Correct. Maybe a little better than fair, but not quite as good as with the Claytor NN. it's just a little high on the right "wall" side. Easily corrected with a light top quilt, and there are some advantages to a top quilt approach with a PeaPod. Of course, do to weight issues, you have to try and balance the weight of a TQ plus PeaPod top half vs temp- you could end up with way more warmth than you need and too much weight.Originally Posted by Cannibal
east_stingray:
For ground sleeping, the Ray Way quilt (aforementioned bulky quilt) with a draft stopper is aces. I used it in a tent prior to getting off the ground and was much warmer than the cheap mummy bag I had before. You have to make them yourself, the alpine version is bulky indeed, but it is about a hundred dollars and a few hours of your time for quality warmth (to 20F, if you are a warm sleeper) and comfort. I do not know what kind of insulation it is, and Ray Jardine is quirky enough that he will not tell you - I can say that it's not climashield XP as I have some of that also - it's much loftier, lighter and softer than climashield. I had enough material left that I made a hat to match; I haven't used it because it's warm enough that it makes my head sweat, so I now wear a simple breathable pullover hat.
Not sure what you consider cold weather camping - are you an above zero kind of guy, or a twenty below camper? For me, cold is about 30-34F, and a couple of 3 season quilts from Jacks R Better do fine. I take a pad for insurance - if I know it's going to be mid 30s there's a chance of it going lower.
And now I contribute to thread drift - but we learn things from that too.
I think a careful, experienced hiker could possibly hike a life time and not get his/her down wet. Especially off the ground in a hammock. Even if some rain blows on things, a good DWR should keep you out of trouble 99% of the time. As long as you can dry the surface off before you pack up.
Though, as already posted, I have seen people get wet from falling tree limbs and tarps springing leaks, those things are admittedly pretty unusual. For example, I have not seen snow break a limb off and puncture a tarp since June 85. And has any body else here seen that happen? I didn't think so, so the odds are pretty low. Though other things happen, even if just making a mistake, as Cannibal's story shows. And Preachaman if we ever hear from him on this.
But most of us are going to stay dry most of the time, I would think. So if 99% of a long hiking career is dry, most of us will probably opt for the lighter, way more compressible, keep it's loft forever down. And if in the unlikely event we should ever get really wet, just bail out. If going home or to town relatively quickly is not an option, and severe hypothermia therefore a possibility, some may rethink the down vs CS choice. Me, I like to use a mixture.
It seems a more likely problem for the experienced hammock hanger is gradual loss of loft due to fog and/or condensation. As has been reported by a couple of folks here, for example. But drying the surface with a camp towel may solve most of the wet shell problem if sunshine is not available and you must pack up and go. Or, maybe that DryDucks poncho will keep all of the surface moisture off. I plan to try one. As for internal condensation, that could be trickier. For example, I still can't figure out why my friend has complained about loss loft in both TQ and PeaPod on 2 dif trips- surface moisture did not seem to be a problem on either trip, though there was some fog on one trip. But we both had PeaPods on the 2nd trip, and I had no problems. ( I was totally synthetic on the 1st trip, and moisture control was never a worry or a concern).
But I chose the down pod on the second trip, and a down vest as part of my otherwise syn clothing and sleep system. I stayed dry and lofty under my JRB tarp for the week in hail, sleet, snow and WIND! I could not detect any loss of loft. But you better believe that, deep in the Rockies over a full days hike from my car and even much farther from any town, protecting that down was ever on my mind!
Well, if not CS, I wonder just what the heck it is? A synthetic much lighter and loftier than CS?
Last edited by BillyBob58; 04-20-2009 at 22:08.
I'm originally from central IL, so winter camping sometimes meant -15 or -20. I'm currently farther south for my never-ending school career, but before the last two years of constant studying, I spent a fair amount of time in Wyoming and Montana. Not sure what the coldest I ever hit up there was.east_stingray:
Not sure what you consider cold weather camping - are you an above zero kind of guy, or a twenty below camper? For me, cold is about 30-34F, and a couple of 3 season quilts from Jacks R Better do fine. I take a pad for insurance - if I know it's going to be mid 30s there's a chance of it going lower.
And now I contribute to thread drift - but we learn things from that too.
I'm going to have to mull over this quilt thing. I have an old queen-sized down bed quilt that has seen better days and could probably be converted if I thought about it and enlisted the help of my two seamstress family members.
