Nunatak Custom design

[Frank Ramos]

I had used a Nunatak Arc Alphinist several years ago for almost an entire season, but that was before I knew how to keep clean outdoors and I ended up stinking the thing up with foot fungus so bad I had to throw it away and buy another bag to complete my trip. After that miserable experience, I decided to go with Polarguad, which is easier to wash and has some other advantages over down. However, I found my Polarguard quilts lost about 30% of their initial loft of 2" as the season progressed, and by autumn I only had 1.3" of loft, which was uncomfortable for sub-freezing weather. So the choice was to either start with 3" of Polarguard, or go back to down.

I decided to go with down, but I wanted to use the same sort of quilt I had used with Polarguard, namely, one with an integrated hood. Nunatak provided me with a custom backcountry blanket, measuring 88" long by 57" wide at the head tapering to 42" long at the foot (these are dimensions of the stretched shell of finished quilt–the lofted and unstretched quilt is slightly smaller). 15oz of 800cuin/oz fill. There are 2" sewn-through chambers at either end, which serve as draft tubes in the finished quilt and the remaining 84" uses 5" wide baffled chambers. I then completed the quilt by folding in two and sewing up the foot end, plus 12" along the length to make a foot pocket, and also sewed up about 16" of the head end, leaving a circle of about 25" unsewed in the middle as a breathing hole. Finally, I added 8" wide by 60" long draft skirts to the sides of the quilt. Final weight is 680 grams (24 oz) and loft is about 2.5".

I am very pleased with the final result and look forward to using it on my upcoming trip. Based on my experiences with Polarguard quilts of the same design, I am confident this new quilt will work very well, and be much more comfortable than using a separate hood. I can highly recommend Nunatak for making the backcountry blanket part of the quilt. By mutual agreement, I sewed the final steps myself, but it probably wouldn't be hard to arrange for Nunatak to do these steps.

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