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A solo camp on the Wyoming/Utah border. The same tent has been keeping me dry for almost two decades. |
On warm-weather tours I get by with a bivy. After all, summer touring finds you out of your abode until nine or ten p.m., and up with the light most often, so who needs the extra room? In winter, however, chances are good that you'll be in your sleeping bag before it's completely dark, and cooking in the OPEN vestibule or just outside the front flap. You will want to bring far more into the tent with you (water bottles that you don't wish frozen, extra clothing, food, riding shoes, portable TV and VCR . . . ), and your sleeping bag will be considerably larger as well. If your winter bag isn't larger than your summer bag don't worry about room in your tent; you'll be in a motel the next night anyway.
So, from my coffinlike summer bivy I move to a two-person tent for my winter solo tours. I get by with my three-season (spring-through-fall) self-supporting Moss: I compensate for the open, screened top (closed off in part by the rain fly) with a heavy bag and liner. No, not a VBL (vapor barrier liner, another name for human-size ziplock plastic bags), but a lightweight, ten-degree addition made of the same synthetic fill as the bag itself. This moves my zero-degree bag to ten below, and also means I must wash only the liner whenever I get around to doing it. You say you ended up with two summer-weight bags when your former mate took a hike and didn't want reminders? Well, consider yourself lucky — at least about the extra bag. If the sizes will allow it, putting one inside the other might be just your ticket for warm winter sleeps.
You will be bombarded with kinds of tents and names of bag fibers (and feathers) when you begin shopping for your portable home on the range, so I'll try to keep it short and simple here.
First, few of us want to have to buy two good tents. I make do with my three-season in winter as well, and enjoy the (slightly heavier) self-supporting model no matter the time of year. Whether you're camping on slick rock or snow, it's nice not to have to worry about staking out the corners.
Second, always assume that a sleeping bag's minimum temperature rating is correct for someone other than you. Don't trust them, in other words. Some of us sleep warmer than others, even at home. We all know this, yet we seem to check our brains at the door (or at the front cover when reading how-to books by"experts") when it comes to handling adversity in the wild. Heed the advice of veteran tourers, surely, but always be ready to adapt — not blindly adopt — their suggestions. Or toss them completely, once you've gained some experience and know what works best for you. Just as there's no one right way to live, there's no one right way to tour.
Third, choose down (feathers) as your bag fill only if you are absolutely, positively, without a doubt sure that you can keep your bag dry, and that you won't have to launder it while on the road. I'm never this sure, which makes me a (hu)man-made fill kind of guy.
Fourth, the warmest bag won't keep you that way if you aren't insulated from cold mother earth. As you slumber, your weight collapses those air pockets in the sleeping bag panels beneath you. Choose a ground pad guaranteed to provide both a good sleeping cushion and great insulation. And don't use it while sitting too close to the campfire. I've done that, on a winter-conditions tour in the mountains (it was spring down in the valleys), and found that I had too few patches for the repair. It was a loooong night.
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