who had been woken up by the noise that we could lift his bed and take it out into the courtyard, with him still in it, still asleep. 

He was quite amused when he discovered what had happened, and sympathised completely with those of us who had been woken up. 

sleep in the recovery position

I sleep in a tent next to the hut I regularly go to.  Only ear plugs and distance probably work I reckon?

I also snore apparently, so I do other peeps a favour too. 

It's kinda funny when the hut snorers all drink and fall deeply asleep, and all snore and talk about the other people 'being snorers'. Hence my tent.  

Some great stories and advice on this thread. Thanks everyone. 

I actually tried the breath synchronisation tip last night and it helped. Although it may have been the complete exhaustion which finally sent me off..

Try different ear plugs. I favour Molex Jet SNR30 plugs. The higher the snr number the more they block out and I find this brand fit me the best. 

You could try the expensive way:

Noise cancelling earbuds (easier to sleep in that full cans, can't promise you'll like sleeping in them though or that the batteries will hold out)

Milford Sound on an overnight boat trip with wife, mother-in-law and mother-in-law's friend.  We are in a cabin on a ship with another 40 or so passengers in another 10 cabins.   The ship is wooden.  Mother-in-law is a dinky four foot, six stone white haired 70 year old yet snores like a DEMON.  I am kept awake all night by the reverberating snores emitting from MiL, the worst snoring I have ever endured.  I emerge bleary eyed the next morning to death stares from the other passengers.  MiL had breakfasted before me and when questioned by the other passengers cheerily blamed it on me - she had a twinkle in her eye all day!

Always carry a sewing kit and a bag of tennis balls. If problems occurs - quickly attach a tennis ball to the back of the offender's top, thus preventing them from sleeping on their back. 

That sounds a bit like a Viz top tip !