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Trying to finalize my bag selection...
What's the coldest temp you personally experienced on the PCT between May / September?
Barring a weather anomaly I'm guessing the coldest temps are in May and September so desert and WA state would be coldest?
May to sept...... I didn't have anything below upper 20s but there were many nights border to border in the thirties. I think most of the very cold temperatures are found in SoCal in march and April.
Reason I asked is because I was planning to take my MB 20* bag - weighs just over 2 lbs.
I've got a WM 35* bag (good for 30*, easy) that weighs 15.9 ozs on my scale. Could even put in a silk liner and come in less than the MB bag.
Decisions. :)
postholer.com
03-09-2014, 19:23
What's the coldest temp you personally experienced on the PCT between May / September?
It's not unusual to experience a 20 something degree night in the Sierra. All it takes is a moderate cold front passing through and it will get chilly. June 24th of last year near Hwy 4/Ebbets Pass was a perfect example.
May 2nd on Mt Laguna during my first hike, 2nd night on the trail was 22 degrees. I was using my home made quilt and damn near froze.
My frist experience on the PCT clearly dictated I carry my 15 degree Marmot Helium (2lbs). While I only zipped it up completely on a handful of nights, I'm glad I had it.
-postholer
RedBeerd
03-09-2014, 22:11
I was living in the Sierras from late May - September about 3 miles off the PCT. We had a few nights well under freezing and believe we hit the teens mid-late august. This was at 8000 feet.
I clearly remember 2-3 nights cowboy camping in my 25 degree down bag and waking up shivering cold even with all my layers on and I sleep warm.
garlic08
03-09-2014, 22:14
I had one night in the upper teens during a late snow storm in the Sierra. My 20F bag worked fine. If I'd had my Helium then I would have carried it the whole trip. The dampness in the WA Cascades was more of a factor than the cold--one early snowstorm and the temps were around freezing but it was a challenge after four days of heavy rain.
handlebar
03-09-2014, 22:19
I carried a 15* Mountain Hardware bag for the PCT because I didn't have the 20* WM Ultralight that many were using. I would carry my Ultralite and silk liner if I hike the PCT again. I had some temps in the mid 20s in the desert, the Sierras, and the N Cascades. Whether your WM 35* bag w/silk liner will work for you on PCT depends on what other gear you carry. For example, I was comfortable in my 0* Mountain Hardware bag on a recent winter trip where the temp reached -12*F because I had a silk liner and wore wool socks, lightweight long johns and my lightweight MH hooded down sweater over 200 wt Icebreaker long sleeve T shirt.
I'm not suggesting you carry all those for the entire PCT. If you use a bounce bucket, which I strongly recommend, you can have similar extra insulation for use when sleeping in temps colder than your bag rating then offload some of the extra to the bounce bucket in portions of the PCT with milder overnight temperatures.
I recommend a silk liner regardless of which bag you decide on. The liner protects the bag from your body oils and dirt which over time will reduce the down's insulation. It's quite easy to hand wash a silk liner on a town day. (I've found machine washing and drying of silk severely shortens it's useful life.) Washing a down bag during your thru would mean a very busy Nero or zero.
Sasquatch!
03-09-2014, 22:24
Last year I went with a WM Summerlite long with WM down pants, and a down jacket. I was cold a few nights when it got below freezing. The bag was too narrow for my build.
This year I am using a Marmot Helium long I snagged for $270. I wanted the new WM Terralite but its about $485.
The Helium is a 15 degree bag. The Terralite is a 25 degree bag. However, both have the same EN comfort rating or 28 degrees.
If you can afford it grab a terralite. It zips open completely like a quilt, is wide enough to allow all sorts of layering, and weighs less than 2lb
SCRUB HIKER
03-10-2014, 02:32
Personally, upper 20s. My water bottles only froze overnight three times, once in the Sierra, once in Northern Washington. Hiked May 5 to September 23. I thought Yogi's planning guide made way too much of the cold nighttime temps on the PCT. They're definitely cooler than the AT, but I had to wear a balaclava and extra layers a total of a dozen times max. Never wore or carried a warm hat. Make of that information what you will.
A 20* bag is just about perfect the entire distance.
