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How Low Ya Think It Will Go?
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May 10, 2006 at 9:50 am #1218544
I am looking at the MontBell Warm Up Liner inside of a bivy for summer use. ANyone have a guess on the temperature it will go down to?
May 10, 2006 at 10:30 am #1356177Kevin,
I have no clue…. but I will test the idea this weekend on a trip to my “playground” – Manzana Narrows camp in Dick Smith Wilderness (Los Padres National Forest).
I’ll be using the Montbell Warm Up liner inside an Equinox Bivy. Temperatures are predicted to be low 40s to mid 50s at night.
May 10, 2006 at 12:58 pm #1356185I’ve been toying around with a concept like the liner. How heavy is your bivy? MontBell lists the liner at 8.8oz.
I’ve wondered about using a simple fleece sack for summer camping and I’ve seen some shelled fleece blankets that raised the same interest, but they didn’t use UL fabrics. A tapered fleece bag with a UL water resistant/breathable cover would be a simple thing to sew and would make a great day hiking backup too.
Marmot makes a sack with about the same construction as a DriClime windshirt. (See http://www.marmot.com/products/product.php?cat=bags&subcat=23&style_id=H2397). It is 19ozs/540g and list price is $79. More to the point of your question, they don’t give it a temp rating.
I have a Pacific Crest (Canadian outfit importing Asian made camping items) Micron GXT bag that has a thin layer of polyester insulation and light nylon inside and out– it even has a hood– and it weighs about 20oz. It’s something that I picked up at a thrift store and got my creative gears going. It reminds me of a light jacket.
All these bags stuff down to the size of a Nalgene bottle and are bound by the same rules as any other bag or garment– your tolerances, wind, humidity, pad and ground temperature, and what you wear with it.
I’d say 60F and good to 40F out of the wind with some clothes on– socks, long johns, long sleeve tee, vest and a hat. You could survive lower than that, but you wouldn’t have fond memories of that night :)
I tested a few light, cheap sleeping bags that I collected by sleeping on my front porch on a 40F night, which exposed me to some wind, but had enough overhang so I didn’t have to deal with rain. The porch floor was cedar decking and I used a Ridgerest long pad. Wind made a big difference and the weave of a sleeping bag shell was obvious with just a light breeze. I have a Lafuma 800 Extreme that I now know needs to be inside a tent or used on a good warm summer night– it breathes *really* well.
It is odd that will all our technology, a few ounces of goose down can exceed man made fibers for insulation. Of course the goose had a head start on R&D :) It would be nice to have sleeping bags that would handle say 15F-20F conditions and stuff down to the size of a 1 liter bottle. It seems there should be some heat reflecting materials available or at least enough market to support the development.
May 10, 2006 at 9:15 pm #1356218>Marmot…19ozs…Micron GXT bag…about 20oz.
That’s why I keep coming back to my Jacks R Better Nest down quilt (20.2 oz), which isn’t much more than most liner+bivy combos seem to weigh (not including BPL’s possible future products). I used it in the hammock at +25F with clothing and Micropuff jacket and was quite warm. (I need to test it again without insulation near freezing.) None of the fleece bags seem to come near that temp although they come near the weight. I’m also looking for something that is warm down to freezing and packs small, but so far the Nest seems to be the closest solution. There are some top bags in the new BPL article that shave 5 oz. off the Nest, but they also add +10F to +20F to the manufacturer’s temp rating (not truly comparable, I know). It does appear that at most I might shave 4-5 oz by switching to a bag that isn’t as warm, but the Nest/No Sniveler has the advantage of being wearable as insulation. That saves me 13.2 oz of Micropuff right there, at least in the summer.
May 11, 2006 at 2:28 pm #1356250Fleece bags are quite heavy for their weight and loft. They would be cheap and easy to make and you could beat them up like you wouldn’t dream of doing to a down bag, but they aren’t useful for much more than hostels or summer car camping. Too bad we can’t get a miracle insulation that doen’t require a lot of loft to do the job.
And I got that Micron bag for $5– just for experimental use. I want a bag good down to -20F, has a dehumidifier, air conditioning, satellite TV and compresses to the size of a thimble. It should weigh no more than 8oz and cost under $100. Get busy :)
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