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13 | (continued) Once I learned how to use a mummy bag for my own greatest comfort, mine have yielded many supremely restful evenings. I’ve mentioned that I never zipped mine up, but merely draped one of them over me, and used the other as a mattress. It occurs to me now that this must sound incredible to many other campers of comparable experience, who could not imagine doing any such thing, even in temperatures considered only mildly frosty. Yet I can assure you that as long as you are using the largest available size of the type of bag you prefer, and its edges are touching the surface you are lying on, and you are warmly dressed for sleeping, you will experience no chilly breezes—you are inside a double-wall tent, after all—which is normally about 10°F above the ambient atmosphere, from body heat alone. By far the coldest moments of the day were those between leaving the sleeping bag and becoming fully clothed. I seldom time events like these—I seldom time anything, really—but with practice I got the whole routine down to two or three minutes, with the exception of my boots, which were always a problem in very cold weather. Even after I had learned to carefully shape them upon turning in, just in order to get them on, I was still forced to wrestle with the extreme stiffness of the oil-soaked leather for some time before they were moderately comfortable to walk in. I’ve heard tales of some campers, in severely cold climates, taking their boots into their sleeping bags at night, but this was an act of desperation I never considered; mummy-bags offer very little spare room—another reason I never zipped them all the way up.
Of course, if you’re habitually inclined to toss and turn a great deal in your sleep, that sleep is bound to be interrupted by the occasional need to readjust the edges of the draped bag. But the sense of freedom that an unzipped bag provides is likely to reduce your overall discomfort to the point where you may find yourself sleeping more calmly than usual. Several hours of strenuous canoeing or hiking helps enormously in deepening and prolonging sleep. The simple secret of using a mummy bag this way is, naturally, always keeping your feet in the foot of the bag, which in most models doesn’t unzip anyway. This keeps the bag secured in place, and keeps your feet forever warm, regardless of the position you assume. I know it all sounds a bit difficult, but I recommend that you try it at least once. Needless to say, an inflatable mattress of premium quality will make the whole experience vastly more comfortable.
You must accept with equanimity the simple correlation between safety, quality and price in the choosing of camping equipment. That is to say, if your life may depend upon a piece of gear, it should be the best that can be had, which means that it will probably be the most expensive item of its kind on the shelf. There’s no escaping this, but it does give me the chance to clarify a point that has seemed so obvious to me for so many years, that I am continually astounded by its failure to penetrate the minds of those who could most benefit from it. It is simply that the eternal effort to save money by buying cheap, and “making do,” is a massive waste of ingenuity and intelligence. The most concise—yet reliable—advice on this subject was, I’m sure, written years ago by an anonymous Sales Manager, but it remains as valid now as ever: The bitterness of poor quality remains, |
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Freezing to death in your sleep is impossible for a normally healthy person; you simply |
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