Opinions on dedicated winter bag vs. layered bag/quilt?

[Chris K]

Hey all,

I’m looking to replace my zipperless bag (old Gossamer Gear design circa 2006) with a sensible two or three bag/quilt combo that is good for all four seasons in the mountain west. Usage will be year-round in the Colorado Rockies, Colorado Plateau and Great Plains (Nebraska, S. Dakota, etc). I’m not doing long-duration trips in the winter, generally one-two nights at a time. I had a simple system for many years – the zipperless bag and a homemade single-layer Climashield overquilt, but it wasn’t warm enough for winter.

I know I want a quilt for above freezing. Below 20F, I want a bag. For the space between, I can’t decide if I should get a warmer quilt, or get a slightly less warm bag, which I can use standalone in that shoulder season temp range, then combine with the quilt for winter.

So, to sum up, I’m trying to pick one of these combos:

– a 30F or 20F quilt + a 0F bag

– a 30F quilt + a 10F or 15F bag, and layer them together

– or something else I’m not considering?

Appreciate any insight if you’ve tried the layering approach, or recommend an outright warmer bag exclusively for winter and one quilt, or perhaps two quilts, for the rest of the year.

[Bruce Tolley]

Two nights in Nebraska in winter sounds way cold.

Sounds like you are asking for specific recommendations. I recall there was a thread here at BPL a year or two ago about how to figure the insulation value of various down bag plus synthetic quilt combinations with respective temperature ratings. You should be able to find it using the search engine.

The other consideration is whether you want a vapor barrier or not. For a two night trip, you might be able to get by without it

[Chris K]

Thanks, Bruce, I’ll search around some more.

I imagine I’ll stop short of needing a vapor barrier. Like you said, a couple nights max, with time to dry things out if necessary, would be OK without it.

[Bruce Tolley]

You also don’t say what kind of shelter you are using and whether you expect to be setting up on snow or not.  If you are sleeping solo under a pyramid, folks might give different recommendations vs sharing a 4 season double walled tent.

You also might look that the sleeping systems described by Adventure Alan and Andrew Skurka on their respective sites for winter or shoulder season trips in the regions you are described.

My winter (snow) camping is all in the Sierra Nevada below tree line where it barely gets into the teens at night.

[John Vance]

I like an enclosed bag for 15f and below but have used quilts down to zero f but it wasn’t planned.   I have a 30f quilt, a 15f quilt and a zero f bag.   I just like the simplicity of a bag when it’s really cold.

[Zack L]

What I have found to be the most versatile for me is a 15-20 degree down bag and a 30 degree quilt down quilt and a 50 degree synthetic quilt.

I have slept in the 15 degree down bag paired with the 50 degree quilts wearing my insulating clothes and been comfortable down to -17F.

I prefer a 3-season bag paired with the clothes I’m already bringing mostly due to pack volume and cost.

[Mark Verber]

The most versatile combination I had was a 10F bag, a 30F down quilt, and a 45F synthetic quilt.  I could do a lot of mix and match to cover almost any condition. BUT…

I got rid of the 45F quilt after a few seasons… the 30F quilt worked fine in warmer conditions by leaving it loose and and I haven’t had an instance in my adult life where moisture actually impacted my down’s performance. We don’t need to talk about my experience as a youth :)

I have used quilt only down to 0F, but I have to say that when it was below around 10F there is something really comforting about crawling into a puffy, fully enclosing sleep bag. I will also note that the colder it is, the more noticeable drafts are when the edge becomes unsealed.

For my conditions, I found a 30F quilt (which I could push lower with my puffy clothing) worked for my 3 season use, and I pulled the bag out for the winter. Your milage might vary. For example, we have what I would consider to be a 15F double quilt I use with my wife. She thinks it’s perfect.  My leg is typically sticking out because I think it’s too warm most of the time.

[nunatak]

I wrote this a couple of seasons ago for another website. Maybe there’s something helpful here.

 

Four Season Sleeping for a weekend warrior.

Winter for the purpose of this article is temps 10°F and below, 10k’ plus altitude, and fully snow covered.
Summer is altitudes up to 13’k, temps down to high twenties, and no snow.
Shoulder seasons are anything between these two extremes, with sleeping altitudes still above 10k’.

Background. I am a warm sleeping male and blessed with true wilderness all around my location. But a busy, tight schedule rarely allow outings of more than a week. For me it is much simpler to fit in shorter trips year round. Often these are focused on spectacular meteorological events, and planned at lunch on a workday, leaving at four and returning mid morning the next day. Aka the S24O, a term coined by Grant Petersen of Rivendell Bicycle Works.

SUMMER

Summers in the Western mountains are now starting in May and getting warmer, presenting me with the only true quilt season. I typically use a single wall shelter that goes to the ground all around for bug protection. The torso length air pad is uninsulated and supplemented with an 1/8” CCF pad underneath (occasionally above, however this is a slippery mess). A light puffy jacket comes along too.

