Synthetic sleeping bags – best weight to warmth ratio

Christine,

+1 for enlightened equipment. Tim Marshall is a great guy to work with. i recently purchased a 40 F quilt and although it is a little heavier and bigger than i needed size-wise, it's nicely made and I am pleased with it.

You may also look at MLD spirit quilts, which are a little more expensive, but lighter that EE.

oh, BTW, you may want to re-check the temp charts for your exact destinations, becasue if you're in SE US during the summer months, you may not see 20 F lows except at high altitudes. which means you may not need such a warm quilt or bag.

best of luck
susan

@Michael: Thanks for the reference to Andy Kirkpatrick's article. Very interesting read – and he unfortunately came to the same conclusion I did: There are hardly any proper technical synthetic bags available on the market! And that is the biggest problem I am facing now….

@Nigel: Thanks for your elaborations on the dew point. I find them very interesting and agree with you, but: Your theory on dew point is only one of many factors that can make a down bag damp. Over the years I have noticed a variety of things that can make the down clump together: It can be anything from touching the wet tent wall, leaking drybags and most important your sweating at night. If you hike in damp conditions no matter what you do down will clump. If you use liners or the double system you will delay the process a bit, but it will still occur.

The problem with the double bag system is that your down layer is very thin to start with and therefore even more prone to cold spots due to clumping. Interestingly enough in another recent thread about synthetic sleep systems it was agreed that synthetic works especially well for warmer conditions because summer down sleeping bags have less down that is more easily rendered useless.

For me the trouble with those reports (including Andy Kirkpatricks) is that the double system is only used for a relatively short period of days or maybe a couple of weeks. I do believe that the double system works for those short periods, but not for much longer. I personally do not trust a summer sleeping maintaining its insulation qualities over weeks in cold and damp climates – even with a synthetic outer bag. I would be happy if anyone could come up with practical long-term experience with a double down/synthetic system.

Regarding your question: I expect above freezing temps and rain during the day and below freezing only at night. And all my insulating clothes are synthetic.

I have an 0 degree epiphany-k down quilt from Tim Marshall since it's cuben it's a vapor liner which keeps the down dry. Because it inflates you can control how warm the bag will be, less air less loft. One drawback is you can't wear down clothes inside for more warmth; it gets too clammy so I recommend using the 0 degree quilt. I can use it in 40 degree weather or 5 degree weather. I have also found putting a light GG pad inside seals out the drafts and also gives more warmth then when it's on the outside. I find the cuben warms up faster than a nylon or polester linings of standard bags and quilts.

However I have not tested it in the southeast, just the Sierra's so very different conditions.
You might ask Tim what he would recommend.

I actually used a quilt down to about 15 degrees (assuming the weather forecast for that night was correct). The quilt was a dicontinued BPL quilt but a similar quilt would be a quilt made with 7.5 oz insulation by Tim Marshell. A quilt like this should be comfortable down to 15, although you may need to add some of your insulated clothing on colder nights. A bivy really helps too. Even with a bivy such a quilt is lighter than any mummy bag I'm aware of.