Sleeping Bag Advice.

Thanks, was looking at Rabs new an old range.

Wh

ere and when you going?

Hi Chris,

It was nice to meet you at the Om winter course.

Heres my two pence worth.

I have only being using down sleeping bags for just over a year but have been using crappy syntetic bags for twenty so I know what its like to be cold at night, but not anymore

All last year I slept in a Alpkit PD400 and it did the trick, for the OM snowholing course I used it with a Regular Neo Air, event Bivi bag and down trousers and jacket and I was toasty.  The outside temp that night was -15 and it was not much warmer in the show hole.  If it was going to be any colder than that I would have been packing a down mat and PHD Hispar 800 (1240g)

You mention you would like a bag you can carry yourself, it might be worth looking at the Alpkit PD800 for herself and get a PHD bag for yourself.

Cheers,

Stephen

Cheers Guys, you're suggestions align with the ideas I've been kicking around.

Tom, sounds great we did the tourist Inca trail a couple years ago as part of a tour of Peru.  Feels strange to be with only the trekkers for a couple of days then surrounded by tourist when you get to Machu Picchu.

As for your Jungle trip I can heartily recommend trying to get up to the Tambopata Research Centre the journey upriver is stunning and the clay lick near the centre is a must do!

edit: We're doing the Huayhuash circuit in Jun/July

We're going with Exodus, My wife is a "Lite Camper" only so organised groups are the way forward!  Also I quite like meeting and socialising with other group members.  I will defo have a look at the website thanks, as I like to have a good idea of where I am and how the geography lines up so to speak.

If you ever go over and do a river lead again and need a bag lacky I'm your man (pretty handy in boats aswell!)

On the subject of Bags I am coming down on the side of the PhD Hispar 400 or 500 for myself and the New Rab Ascent 700W for my wife. The only thing is I'd like something a little warmer for her but there's nothing in Ladies bag ranges around -10 seemingly from anyone. It was suggested that I look at an Atlas 750W and get a bit more down put in but I wonder if that would just be too much down for the baffle size.

I have read post on the US BPL site about how its possible to overstuff down by something like 1.5 times the 'optimum' loft level before losing significant efficiency. As I understand it, this means that if you take a standard bag and stuff in 50% extra down then it will be almost 1.5 times as warm, even though the down cannot loft to the full extent. This is somewhat counter intuitive as its generally thought the trapped air rather than the down  that does the insulating. In fact CP from this site queried the original poster and received a somewhat prickly response. Overall I get the impression that people with overstuffed bags are generally happy with the result, given the following qualifiers - the bags are only overstuffed by maybe 10-20% and I doubt many of the people with overstuffed bags have done a direct comparison with the standard fill level.

Sorry for rambling on a bit but its an interesting subject for me - I probably should get out more...

I like montbell bags as the company, despite covering almost every aspect of outdoor gear, seem to have a great deal of expertise in down wear. Their bags offer some of the best 'official temp rating' to 'official weight' ratios inthe industry, though maybe not quite up to PHD levels, at reasonable prices i.e. they are not cheap but once again not in PHD territory. Why montbell dont have a UK presence is a mystery to me. Having said that, they are about as far from a local cottage industry company as you can get, but then again so is the likes of Rab, Montane these days.

Tower ridge are doing them for £303

 http://www.towerridge.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3_23&products_id=570

 I'll hold you to that