Cold weather down bag...

[Goatgas]

Check out the never summer, 0deg bag by marmot. pretty toasty.

[Hosh]

SNC has a Marmot Helium 15 at 37% off in their gear cache

[q-tip]

WM Alpinlite-my go-to bag, I have three WM bags, heavy investment, but bags for life, just love them....

[Weather-man]

I've been playing with my cold weather sleep system and have had some good success mixing down clothing and my Z-pack 30 degree bag. My intent was to cut weight by intergrating camp colthes into my sleep system and so far, so good. I think the coldest I’ve had this “system” down to is about 15 F and it’s been toasty. 0 or a little below might be pushing it and I’m hoping to find out when I head back up the SNP in Feb.

What I'm using is as follows:

- Z-pack wide and long 30 degree bag. 17 oz
- Z-pack down hood. 2 oz
- Borah gear down vest 4 oz
- Luke's down sleeves 1.5oz
- Goose feet gear down pants (baffled with 5 oz down) about 7.5oz
- Goose feet gear down booties (over stuffed) 3 oz

This cold weather ensemble gives me some flexibility to mix and match as conditions allow. Everything packs down nice and small and I generally just jam it all into the bottom of my pack’s poly-cro liner. It’s kind of a toss up as to how much weight I’m saving. The down pants are camp wear luxury imo and normally wouldn’t carry them if I had one of my winter bags. So I guess after the pants trade off I’m saving maybe a pound but also have some pimp camp wear to hang out in at night.

I’m hoping to get some cold weather in Feb and test it all down into the low single digits. Note that I’ll bee within a days walk from the trailhead so if it gets miserable I’ll suck it up thru the night and then bail back to the vehicle for my WM Versalite.

[Casey & Gina]

I decided to go high-end for a warm bag and considered Feathered Friends and Western Mountaineering, as well as some other brands. I ended up going with FF and am glad I did - they are a real pleasure to work with and the product is fantastic, though I am sure WM is good too from all I've read.

Be warned though that FF is not doing the same degree of custom work they used to be willing to do, these are recent quotes from their customer service:

"We are not really doing full custom work from scratch any more. It has become too costly for us, and we no longer have the production time and capacity to do this."

"We try to be as reasonably accommodating as we can. We are still a small family run local Seattle manufacturer. These types of custom pieces can literally cost us thousands of dollars in lost production time as we have to pull staff off of our normal production line while they work on a single item instead of many at a time. Most consumers are not willing to pay the real costs we incur to create unique items like this, and custom items often do not turn out the way people envision them. We do not do any customization of our clothing products. Sorry about that! The custom changes we do take on are ones related to fabrics, zippers, and down fill in our sleeping bags only."

I had read reviews from people who had garments customized, but apparently this is no longer possible. That said, I did end up getting the customized groundsheet ordered that I wanted (custom fabrics and extra down to match the warmth rating of my (also custom) sleeping bag, so it never hurts to talk to them and see what they are willing to do. Of course, you shouldn't order anything custom unless you are willing to wait the time it takes, pay an added cost, and accept that it cannot be returned.

I was personally most intrigued by a fully rectangular bag, not a mummy or semi-rectangular. I wanted something my wife and son and I use it as a quilt in conjunction with a groundsheet, and rectangular sleeping pads so that there was no gap between them on the ground. I figured a rectangular sleeping bag would be a great solo option as well and wouldn't feel as constricting as the mummy bag I used used previously. I got in touch and found that they make a few bags which are not advertised on their website due to low popularity - one of these was a 0-degree version of the Condor. I guess most people interested in rectangular sleeping bags are interested in using them for a 2+ person setup, and most families or couples don't care to go winter camping together. Oh well. In any case, the 0-degree version has a neck collar that is not in the pictures of the warmer-rated bags, and I wanted them to add an extra 4oz of down to bring the rating to around -10 and use Pertex Shield outer fabric rather than the default Nanosphere. This was all done and the final product came out wonderful along with two matching hoods. My only mistake was ordering a stock groundsheet rather than a custom one, which ended up meaning our feet got a little bit cold if pushed all the way to the bottom of the bag, since there is a small down-filled footbox flap attached to the groundsheet, and that was much less insulated than the rest of the bag. Not the biggest deal and we were plenty warm enough at 17 degrees and slept as well as at home but I ended up ordering another groundsheet customized to have more down and custom materials as well - since I intend on using this setup for many years to come I want it as perfect as I can get it.

