I didn't see more details in the article, but my guess is they were taking and averaging multiple temperature reads across the body. That is, core temp should only be within a narrow range like you say, but fingertip temp will vary much more widely.

All in all I found this to be a very strange article. If you just look at the data, I think a reasonable conclusion is that modern gear is vastly better at its function than old time Mallory gear. It's much lighter and keeps the wearer much warmer than old gear. But the whole tone of the article is about "myth busting" and how there haven't been really that many improvements in gear. I'm just looking at their charts and data and wondering what they're smoking.

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fwipsy 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I think they're "debunking" a strawman argument that old gear was completely useless

	▲	db48x 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Obviously that older gear wasn’t useless, since real people used it to climb the exact same mountains that people climb today. It’s pretty clear from the text that they have debunked the idea that modern synthetic materials have outstripped older materials in performance. At the start of their project they expected modern gear of similar capabilities to be lighter. What they found was that modern gear’s advantage is primarily that it is simpler to use. Instead of seven carefully–chosen layers of wool and silk, you can wear a single coat. That single coat is also effective over a much larger temperature range than the older clothes. Really this should not be all that surprising, as the expertise required to pick those layers has been condensed by engineers into the design of the coat. The modern climber no longer needs that same expertise, just money to buy the coat. This is the same story of specialization that has powered our economic growth for centuries. You and I no longer need to know how to grow vegetables, or shoe a horse, or design a circuit. There might still be advantages to knowing how to write a sonnet or plan a battle, but for the most part we can leave these tasks to specialists who can get better results than we can. Those specialists in turn can leave other tasks to us. Everyone gets more efficient as a result.