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Down sleeping bag? (specific criteria)

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I am looking for a down sleeping bag, something in the 20F range or lower. Preferably rectangular, so it can be unzipped as a giant blanket without neck baffles or foot box.

It has been a while since I bought a winter weight down bag. Dang, that’s some serious coin, even those I’ve seen on discount/outlet sites.

I have a zero degree synthetic bag (a Wiggys) and it does everything I want it to do in freezing temps, except pack down smaller than a beer keg.

Suggestions for a down bag that fits the bill? I would forgo the rectangular shape if that was easier on the wallet.
 
Kelty is a good starting place. I like Marmot bags which can sometimes be found on sale at a place like Campmoor. I would investigate the new dry down bags.

Two down bags are hard to beat in cold weather. Years ago I bought a canvas bedroll which is a very large piece of canvas with snaps. It is the cowboy suitcase. With a down bag, foam pad, thermarest and two wool blankets, it is good to below zero. The canvas does a good job of holding everything in place. I have slept in it in the open and awakened to 5 inches of snow with no problems. Lots of good solutions on this thread.
 
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Kelty is a good starting place. I like Marmot bags which can sometimes be found on sale at a place like Campmoor. I would investigate the new dry down bags.

Most of the major manufacturers do a decent job with down bags. I have a Mountain Hardware 35/50 down flip rectangular bag that is perfect for my shoulder season desires. Basically this bag, but down, so it packs (without a compression bag) to the size of a grapefruit.

http://www.mountainhardwear.com/flip-35-50---reg-|-319-|-reg-786559903350.html

I probably wouldn’t have bought it, but it was deep discount discontinued, and it proved to be an ideal bag/blanket for shoulder seasons.

When I travel in the tripping truck I like to carry two sleeping bags to cover a possible range of temperatures from 20F (or below) to 50+. And a microfiber sheet for warm weather. That three-fer range and choice spans most of what I trip and truck camp in.

But we already have a family abundance of synthetic bags covering a range of temps, so the cost/benefit ratio of losing half the volume and a few pounds of weight doesn’t come close to the retail ouch for most down bags.

Which is a long way of saying “If anyone comes across a deep discount down bag, give a shout”.
 
I always wanted a down bag-they just feel so nice and yes pack small. Their price and poor performance when wet put me off. I saw a down mummy on closeout at a real cheap price and ordered it. When I got it I found out why it was so cheep-it was puke green with yellow pokadots! But I do love it in the dark or with my eyes closed,besides ,as a freied said"how many times have you got your sleeping bag wet? I do dubble bag it though. Sure feels nice!
Turtle
 
I have two Mountain Hardware down bags, that have a second zipper that either snugs things up as a mummy bag in the real cold, or allows more room when opened. If the temps are above freezing, I sleep with it open as a blanket only, with my Exped Down Mat underneath. I do like having the footbed though, as I still keep my feet tucked in (unless very warm out).

I have pretty much always used down, and ensure that it stays dry. I do have a super warm Mountain Hardware synthetic (-35C), that sees use about 5-10 times a year is all, and a down for that warmth would be very expensive.
 
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I have a Cdn military surplus down bag. It's a two piece set, essentially two 3lb down bags that fit inside each other. You use one for shoulder seasons and both for the real cold days. You could do the same possibly with lighter ( and cheaper) down bags, maybe even use a duvet inside one? The hot new accessory for mine is a polar fleece liner...that is pretty comfy.

If you search around you may be able to find one of these on a surplus site. They do run around $350 with the hood and valise but I have had mine for ages and love it.

Christy
 
I have an EMS down 0[SUP]o[/SUP] F mummy bag for cold weather, and a MH 40[SUP]o[/SUP] F down mummy bag for warmer weather. The EMS bag was deeply discounted and was less than $200, and then I used a coupon!! The MH bag was new, never used from a previous owner...$100!!
If you're not in a hurry, I'm sure you can find a good deal on a quality down bag. I spent too many years with synthetics, after switching to down, I could never go back. My MH bag packs down to the size of a 16 oz soda!!
 
