Determine if a Down Sleeping Bag is Right for Your Camping Trip

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is Dan and I am here with Expert Village. Today we are going to talk about sleeping bags. Right now we are going to talk about Down sleeping bags. There are pro’s and con’s. Down sleeping bags are very light and they are very packable. They keep you warmer than synthetics for their weight but there are a few down sides as well. They have a tendency to after time start leaking fill so you go to bed and in the morning you will wake up covered in goose down and the biggest draw back to them is that when they get wet, they become like a soggy waffle. They loose all of their insulating value and they are very hard to dry out. So this is a demonstration and I am going to show you. This is a 20 degree synthetic bag already stuffed and I am going to stuff this 20 degree Down bag and show you the size difference. Sleeping bags can come with a right handed zipper or a left handed zipper. If you get two of the same kind of sleeping bags, one with a right and one with a left, you can typically zip them together. When stuffing your sleeping bag, you don’t want to roll or fold it. You want to do just what you said you were going to do and stuff it in, that way you don’t get any creases or folds in the fabric because overtime will wear out and start to split. So there you have it; same warmth two different sizes. Another thing to think about when storing your sleeping bag when not using it, you want to let it air out and put it in a nice mesh bag. Most sleeping bags will come with one of these bags. What I like to do is just stick my sleeping bag in here, put it in my closet and forget about it. "