Feathered Friends has been a wonderful company to do business with and the products are top notch with excellent workmanship. I am going to order more winter-worthy garments (jackets, pants, and booties) from them soon, but as mentioned, those cannot no longer be customized. My hope is that wearing a base layer and down garments while in the bag will suffice in temperatures significantly below zero, while in warmer weather we can completely unzip the bag from the groundsheet, not use the hoods, etc. to be comfortable enough. It is hard for me to be "too warm" when at rest and I happily used a 15-degree mummy bag in mid-summer before, so I think it should work out well for me.

[LittleJimmy]

If you you have the dough, you will not be disappointed with an appropriate temperature Western Mountaineering bag. And you won't wish, years later, that you had bought all those second-rate ones, ending up spending more in the long run and seeing them stay hanging in the closet taking up space.

[QiWiz]

I'm in the market for a new cold weather bag. My warm weather bag is a Zpacks 30 degree bag or I use my Jacks R Better quilt. So I was considering the Zpacks 10 degree bag or the Mountain Hardwear Phantom 15. The Zpacks bag is nearly a pound lighter and I'm already familiar with their products. Does anyone have any preference or know of another option that I should consider? Thanks in advance for the advice.

I like a bag with lots of room so that I can wear extra layers like a puffy jacket without compressing sleeping bag loft from within. Western Mountaineering makes two you might look at. One is the MegaLite. Even warmer is the Badger, which is now my coldest weather bag. Down into mid-20s I'm now using JRB quilts; sold off the MegaLite as a result.

[Venchka]

I've been playing with my cold weather sleep system and have had some good success mixing down clothing and my Z-pack 30 degree bag. My intent was to cut weight by intergrating camp colthes into my sleep system and so far, so good. I think the coldest I’ve had this “system” down to is about 15 F and it’s been toasty. 0 or a little below might be pushing it and I’m hoping to find out when I head back up the SNP in Feb.

What I'm using is as follows:

- Z-pack wide and long 30 degree bag. 17 oz
- Z-pack down hood. 2 oz
- Borah gear down vest 4 oz
- Luke's down sleeves 1.5oz
- Goose feet gear down pants (baffled with 5 oz down) about 7.5oz
- Goose feet gear down booties (over stuffed) 3 oz

This cold weather ensemble gives me some flexibility to mix and match as conditions allow. Everything packs down nice and small and I generally just jam it all into the bottom of my pack’s poly-cro liner. It’s kind of a toss up as to how much weight I’m saving. The down pants are camp wear luxury imo and normally wouldn’t carry them if I had one of my winter bags. So I guess after the pants trade off I’m saving maybe a pound but also have some pimp camp wear to hang out in at night.

I’m hoping to get some cold weather in Feb and test it all down into the low single digits. Note that I’ll bee within a days walk from the trailhead so if it gets miserable I’ll suck it up thru the night and then bail back to the vehicle for my WM Versalite.

If I owned a WM Versalite, and I very nearly bought one before finding a WM Alpinlite at an attractive price, I would just take the Versalite for all of it's heat containing features (hood, collar, draft tube & foot box, and the Z-pack bag to layer over the Versalite and call it good. Since I never go anywhere without a Merino layer next to my skin, warm head gear, down vest, Xtherm and maybe add my 22" x 54" CCF pad, I reckon I would be comfortable into negative zero territory. But that's just me.

Wayne