Hi Mike, I've often though that I'd like to give down a try but every time the comparison with my Wiggys nesting bags stops me. But you sure are right about the beer barrel size when packed.
I wonder if a down bag will start picking up moisture over several days of being out camping? I do know that quite a bit of water vapor is given off from a normal at rest body.
Almost but not quite bought a Western Mountaineering bag after looking at their site, the thing that stopped me was, if I read it right, the idea that you are supposed to pat the down around these circumferential tubes depending on the temperature you were expecting. If it's going to be warm you pat the down so that you're laying on most of it, there by rendering it ineffective as insulation, the reverse if it's going to be cold. I guess that makes sense in a way but if I'm going to lay out several hundred dollars for a bag I'd like a more certain outcome than such a by-guess-and-by-golly system. Now, maybe I didn't understand it right when I read about it but it sure seemed to be that way.
I've got a LL Bean down vest, love it, but when after a long while it needs washing and then drying, I'm really impressed how long and protracted it is to get all the moisture out of the down. And by default I reflect that I sure wouldn't want to be doing that with a wet down sleeping bag over a campfire!

I guess that I'm still willing to put up with a weight and volume penalty in exchange for knowing that no matter what, I'll be sleeping snug at night.

Hoorah for Wiggy's beer barrel bags! Rob
 
Hi Mike, I've often though that I'd like to give down a try but every time the comparison with my Wiggys nesting bags stops me. But you sure are right about the beer barrel size when packed.
I wonder if a down bag will start picking up moisture over several days of being out camping? I do know that quite a bit of water vapor is given off from a normal at rest body.

I bought a good quality down bag in the early 70’s when I first got serious about backpacking and paddling. In an odd twist of fate the outfitter I bought it from 40 year ago later became and remains one of my best tripping partners. Small world.

One of the things he suggested at the time was that I also buy an inexpensive 3-season bag to use in the shoulder seasons and save the winter down for really cold temps. That down bag went everywhere (including a couple months in Nepal when I loaned it to a friend) and was still going warm and strong 20 years later when it was stolen from my truck.

We needed a family worth of bags then, for the wife and kids as well. I wasn’t buying four down bags, and had concerns about kids and bag security/waterproofieness, and so bought synthetic fill bags.

Down bags have come a long way in 40 years, with vapor shells and linings and treated down, and in 40 years of tripping I’ve never had a really wet bag aside from some damp corners due to leaky tents.

I do like my zero degree Wiggy, and make room for the beer-barrel volume when tripping, but as I begin to take longer road trips roaming the country volume in the tripping truck has become as important as space in the canoe, especially since some of my trips now include bringing shop tools to do carpentry work on the road.

I was in North Carolina for October; starting the month sleeping under a microfiber sheet and ended it in a 30F bag, so the need to carry both a summer and winter bag was apparent. More so if I’m roaming from Florida to the Rockies.

I see a down bag in my future.

Two stupid stories about that down bag. It was a “long” cut and when I got it home from the store I decided to see how just long. For some unearthly reason I opted to test the length by dropping the fully zipped up bag over my head. It was a mummy bag, and the length was fine. What wasn’t fine was that I found myself trapped, standing upright, encased in a tight fitting mummy bag with my arms at my sides. The only way to extricate myself was to fall over onto the floor and wiggle out, and even that proved difficult.

When the bag went to Nepal I included a present in the stuffed bag for the loanee. A nicely life like rubber snake. The snake was a huge hit with the Sherpas.
 
I have used two LL Bean 20 degree rectangular down bags for the past 35 years. The older one has some patches and I now use it on my bed at home.

It's difficult to imagine the down getting wet in the canoe or on land. In the canoe it's in a waterproof stuff sack, which is inside a waterproof liner in my Duluth pack, so it won't get wet in a dump. Unless my tent is ripped open during a rainstorm, I don't see how it would get wet on land. In any event, neither one ever gotten wet, beyond body perspiration, in 35 years.

I don't need a warmer bag because I don't camp in winter, and for shoulder seasons I carry a very compact rectangular silk bag liner. In hot summers I just use the bag, or the silk liner, as an unzipped blanket, which can easily be kicked off if it gets too hot.

Stick with rectangular down, Mike. The warm-when-wet rationale for synthetics is overstated and irrelevant to a careful packer. Mummy bags are for ectomorphic kayakers and hikers or people who climb Everest.

