A (sleeping) Sound Investment
by Cathy Casey, Director Joe Browns and The Climbers Shop
Have you ever woken from a great night’s sleep, looked up at the ice crystals twinkling above you on the fabric of the inner tent, relished at how toasty you are in your warm sleeping bag and thought “I’m not getting out.”?
This was my reality as I was enclosed in 600g of highest quality goose down in an expertly designed sleeping bag by British outdoor equipment experts Rab and believe me, it’s a rare one. Usually, I sleep like an ice cube and as the campsite in question was at 3600m (11,800 ft) I had been expecting a night of high altitude headaches but no, not even wacky vivid dreams had interrupted my sleep and instead, I aired my bag inside out across the top of the tent under snowy Himalayan giants feeling refreshed, energised and just a little bit smug.
With over 40 years of expertise Rab hand fill all of their down insulated bags at their Derbyshire base to ensure that they are not compressed or stored in a way that will damage them, so every Rab sleeping bag reaches its’ new owner in optimum condition. Intrigued at how my bag had kept me so warm, I visited Rab to discover some of their secrets……..
You don’t need to look far on the high street these days to see down clothing being worn by the masses. Cheap high street prices or even expensive fashion brand names entice with stylish colours for the season without once drawing attention to the plight of the bird whose feathers keep you warm – you’ll only ever want to Google “Live plucking” once to get an idea of how production costs are cut.
Happily, this is not the case when you buy a Rab product, nor indeed any of the quality outdoor brands that we stock, who are all proud to display their down story. Every colossal blue bag of the ten tons of duck and goose down that Rab use per year carries the Responsible Down Standard logo. Delicate feathers and fronds are gently hoovered into large processing machines which in turn precision fill each individual baffle on a given style of jacket or sleeping bag, worked by skilled men and women of Derbyshire. Individual baffles are then handstitched so that should you ever wish to boost an old bag or jacket with additional new down then the whole process can be done without the need to send your treasured piece of kit overseas. Buy once, buy well as the old saying goes……
The quality of the insulation, however, is only part of the story of why I stayed so snuggly warm on my trip.
Granted I was tucked up in a tent with good insulation underneath me in a bag designed primarily for alpine climbers on light-weight mountaineering trips but the cut of the bag played a key part too. Air that my body had worked hard to heat was kept next to me by the close fitting neck baffle design. The length of the bag was perfect with neither my head nor feet pushing against the ends compressing the insulation, neither was there a spare foot of space at the bottom for my naturally cold feet to fail to heat. The proportionally assigned differential cut meant a snug fit around my body which, combined with the sculpted hood, created a perfect mummy shape and a space around my face deep enough to keep my nose warm (my cold nose is another reason for frequent waking). The baffles on the Womens Neutrino Pro 600 bag I was using have a trapezoidal cross section so at no point was there just stitching next to my skin and finally – the holy grail (for me) - was the additional down insulation placed around the hips, a feature in all of Rab’s women’s bags meaning I didn’t wake up once with a cold bottom. Result!!
After using an identically rated unisex sleeping bag from a well-known American company for the past twenty years and thinking that frequent waking was just part of camping, this has been something of an embarrassing eye opener and an experience that I share with any customers I find pondering the sizeable purchase of a sleeping bag in our shops.
Not only are men and women generally a different body shape but each gender has evolved to carry fat in different areas of our bodies so it makes sense that we will sleep at different temperatures and require different qualities in our sleeping bags as a result. It is important to remember that it’s not the insulation in the sleeping bag that keeps you warm, it is the air that your body has warmed that becomes trapped in the insulation that keeps you toasty. If there is too much air for your body to heat - you will be cold. If the insulation is compressed because the bag is tight - you will be cold. If your body is not generating heat - you will be cold.
You could be forgiven for thinking that a fatty area of the body would be warmer BUT there are fewer blood vessels in fat than muscle so blood circulation behaves differently. Blood vessels in muscle expend more energy and therefore heat. It is this heat that warms the air in your bag keeping you toasty warm - if the muscles are effectively insulated by fat then less heat can get to the air in the bag to keep you toasty warm. That is why Rab and other quality sleeping bag manufacturers like Mountain Equipment add additional insulation in areas of the bag cut specifically for a woman’s frame.
Of course, there is one key element of staying warm that Rab can’t help with and that is being well fed and hydrated. On this occasion, our Guiding company High Places Adventurer took excellent care of that and if you ask me very nicely I might, just might, give you the name of our cook – one of the finest I have come across in the 27 years that I have been trekking and climbing in the Gangotri valley.
Want to know more about Rab sleeping bags? They have a fantastic amount of information on their website here or simply pop into any one of our shops in Ambleside, Llanberis or Capel Curig where our staff team will be able to help you make sense of comfort ratings, lengths, baffle construction and most importantly - you can try one on to get just the right fit for you.
You can hear more from Cathy about sleeping bags in our lighthearted podcast:
