[at-l] Staying warm at night

[jsmith at wate.com (James N. Smith)]

I'd like to chime in with another suggestion for staying warm.

Trust the rating of your sleeping bag until you are proven wrong. That may
sound like an odd suggestion, so let me explain.

A sleeping bag's temperature rating is only a guess made be the manufacture.
YMMV, as they say, but it's generally a pretty good guess. So until you're
certain a 20-degree bag won't keep you warm down to 20-degrees, trust that
it will.

Here's why: If you assume you're going to be cold and layer on extra
clothes, you might get cold -- not because the sleeping bag failed to keep
you warm but because you built up sweat and then chilled.

I made that mistake on several outings with my 20-degree bag. I wanted to
avoid getting cold, though the temperature was only in the 30s. I added
extra layers and I got cold.

Now, I start out the night without the extra layers and I stay warm. I keep
those layers handy, though. If in the middle of the night I start to get
cold, it's easy to add a layer. In fact, I've learned that I can trust my
30-degree bag to work just as well as my 20-degree bag in most chilly
conditions, so I usually carry it. I've also learned that it has to be
pretty darn cold before I need to carry my zero-degree bag. I've roasted in
it, and that's just as miserable as being cold.

_____________________________________________________
-jns

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
- Steven Wright