GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
Serious thought and research should be undertaken when purchasing a sleeping bag. Your sleeping bag provides warmth and comfort during the night so your body can adequately recover from a rough day on the trail and be fresh and ready for the next day’s adventure. Do your homework, as you should for every piece of outdoor gear, when considering which sleeping bag suits your needs. Some areas to consider when looking at sleeping bags are: temperature rating, warmth/weight/compression, shape, and sleeping pads.
Temperature Ratings
Temperature rating, or comfort rating, is typically the lowest temperature that an average person will remain comfortable in a sleeping bag. Sleeping bag manufacturers vary somewhat when it comes to defining the method used to determine a bag’s temperature rating. Some varibales in a manufacturer’s equation for determining a temperature rating are: sleeping pad? bag liner? clothes? tent?. Manufacturers may or may not include these factors when calculating bag ratings. So, the best advice to give concerning temperture ratings is to use this information to acquire a “ball park” temperature that will suit your needs and supply comfort. Also, seek the advice of a good outdoor gear retailer concerning rating values for specific manufacturers. Again, doing research is highly advisable.
Warmth/Weight/Compression
These three considerations are grouped together because they are all basically determined by the fill material. Sleeping bags are filled with many different kinds of material that are grouped into two main categories, down (from goose) and synthetic.
There are advantages and disadvantages for both types of fill material:
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Advantages – better warmth to weight ratio, easier to compress, years of effective performance (if properly cared for). Disadvantages- expensive, loses insulating abilities when wet, long drying times. Advantages – more affordable, insulates when wet, quickly dries. Disadvantages – bulky (poor warmth to weight ratio), not easily compressed, usually loses performance after several years. As you can read, the different fill materials can present a backpacker with a dilemma when choosing a sleeping bag. Each bag performs differently in certain situations but it’s not practical to pack two bags and weather predictions are not exact, especailly in the high country. Therefore, a compromise must be made. One compromise might be to use an overbag in conjunction with a down filled bag when winter camping. Nothing warms like goose down and the overbag will decrease the chance of your bag getting wet. ShapeThere are three basic sleeping bag shapes: mummy, semi-rectangular, and rectangular. Basically, the closer the bag fits, which is characteristic of a mummy bag, the warmer you will remain during your night’s sleep. However, the closer fitting bag affords the hiker with less room as a consequence of the gain in warmth. For some people this might be uncomfortable. The rectangular bag gives the hiker more room but is not as effective as a mummy bag in maintaining warmth. The semi-rectangular bag is a hybrid between both. However, the mummy bag is more favored by backpackers due to its lesser weight on average due to the smaller amount of material used to construct the bag. Sleeping PadsSleeping pads are essential to comfort. When a person is in a sleeping bag the part of the bag between the ground and hiker is flattened. This renders the bottom of the sleeping bag very poor in keeping the hiker warm. The use of a sleeping pad will offset this effect and keep the hiker comfortable. |
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