Don't know the temps, but it snowed for just outside of Wrighthood heading north. That was in May!
garlic08
03-10-2014, 09:00
Don't know the temps, but it snowed for just outside of Wrighthood heading north. That was in May!
I remember the locals in Wrightwood saying they always get a May snow.
colorado_rob
03-10-2014, 09:25
Reason I asked is because I was planning to take my MB 20* bag - weighs just over 2 lbs.
I've got a WM 35* bag (good for 30*, easy) that weighs 15.9 ozs on my scale. Could even put in a silk liner and come in less than the MB bag.
Decisions. :) Just one opinion, I'd go with this setup, keep the liner for a while, then ship it home (and potentially get it back very late in WA, depending on how fast you get there). This assumes you are using a tent or at least a tarp?
My modus operandi is to save weight and carry a bag for long hikes that is slightly inadequate for the coldest of nights, realizing that there will only be a handful of nights where I might have to simply wear all my warm clothing to bed. Your WM bag and liner really should be fine down to close to 20 or so, especially if you are prudent on campsite location on the colder nights, like try to find some overhang/tree/whatever to shield you from the frigid night sky. The biggest heat loss in the west comes from radiative heat loss to a clear night sky. I realize trees and other cover might be hard to come by, but even cozying up against a large rock or whatever helps reduce your sky exposure. It's all about the clear nights in the west. cloudy/overcast nights are much warmer for sleeping. This gets more and more important at higher altitude, of course, but by the time you get to serious altitudes, it will be June+. Go with what you have.
colorado_rob
03-10-2014, 09:27
And snow has absolutely nothing to do with sleeping warm. Snow happens in the west (at altitude) when it's in the 30's and even 40's that time of year. Snow, schmow.
I had a few nights below freezing in SoCal in spring and I had temps drop to around 20F in Northern Washington in late September. When I was camping at Dolly's Vista by Glacier Peak, I had to wear my hiking clothes over the baselayers I normally slept in and had my rain jacket laying over my hips. That was the only time I had to resort to sleeping in anything other then my baselayers inside my optimistically rated 1st generation GoLite (2008) 20F quilt at 19oz (should have been rated at high 20's in my opinion) while inside my lightweight bivy sack. Even with the snow that I had at the border wasn't that cold.
In a related note, my coldest day hiking before the last week on the trail near Canada, was just after Wrightwood in SoCal on June 3.
fredmugs
03-11-2014, 08:37
Last August I did 200 miles from Goat Rocks to Stevens Pass. The first night out of Snoqualmie I thought it was going to snow but it didn't. Very cold and windy. It did snow right after I finished my section.
Transient Being
03-11-2014, 12:36
What about using a tent to increase warmth at night? I have a summerlite 32° bag. But if I get in my lightheart solo tent wouldnt that raise temp a few degrees? Im not sure about using a non-free standing tent on the PCT, ive never been out west. Just trying to see if this setup would be feasible.
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SCRUB HIKER
03-11-2014, 20:03
What about using a tent to increase warmth at night? I have a summerlite 32° bag. But if I get in my lightheart solo tent wouldnt that raise temp a few degrees? Im not sure about using a non-free standing tent on the PCT, ive never been out west. Just trying to see if this setup would be feasible.
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Thousands of PCTers and JMTers, yours truly included, use/used a non-freestanding tent. Yes, tents keep you warmer and most people pitch their tent when it's cold at night regardless of rain/bugs, but a sleeping bag provides vastly more warmth per ounce than a tent does. It's much better to focus on sleeping bag selection than tent selection if you're concerned about warmth.
brian039
03-11-2014, 20:08
Low 20's in the San Jacinto's and Sierra. I carried a 20* bag the whole way. It gets to be a little overkill in for a short while in NorCal but not worth the trouble of switching out bags.
Sasquatch!
03-11-2014, 20:08
What about using a tent to increase warmth at night? I have a summerlite 32° bag. But if I get in my lightheart solo tent wouldnt that raise temp a few degrees? Im not sure about using a non-free standing tent on the PCT, ive never been out west. Just trying to see if this setup would be feasible.
