Sleeping Bags

Consider that during the long nights of the late fall and the early spring you'll be spending a lot of extra time snuggled in your sleeping bag as you make your gradual ascent up the trails of the Himalayas. Factor in that beyond Namche and 13,000 feet the temperatures really drop and you'll rely on good insulation and a keen zipper to keep you stowed away from the chill. Don't forget that you may be packing your sleeping bag with you up and down and up the hills. With all of this in mind you'll want to choose this vital component of your camping gear to keep you dry, warm and light on your feet. At the time that Sir Edmund Hillary successfully submitted Mt. Everest the materials available for clothing and sleeping bags insulated poorly and were very bulky and heavy. With the advances in artificial materials such as microfiber and gore-tex you don't need to make any compromises on insulation, breath-ability, and weight reduction.

Microfiber is made of an extremely thin filament, thinner than silk, that bundles together well with the remarkable combination of allowing moist air to pass out but causes water to bead up on the outside. The light weight and fluffy volume works really well to trap air and make for great heat insulation. Adding gore-tex to the outside almost makes it so you could sleep outside of your tent (but why). Each sleeping bag has a rating for the coldest outside temperature that it will keep you from freezing into a Popsicle overnight. A bag rated at zero degrees Fahrenheit will protect you from the deep chill, but you can expect to sleep toasty and warm fifteen or twenty degrees above that rating, or about 20 degrees Fahrenheit. To supplement the comfort level you can insert a fleece liner on the inside. Getting the inside of the sleeping bag wet, in whatever manner, I won't ask how, cuts down considerably on the comfort level, so be careful with your pee bottle and dry the bag out during the daytime.