With this setup a slim 40°F quilt with overfill and mummy style foot is plenty warm most nights. Wearing additional clothes and a willingness to accept moderate discomfort easily takes me down to the occasional freezing night. If the odd cold front coincides with a trip, I toss in a ten ounce over-bag.

That said, due to the increasingly mild conditions, rampant fires thru-out, and my Scandinavian blood summers are not my preferred season for overnighting in the mountains. It’s the time for bagging high peaks and doing extended day hikes when the smoke pressure is low.

FALL

I start coming alive in the fall when the daytime high reads in the sixties, and the nights become mountain-like frigid. I will bring either the burliest single wall shelter I have, or later on a legit double wall tent. The torso pad is now insulated and still paired with the thin CCF, and some sort of down coat is packed along.

The one and only quilt I own gets put away without much melancholy, and is replaced by a zipperless/hoodless full coverage down bag, conservatively rated to just below freezing.

Eliminating underside drafts immediately makes such a bag a cozy transition time winner. With the shorter days I will rarely find myself suffering from the lack of night time venting versatility.

If unseasonably cold is forecasted I am definitely heading out in the hills, and for this I now add a compact Alpha Direct over-bag. How much additional warmth this fringe idea provides is still open for debate, but 10 degrees might be all I can squeeze out of it. While not saving much weight, it is less bulky than the tried and true Apex over-bag, and looks to be a lot more resistant to rapid loft degeneration.

WINTER

Once winter arrives in earnest the shelter needs to be unbending to high winds, seal out blowing snow, and if it also adds warmth I’ll take that too. In other words a sprawling Scandinavian tunnel or a tight mountaineering dome. The pads are full length and consists of insulated air and thick CCF. A couple of extra 1/8” pads also doesn’t hurt, as lounging anywhere is on snow. The parka is high loft down, and down booties mandatory too. Thin insulated pants does it for me, as opposed to down leggings.

It is now mummy season, as in differentially cut high loft down, internal draft collar, snug hood and plenty of room for layering and wearing booties. The Alpha over-bag is on full time as moisture becomes a real issue on longer trips. I have another bigger one to accommodate the huge mummy bag so not to compress a centimeter of loft.

SPRING

The arrival of sunnier, warmer and longer days are alluring, but there’s still snow under me when sleeping and conditions in the high mountains can worsen quick. In other words this is a tricky time to plan for. If I had one, a good sized pyramid could do well but in my case the slightly heavier double wall tent brings enough insurance against storms. Air pad remains insulated and with the ubiquitous 1/8” CCF close by. Puffy jacket is medium weight and some sort of camps shoes/insulated booties are nice for the snow.

Maybe, just maybe, this could a time for a warm quilt because of the wildly fluctuating temperatures. Alas, don’t have one, so I either bring the zipperless down bag or the 40°F quilt with over-bag.

Spring time is often too busy for me to do much backpacking, but it is a lovely time in the mountains – before bugs, smoke and heat, and with lingering snow adding that crucial element to high country travel.

[Ken Larson]

Jan….Excellent followup to the subject presented and documentation.

[Chris K]

Wow. Thank you for all of your replies.

Jan, very helpful. Appreciate the full-fledged description of the annual cycle. Beautiful. Guess I don’t have to email you now with this same redundant sleep system question!

[Chris K]

Jan, do you find that the Alpha overbag is sufficient to push the dew point out of the higher lofted winter bag?

[nunatak]

Minimal testing yet, but I’d say pretty likely.

[Ryan Jordan]

I sold my winter mummy bag (Feathered Friends Lark 10) last year. Combined with a puffy parka and pants, this is what I used for trips to well below 0 °F. The reason for selling it was that I’m in the middle of moving and have way less space to store stuff right now, and our new home (< 1,000 s.f.) will be a lot smaller than our old house.

But I kept my Feathered Friends Tanager (20 °F) and Enlightened Equipment Enigma Apex (50 °F) and I’ve been really happy with that combo down to about -5 °F, when I’m wearing my winter parka (PHD Yukon K Hoody) and pants (Western Mountaineering Flight Down Pants) – when sleeping in a fully-enclosed shelter (pyramid or tent). This is a pretty solid multi-day system, even when I don’t have the chance to dry gear out in the sun. No need for a VB liner for trips of less than 4-5 days. For longer trips or really frigid weather, I’d definitely opt for a VB system, and a real winter mummy bag with a water-resistant shell to keep the frost at bay.

[Tjaard Breeuwer]

@Chris K, I agree with you about quilts for warmer weather and bags for colder.

I’d say it just depends on how warm a system you need. You said your old system wasn’t quite warm enough, but that sounds like you don’t need much more warmth, not a ton.

I find a mummy bag with 10F EN comfort rating works well for me most of the time, even for short trips well below zero (using synthetic over quilt high loft clothing and tent

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