All you can do is keep an eye out on various sites for price bargains. They do come up from time to time. Left Lane and Steep & Cheap often have good deals.
 
Stick with rectangular down, Mike. Mummy bags are for ectomorphic kayakers and hikers or people who climb Everest.

All you can do is keep an eye out on various sites for price bargains. They do come up from time to time. Left Lane and Steep & Cheap often have good deals.

Steep and Cheap I knew, and I used to get the Daily Dose

http://www.steepandcheap.com/

but Left Lane is new to me.

http://www.leftlanesports.com/Search.aspx?l=00050000000000000000

If I find what I am looking for price and feature-wise I can live with a mummy, especially if it is not too tight a taper. I rarely zip any bag up and have used mummys as overblankets in below freezing conditions for years.

It is actually becoming a question of packing space and volume, unless I want the tripping truck packed like the Magic Bus, and a mummy does save some space.
 
Have you considered forgoing the bag and using a top quilt instead? I have one for hammocking but if I was going back to ground I'd probably stick with the same setup. The thinking is that a sleeping bag doesn't provide much insulation on your backside because you're laying on it and compressing the insulation. That's why we all use a sleeping pad. So why not save the weight and bulk and skip the bottom half?

I don't know that it's necessarily going to save you much money but I find mine very comfortable and the size, while probably not as large as an unzipped sleeping bag, is much more generous than a zipped bag and allows you great freedom of movement. Mine has a small foot box that can be opened or closed.

I'm sure they're made by the big brands as well but there are plenty of very high quality ones available from smaller, "one man", operations. My top and bottom quilts are from hammockgear and rated at 20*. I've been very happy with them. My main reason for picking them was their "standard" quilt was just a little longer than the others so I didn't have to pay extra for the "extra long" model.

http://www.hammockgear.com/top-quilts/

http://www.jacksrbetter.com/quilts/

http://www.undergroundquilts.com/

http://www.enlightenedequipment.com/quilts-1/

http://www.warbonnetoutdoors.com/topquilts/

Alan
 
Most of the time I sleep in my mummy with the opening under me and my feel in the foot box. The rest is like an overquilt. Lots of room. This works particularly well in my hammock. I only use it as a conventional mummy if its real cold.
Turtle
 
Have you considered forgoing the bag and using a top quilt instead? I have one for hammocking but if I was going back to ground I'd probably stick with the same setup. The thinking is that a sleeping bag doesn't provide much insulation on your backside because you're laying on it and compressing the insulation. That's why we all use a sleeping pad. So why not save the weight and bulk and skip the bottom half?

I don't know that it's necessarily going to save you much money but I find mine very comfortable and the size, while probably not as large as an unzipped sleeping bag, is much more generous than a zipped bag and allows you great freedom of movement. Mine has a small foot box that can be opened or closed.

That is largely what I use the 35/50 Flip bag for. I think the Big Agnes pad and combo, eliminating the compressed bag undernrath, is a great set up for weight and volume savings, But not to a toss and turn “blanket” sleeper.

My usual tripping partner uses a hammock (or one of a couple of hammocks) with a quilt and underquilt. Yowza, I think his down hammock quilts cost more than I want to pay for a zippered bag.

Using a sleeping bag opened as a quilt works for my 90 percentile use. But for the 10% where I wake up thinking “Ok, it’s dang cold, time to zip this puppy up” a sleeping bag is handy, despite my desire to sleep unfettered.

In that cost/availability/benefit ratio I need to be realistic about how many times a year I actually zip up a sleeping bag. I sleep warm in the cold everywhere; we sleep with the windows open at home, and don’t heat our bedrooms, so I’m used to bundling beneath the covers.

I have zipped up the Flip bag a few times when it dropped below freezing, so I know it does the job from 30F to 60+F.

I’ve been zipped up in the giant Wiggys rectangular bag a few times with roll-around, change-sides comfort. But only on rare occasions, and if cost/volume reduction necessitated I could deal with an enclosed mummy bag a couple of times a year, especially if it was a wide taper.

The search continues.
 
