it seems that traditionally most sleeping bags (at least in the above 0F range) had continuous horizontal baffles. This ostensibly was easy to manufacture – gave good vertical down control and facilitated moving down form back to front as need required.
In the past few years there seems to be a proliferation of bags that either have fully vertical baffles (eg Marmot Plasma) or Vertical baffles on the chest area (like the Stoic and others) If i understand correctly this helps deal with down shift that would be caused by gravity (that is if i roll a bit in my sleep down will shift from chest to back in a normal horizontal baffle bag).
My questions are:
1) does this design have any other benefits?
2) how did they deal with the difficulty of vertical down control with such huge baffles (say in the plasma) I reckon they have some "gate" system….is this just a semi baffle (like the Karo step enlightened have) does that really solve the problem well? wouldnt this add weight since you are baffeling both ways?
3) do you guys find the lack of ability to move down form chest to back at all troubling?
Any insight is welcome
Thanks
Mike
