Selecting a Bag or Quilt

The one part of your kit that you shouldn’t sweat the cost. Buy once, cry once. (Nunatak Arc 30 pictured)

If I had it to do all over again, the first piece of gear that I would purchase would be my quilt or sleeping bag, and that first purchase would’ve been the best I could find regardless of cost.

When I was a kid, whenever my Dad and I car camped we were in something like this:

About 20 years ago when we started our family, I started to put together some gear that allowed us to do weekend trips. We did quite a few such trips and had a blast while the kids were still young. But man, some of the gear that I used! I had an 85L pack (Dad has to carry most everything, remember) that I shudder to even look at today, for example. But one thing I did right- by sheer luck- was buy some great sleeping bags. We have a bunch of Feathered Friends bags, and they loft just as well today as they did 20 years ago. And they’ve been used. Looking back on it, even though they were expensive, they’ve been among the best gear buys I’ve ever made.

You really have only one critical decision to make, and that’s between using a quilt or a conventional sleeping bag. So before you purchase your own, get out in the woods and test out what you can beg, borrow or steal. If you tend to sleep cold, you’ll probably prefer to be completely enveloped in toasty down, and you’ll prefer a conventional sleeping bag. OTOH, if you sleep warm, or if you toss and turn all night, you may find that you prefer a quilt.

As noted in a prior post, quilts weigh less because they don’t have insulation underneath you (that’s your sleeping pad’s job). Compressed insulation doesn’t do much to keep you warm. Thus, IF a quilt suits your style, they’re the way to go. However, there’s a lower temperature limit where it makes sense to go back to a bag. I’m comfortable in my winter quilt down to single digits, which happens to be the limit of where I’m willing to be in the outdoors period, but IF I were to go camping in even colder weather I’d switch back to a bag. Of course, I’m more likely to sign up for another colonoscopy than I am to camp in -10F temperatures.

If you decide to go with a sleeping bag, take a deep breath and buy the best, which IMHO is either Western Mountaineering or Feathered Friends.

Likewise, if you prefer a quilt, buy the best, in this case Katabatic or Nunatak. If you can’t afford these, solid budget options for bags include the REI Igneo and Magma series, and for quilts Enlightened Equipment. All of these are solid choices used by many, many thru-hikers.

Now of course, no one bag will be suitable in all settings. Most hikers have at least two bags or quilts, commonly a 40 degree-rated model for summer and a 20 degree model for shoulder seasons (not many of us get out in the backcountry in the dead of winter; those that do will have a 3rd bag/quilt rated 0-10 degrees).

Make sure that you get a bag sized right FOR YOU, one that balances having enough room to wiggle in without having too much dead space for your body to heat up. Also note that quilts tend to be much more customizable.

Cam “Swami” Homan has a great review of sleep systems used by well-known thru-hikers HERE that is a worthwhile read. And you can always search on the Backpacking Light or r/ultralight forums to find out more specific details about something.

There is a saying in the hiking community that when it comes to certain pieces of gear- buy once, cry once. You might spend $500 on your bag or quilt, but if you take care of it, it’ll last you a long, long time.

In case you’re curious, I have 4 main quilts in my quiver- a 15 degree Katabatic Sawatch for winter, a 22 degree Katabatic Flex for alpine summer adventures, a 30 degree Nunatak Arc 30 for shoulder season, and a 40 degree Enlightened Equipment Apex for summer use on the (humid) AT. Everyone else in the family prefers sleeping bags and chooses from our batch of Feathered Friends bags rated 10, 20 and 30 degrees.