Mummy bags are for ectomorphic kayakers

Thanks for confirming my suspicions, those sneaky ectomorphs can't be trusted, with their big brains and spidery limbs. I'm looking forward to more suggestions in this thread too, I've always wanted a down rectangular bag to fit my over stuffed, droopy, once upon a time mesomorphic body.
 
That is largely what I use the 35/50 Flip bag for. I think the Big Agnes pad and combo, eliminating the compressed bag undernrath, is a great set up for weight and volume savings, But not to a toss and turn “blanket” sleeper.

True that, but you've only got ~36" between the shelves in the back of your truck? A Big Agnes semi-rectangular specs ~78" as a "girth" measurement, so you're not going to pick up a whole lot of inches of thrash room with blankets.

My usual tripping partner uses a hammock (or one of a couple of hammocks) with a quilt and underquilt. Yowza, I think his down hammock quilts cost more than I want to pay for a zippered bag.

But sewing machines are cheap :)

Using a sleeping bag opened as a quilt works for my 90 percentile use. But for the 10% where I wake up thinking “Ok, it’s dang cold, time to zip this puppy up” a sleeping bag is handy, despite my desire to sleep unfettered.

In that cost/availability/benefit ratio I need to be realistic about how many times a year I actually zip up a sleeping bag. I sleep warm in the cold everywhere; we sleep with the windows open at home, and don’t heat our bedrooms, so I’m used to bundling beneath the covers.

I have zipped up the Flip bag a few times when it dropped below freezing, so I know it does the job from 30F to 60+F.

I’ve been zipped up in the giant Wiggys rectangular bag a few times with roll-around, change-sides comfort. But only on rare occasions, and if cost/volume reduction necessitated I could deal with an enclosed mummy bag a couple of times a year, especially if it was a wide taper.

The search continues.

Have you considered using an overbag or bagliner to extend your temp range? I know that the colder it gets, the less interested I am in tossing and turning. When I sleep on the ground in the winter I sometimes use a Big Agnes Cross Mountain summer weight bag as an overbag with my regular 3 season down bag/quilt. I haven't found my lower limit yet for that combo (but I haven't been looking that hard)
 
True that, but you've only got ~36" between the shelves in the back of your truck? A Big Agnes semi-rectangular specs ~78" as a "girth" measurement, so you're not going to pick up a whole lot of inches of thrash room with blankets.

The thrash room is less a matter of girth coverage than of getting a zipped bag twisted when I change sides, hence my preference for a rectangular bag. But again, an honest assessment of how often I zip up a bag may make finding a reasonably priced 20F rectangular bag a less necessary search.



Have you considered using an overbag or bagliner to extend your temp range? I know that the colder it gets, the less interested I am in tossing and turning. When I sleep on the ground in the winter I sometimes use a Big Agnes Cross Mountain summer weight bag as an overbag with my regular 3 season down bag/quilt. I haven't found my lower limit yet for that combo (but I haven't been looking that hard)

An overbag or liner would be the logical solution – if I slept with the bag zipped up. I toss and turn no matter the temperature, and doubling up sleeping bags as layered blankets doesn’t work very well; the top bag slides off or the under bag gets pushed to the side and I’m back to a single layer” blanket”.

This will not be a case of analysis paralysis. I’ve found a couple of discounted 20F wide taper down mummy bags and unless I suddenly find a rectangular down bag at similar cost (and I haven’t seen one yet) I’ll pick one and order it
 
I haven't slept in my down mummy in years. I wonder if I still fit? Ever since my bow/life mate insisted we zip two barrels together (she's a snuggler, I'm a tosser-turner) I've been corkscrewing myself into the double barrel bag every night. The man made fill was easy on our budget, and keeps us comfortable. They don't compress like down would though. Every trip after compression I look at the larger than bread loaf sizes and ponder if down bags might be worth the expense. I'm glad of this thread, it's given me much to consider.

Quilts look interesting.
 
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Over the course of the last few years, I have been consciously replacing my outdoor gear. I looked at weight and volume, in that order. First to be replaced was the sleeping bag, you just can't beat down for warmth and compactness. Next was my sleeping pad, replaced an old self inflating with a Neo Air.
My pack now has much more room, and weighs quite a bit less...
 

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