How to choose a sleeping bag

Each trip involves not only movement around the area, but also overnight stays. Accordingly, ensuring a comfortable overnight stay is an important part of preparing for a hike; first of all, this requires good equipment, in particular a sleeping bag. Which sleeping bag should you choose? In this article we will look at the main aspects that should be taken into account when buying sleeping bags.

Types of sleeping bags

For convenience and clarity, sleeping bags are usually distinguished by type:
– by appearance:

cocoon – a sleeping bag with a hood, anatomical shape (narrow at the legs, wide at the shoulders).
blanket – a sleeping bag shaped like a rectangle, can be equipped with a hood.

-by season of use:

usually divided into summer, winter and off-season:
For the summer season, a blanket made of padding polyester with a temperature range of +8, +5 is suitable.

Insulation materials

In the old days, cotton wool was used as insulation. Cotton sleeping bags retained heat well, but they weighed a lot, took up a lot of volume when packed, and if they got wet, they were difficult to dry and their weight increased by 2-3 times.
So, based on the above, you can see what you need to pay attention to when choosing a sleeping bag – this is the temperature regime, weight and volume. An ideal sleeping bag that holds heat well, is light in weight and takes up little space when packed.

Modern insulation materials that exist on the tourist equipment market are synthetic padding polyester, down and branded insulation materials from equipment manufacturing companies.

Sintepon – inexpensive insulation, withstands low temperature conditions, short-lived, after a season or two it usually clumps into clumps and sleeping bags lose their properties. Also, these sleeping bags cannot be packed very tightly, otherwise the padding polyester will wear out much faster. It should be noted that there are so-called compression bags – special covers that allow you to significantly reduce the volume of sleeping bags when packing.

Many companies use their exclusive developments of insulation materials, as a rule, their properties directly depend on the price. Cheap insulation materials withstand lower temperatures and pack less well; the fibers of these insulation materials contain a large amount of air, which can only be partially removed during packaging.

Expensive insulation materials can withstand significantly higher temperatures and pack well; when packaging, almost all the air can be squeezed out of the fibers, the amount of which is quickly replenished upon unpacking.

Down is the warmest and most expensive insulation material.

Even the “coolest” synthetics have not yet caught up with down in its properties and are unlikely to catch up in the coming years – it is light, compresses well and after that completely restores its volume, it is also the best heat insulator. The down must be from waterfowl, since it has a natural lubricant that largely prevents the absorption of moisture – otherwise it will begin to rot.

Eiderdown is an ideal sleeping bag filling, but it will cost you many hundreds of dollars. The more common type of down for sleeping bags is goose. It is important to take into account the climate in which the birds whose down is in your sleeping bag were raised. The disadvantages of a down sleeping bag are that if the down gets wet, it stops warming completely, and if you don’t dry it for several days, the down begins to rot.
Therefore, if you are going on a “wet” hike (be it the jungle, or a winter hike with its condensation), you should not take a down sleeping bag.

Temperature conditions

As a rule, each branded sleeping bag has 3 temperature indicators, these are the so-called maximum, optimal and extreme temperature indicators.

The maximum temperature is the temperature at which a person can sleep comfortably with the sleeping bag open. The optimal temperature is the temperature at which a person can sleep comfortably with the sleeping bag fully zipped.

The extreme temperature indicator indicates at what temperature a person, being in a fully zipped sleeping bag, will not die from hypothermia.

What clothes should you wear for sleeping in a sleeping bag?

The ideal option is thermal underwear; it retains heat well, thanks to its special composition and weaving, which forms an air layer.

In addition, thermal underwear has the ability to remove excess moisture from the surface of the body, leaving the skin dry.

If you don’t have thermal underwear, you can sleep in knitted underwear; if it’s cool, you can wear things made from natural cotton fabric.

Also, in order to feel comfortable in a sleeping bag, you need to take into account its length, the so-called “size”. Sleeping bags usually come in lengths of 185, 190 and 195 cm. The less free space in a sleeping bag, the better it retains heat, i.e. It is desirable that the sleeping bag fits your body freely, without leaving a large number of empty spaces.