How many times have you gotten your sleeping bag wet?
Quality for cheap. I look for that a lot too. Campmor has a couple of adequate down bags in th $120 to $140 range.
For some ultra-light backpackers, 3 pounds would be 60% of the weight that they carry. The weight and bulk of the bag could force a heavier backpack and so on. On the other hand, Ray Jardine hates down, so it is possible to be an ultra-light backpacker and eschew (gesundheit!) down.
The military generally use a different temperature rating system than other folks. There are a bunch of sleeping bag warmth standards (and they are all suspect), but since the military is concerned with young, well-conditioned, highly active men, the kind of people that sleep warm, the military temperature ratings reflect that.
I've considered buying military surplus down bags but there just wasn't enough loft to take me anywhere near the bag's temperature rating.
You just can't compare temperature ratings and weight, you also need to know that the bags were rated using comparable standards. To pull some numbers out of my hat for an example, your 30° bag might be comparable to a 40° bag from Western Mountaineering and 35° bag by ISO 15831. That's probably the correct ordering of the same bag measured by different standards, though the numbers are made up. In any case, I'm reasonably certain that a Western Mountaineering down bag with the same temperature rating would be warmer, pack smaller, last longer, and cost more.
Of course, the higher the design temperature, the larger percentage of the total weight is in the cover, lining, zipper, & etc. So, for warm weather bags, the weight of the insulation matters less than it does for cold weather bags. Note that Ray Jardine recommends quilts; no zipper, not much of a bottom, and no hood. That helps reduce the synthetic weight and bulk penalty.
That's essentially why I wear synthetically insulated clothes but sleep in down. For the small amount of insulation in my jacket and pants, there is not much of a weight advantage to down and the bulkiness disadvantage of synthetics is bearable. If I was camping in the winter in Minnesota, I'd have to reevaluate but I don't do that.
I've got two experiences:
In the first one, I was set up in a cathedral ring of a redwood tree. The new trees were probably over 100 feet tall. The fog/rain/mist would condense on the upper branches and then fall onto my tarp in huge drops. I think that the drops actually sprayed through my silnylon tarp. My Peapod got damp. The down seemed unaffected. I pitched my spare silnylon tarp under the first and solved the problem.
In the second, I was hiking in a area where hammocks are forbidden. I got drenched in an afternoon thunderstorm. My down bag was in a garbage bag but I hadn't sealed it well enough. There were 2 or 3 fist-sized patches where the down was soaked near the head but the rest of the down was fine. It took a few hours for my body heat to dry out my wool shirt and sleeping bag. I started off cold that night but work up warm.
I wear synthetic insulating layers to give me some insulation, even if my down gets soaked. BTW, when washing a sleeping bag, it's takes some work to get the down saturated with water.
Good info to ponder, Splice. I did know that all the bag ratings were different (and mostly unreliable). I'm a young guy in reasonably good shape, and from what I've read, the military sleep system is rated based on wearing their long underwear (which I have) while in the bag.
I generally take them about 10 degrees above what they're rated at and have gone below that without too many problems. I also use the bivy that goes with the set (which is supposed to add 10 or 15 degrees). I don't figure that in to my 10 above system.
When bivy camping in the rain (it rains EVERY time I backpack or camp), the top part of my bag usually gets wet from condensation. So, in total that's about 5 or 6 trips with this setup where it's been reasonably moist. Perhaps the DWR shell would have stopped it.
I made two down quilts (summer 40 degree rated & winter 0 degree rated). My first couple of trips (tent camping) with the quilts, I packed a sleeping bag too. Found myself just using the quilts, so I ditched the bag!! Haven't packed/used a sleeping bag since!!! I've found that as far as sleeping and trashing around, that I do way less of that with the quilts. Really, I'm not even as much aware of moving around because I'm sleeping much better. Now that I've "gone off the deep end" (that's what all my tent buddies think) and started using a hammock, the quilts are working even more effectively at keeping me warm. I think it was Cannibal that mentioned using a silk liner and it not working so well. I too used one with my sleeping bag(worked great there) and tried it w/the quilts (not so great). I'm no longer using the silk liner either.
sorry guys about diversing into another topic within this topic, but you gotta understand that I've "gone off the deep end"
Happens; you aren't alone.sorry guys about diversing into another topic within this topic, but you gotta understand that I've "gone off the deep end"
Trust nobody!
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