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.