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A tent will def help keep you warmer. The Summerlite is warm enough for most nights with a down jacket, etc.
I carried a free standing tent and it certainly made setup quicker and easier.
Transient Being
03-11-2014, 20:28
Thousands of PCTers and JMTers, yours truly included, use/used a non-freestanding tent. Yes, tents keep you warmer and most people pitch their tent when it's cold at night regardless of rain/bugs, but a sleeping bag provides vastly more warmth per ounce than a tent does. It's much better to focus on sleeping bag selection than tent selection if you're concerned about warmth.
Thanks for the info. I didnt know if the soil would be too rocky or sandy for tent stakes. Since I already have the setup I mentioned, I think ill give it a go. I do have a WM flash jacket too which is quite warm and light. I think my tent weighs about 30 oz. Ill have to re-check that. My sleeping bag only weighs 20 oz. So hopefully this will be a good combination for me. It worked well on the AT for 2 months with temps as low as 20 once or twice.
Transient Being
03-11-2014, 20:34
A tent will def help keep you warmer. The Summerlite is warm enough for most nights with a down jacket, etc.
I carried a free standing tent and it certainly made setup quicker and easier.
Thanks for the input :thumbup:
Darwin13
03-12-2014, 18:25
20 degree down quilt. I have a XLONG and Wide and it comes in at 22oz. i love quilts!
Sasquatch!
03-12-2014, 21:38
Yeah most people have tarps, non freestanders. Often people just cowboy camp.
I like having a freestanding tent that I can throw up near anywhere and quickly, if the weather is turning, or I need rest and mosquitoes are swarming me.
If I were going to go with a non freestanding tent I would opt for a zpacks cuben fiber deal. Super light, but super expensive. More time to setup, and less places to setup.
Transient Being
03-12-2014, 22:22
Yeah ive often thought of just going super UL and getting a tarp, but I cant stand bugs on me at night. My tent weighs in at 30 oz and is pretty comfortable really. I can fully stretch my arms above my head and im 6' 1. Plus it seems like a warm tent so my 32° bag may just be warm enough. Im so pumped about this trip. I want to go this year, but may have to wait till 2015.
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A tent will add some warmth, but a lightweight bivy sack will add even more since there is less air to warm. Considering the interactions of all your gear on your comfort is a really good way of thinking when trying to lighten up so keep it up.
I'm just going to throw this out there. In 2009, I cowboyed camped all but 9 nights on the trail; 3 of those nights were the last 3 on the trail when I had snow to the border. Given that most nights the bugs leave shortly after sunset due to the temperatures dropping due to a lack of humidity, I surprisingly didn't even need to use netting all but a few times. I do get up with sunrise so when they return, I'm already moving. Its really not a big deal.
I love hiking, but I hate camp chores since I'm a lazy camper. So I'm not going to do something I don't have to which includes setting up a shelter if it isn't raining. So my shelter and sleep systems are built on the idea that I'm going to cowboy camp. I just throw my quilt and pad into my bivy sack and drop it on the ground. Camp is setup in minutes and breaks down quickly too. So I wanted the lightest thing possible to keep me dry when it rains. So I use a small lightweight tarp + a lightweight rain resistant bivy sack with netting around the face. For the PCT in 2009, that was a shelter system with a total weight just under 15oz and the bivy part of the system also was part of my sleep system since it added warmth to my down quilt. For the JMT and TRT this summer, for a similar setup that weight will be just under 11oz. I'm not saying that to brag, but to show that there is always a lighter solution out there if you are open to it. I have a friend whose shelter system is even lighter at 7.4oz that challenges my assumptions and thinking everytime I hike with him.
Miner, how did you find the wind? One of my earliest PCT decision in 2012 when I first started thinking about the PCT was to tarp - reading many journals that talked about climbing into tents as the only way to escape the wind changed my mind.
Windy Nights
Wind? Wasn't really a problem. Sounds like an overreaction to me; like they didn't consider that they could camp in the wind and be fine. Just make sure you have some rocks to weigh things down or it will blow away. I was far from the only one that cowboyed camp all of SoCal and most of the trail. Strong winds were the exception not the rule, even in the desert sections and actually made some of the warm nights tolerable as the nights I had strong winds, the temperatures were not very cold. I'll get into the warm nights since we've been talking about cold nights in a minute.
