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View Full Version : Impressions of OR helium bivy, neoair xtherm, and ff snowbunting bag last night



jdc5294
11-27-2015, 10:40
If someone with greater disdain for disorganization feels the need to move this to the Gear section feel free, I just figured more people would see it here :D.

Happy Day After Thanksgiving to everyone, hope you all had a good time with family and/or friends. I got back to my place around 9 after a day of turkey, Jameson, and watching the Eagles lose again and saw it was going to get exceptionally cold in the Colorado Springs/Fort Carson overnight. I used this opportunity to get my recently purchased winter camping setup out and sleep outside my first floor barracks room (with my iPhone charging cable routed out the window) to test it out. These are just my impressions of how all the pieces of my gear did.

First off, it got down to 10 degrees last night. I set my alarm for 6am which is about 20 minutes before the sun comes up, aka the coldest part of the night. I wanted to be awake and judge how I felt. Also when I went to sleep there was about an inch and a half of snow on the ground, when I woke up it was around 3.

Outdoor Research Helium Bivy - This is the one piece of gear I had a small problem with. When the zipper was all the way closed, eventually I started running out of oxygen in there and breathing became harder. I opened the zipper about 8-10 inches, and this alleviated that problem. I woke up around 1am and found that there was a moderate amount of condensation on the inside of the bivy from me breathing, so I opened up the zipper halfway. Waking up at 6am, this condensation had frozen in place. If I had had the zipper open halfway the whole time, would there have been no condensation at all? Who knows. Because the zipper was open there was a very small amount of snow on the inside edge, but nothing to be pissed about.

Feathered Friends Snowbunting EX 0 Sleeping Bag - I l-o-v-e this bag. I had a Marmot Cloudbreak 20 before this, and this bag weighs exactly the same while being 20 degrees warmer. I have the long length because I'm 6' tall, even though the regular length is advertised as being good for 6' I've always found that upper limit isn't very comfortable for me. It's also about 3x the cost of my old Marmot but I think it's worth it. I was slightly worried because of what happens when down gets wet, but the fabric they use for their winter bags is advertised as being pretty weather resistant and I found that to be true insofar as I tested it. This was only as much as having the bag rub against the condensation that formed on the inside of my bivy, but in the morning I don't think the bag was compromised at all. Would it hold up for a couple days of being put away slightly wet like that? Not sure. This bag was plenty warm, if it hadn't snowed last night I absolutely could've gone without the bivy sack and just cowboy camped it.

Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XTherm - Not too much to say about this because it's already been reviewed from here to Mars, but it was great. I love how light it is. My only gripe is it was a little slippery, not sure if this was a coincidence with the material my bag is made out of. This isn't anything that affected my sleep quality, I just had to slightly adjust how I moved around on a sleeping pad when I was awake. But it kept me warm, and again I'm pretty sure I could've gone without the bivy and slept with it right on the snow.

jdc5294
11-27-2015, 10:42
Another note: I've used this same setup on the side of Pikes Peak here in Colorado with no issues besides the condensation, however it only got down to 20 that night. This morning at the top of Pikes it was -12, where I usually camp I'd guess it was hovering around 0. I might take this setup up there one of these colder nights to see how it does.

Dogwood
11-27-2015, 12:34
Well, yeah, when you fully enclose/seal yourself in a very personal sized space with a significantly decreased temperature gradient while emitting an equal degree of insensible perspiration and breathing into this space .....You obviously need to be aware of these affects and mediate them. Foremost, don't or minimize breathing in the enclosed(fabric hood zipped up/closed) bivy. Consider not or minimizing getting into the bivy while in a stressed or sweaty state where you're giving off more energy. Consider in what conditions or how you can provide for those conditions in YOUR knowledge of using bivies that decrease this condensation issue rather than exacerbate the issue. Have you explored VBLs? Or, have you explored reducing your insensible perspiration from an added membrane that traps most of it next to or nearer to your skin? I'll often reduce the condensation issue to manageable proportions by sleeping in apparel like rain wear and not or minimizing breathing into a fully enclosed.