Sleeping Soundly: It's in the Bag

"On the mountains there is freedom! The world is perfect everywhere, save where man comes with his torment."
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, The Bride of Messina, 1803.

In July, 1978, when I embarked on my first expedition to the Alaska Range, nearly all mountaineers used sleeping bags filled with down, the fluffy under-feathers of ducks and geese. By comparison, sleeping bags filled with the synthetic alternatives of the day were quite heavy and bulky for the warmth they offered. Synthetics did offer one advantage, however, which became apparent soon after a bush pilot deposited our four-man team on the Ruth Glacier near Mt. Huntington.

The day after we landed, the sun vanished and a week-long onslaught of wet snow and rain began. Despite good rain gear and our best efforts, we gradually got wet. The inside of the tents became damp, then soggy, then positively swampy. Inevitably, our sleeping bags became soaked. The three owners of down bags saw the loft of their bags shrink every day, until the bags became frigid sheets of nylon enclosing saturated feathers. I still have a photograph of Angus Thuermer wringing water out of his worthless down bag. Joe Kaelin's synthetic bag, on the other hand, retained its loft and, therefore, a bit more of its warmth. When the sun finally did return, Joe's bag dried much faster than our down ones. The moral, of course, is simple: if you let your down bag get wet, it will become just a watered-down version of its former self.

As this anecdote shows, the climate where you'll be backpacking helps determine whether a synthetic or down-filled bag is best for you. Despite the fiasco with the down bag I carried on Mt. Huntington, I've brought a down bag on every subsequent trip to the Alaska Range. Why? Because all of my other trips were to much higher, and therefore colder peaks, where rain never falls and where keeping a down bag dry was much easier than it was on Huntington.

In some ways, choosing a sleeping bag is more difficult than selecting a pack or tent, where every feature is exposed to view. With a sleeping bag, however, you can see only the inner and outer portions of the shell, leading to the crucial question: what is really inside this thing? Goose down? Chicken feathers? Recycled Kentucky Fried Chicken napkins? Your best defense is a good offense: go to a well-established specialty outdoor shop which is staking its reputation on providing quality products. Discount store bags are for carrying on the backs of vehicles; they're too ponderous to tote on your back.

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