One night we had constant 40-50mph winds come up shortly after dark. Setting up your tent to deal with the wind would have been folly. People were dropping their tents, not setting them up as they were concern about damage. I just moved my cowboy camp into some bushes and went back to sleep. One of the advantages of cowboy camping instead of using a tent is you have far more options on where to camp and how small of a spot you can use. Thats the problem with hiking with a group, you tend to camp in wide open spots where you can fit alot of tents together which leaves you no cover from the wind. I hiked solo almost the entire trail so I only occasionally would camp with others just stopping when I wanted to so I often used some creative campsites that no tent would have fit in.
In the San Fellipe Hills about 7 miles after Scissors Crossing, I was camped on a shelf about 20ft below the trail as it was the only flat spot on the side of the mountain I found as it got dark. When I got up once to go to the bathroom, my foam sit pad that was under my head went flying off the mountain to never be seen again. I had to snap shut my quilt around my neck like a cape to keep it from flying away when I got up. I slept in my 20F quilt and the wind was the only thing that made it feel comfortable in it since it was cooling me in the warm night. I was grateful for it.
In Whitewater 13miles after the I-10, camping in the wash, the temperature never dropped below 72F that night. The wind was blowing down the river course and blowing this coarse sand along with it. I slept with my quilt half way off (weighted down with rocks). I should have used my bivy but didn't think of using it as a replacement lightweight sleeping bag until further north. I camped with my back into the wind with my backpack setup to block the wind behind my head. I could hear some of the large coarse sand hitting me (kind of sounded like rain), but I didn't really feel it through my clothing and I actually slept really good thanks to the wind cooling my body.
Over the years of doing desert camping in the winter where you get a strong cold wind, I just make sure I have a sleeping bag that is rated for the expected wind chill and find a sheltered campsite. If you can get behind a large boulder or some shrubbery (it only needs to be taller then you sleeping), it will reduce the amount of wind you feel. You'll never reduce all of it, but it can make the difference between 15mph and 30+mph wind blowing on you. If its cold, I'll use my bivy sack to block more of it and trap heat under it, but its not always necessary.
Warm Nights
Now lets talk about sleeping when warm. Even though the nights in SoCal can drop below freezing, there were nights it never got close. Several nights of 40-50F wasn't unusual which is why I like quilts since I can spread them out more to let them vent heat. There was a night it was 72F as I mentioned above where only the wind made it tolerable. Northern California is also hot. The nights were more often warm then SoCal was. Some people actually mailed their sleeping bag to Oregon only to regret it a few days later when the temperatures got colder. For the most part, just spreading my quilt out as much as possible and looking for an exposed spot that had some wind, trying to camp near a high point in the elevation profile, or camping near a stream/river which helped moderate the temperatures made the nights tolerable. Just before a branch of the Feather River before Belden, it was just too hot for anything. I slept in just my clothing and was grateful that I had treated it with Permithrin back at Kennedy Meadows which keeps the Mosquitos off you (works great in the Sierra Nevada). Even though I had a few mosquitos flying around as I tried to go to sleep, by wearing my headnet over my hat and sleeping in just my clothes (long sleeved shirt and pants) I never was bitten until they finally left after midnight. My hands were exposed, but they never seemed to notice them.
After Burney Falls, I had 100F degree weather and the nights were warm. I started using my bivy sack as a lightweight sleeping bag and just sleeping in it instead of my quilt, adding clothing layers as needed for warmth. Worked great.
postholer.com
03-13-2014, 13:46
Last summer the wind blew for weeks in SoCal. I can think of only a few nights where wind was a problem and that was largely due to poor camp site choice, ie, it's getting dark, find the first flat spot. Should you find yourself in this situation a shelter is a nice, but noisy solution.
As Miner points out the *vast majority* of your days and nights you'll be too warm, cowboy camping under a beautiful night sky using your warm bag as a cover, not crawled into it.
However, you *will* encounter cold/wet/windy weather and you'll be damn happy to have a warm bag and adequate shelter.
That's the whole point of being prepared.
-postholer