[pct-l] Sleeping Bags

[wayneskraft at comcast.net (Wayne Kraft)]

As most of you who follow my occasionally almost topical  
contributions to this list already know, the recent flooding of my  
basement and consequent desecration of my old red and blue Sierra  
Designs down sleeping bags rekindled my interest in this old gear.   
Since then I have taken action to salvage them to the extent  
possible.  Since my wife raided our joint bank account to purchase  
the biggest, meanest, nastiest, top-of-the-line front loading washer  
and dryer available for household use, I decided to use them for this  
task rather than go to a laundry and use a commercial machine.  I  
purchased about $11.00 worth of Nikwax down laundry soap to use for  
this project. The instructions on the bottle were a little vague, so  
I decided to use 1/2 of the bottle for each sleeping bag.  That way,  
I wouldn't have a useless dab of detergent to carry with me for years  
to come.  Before washing the bags I scoured the back yard and found  
four tennis balls our dogs play with.  I knew that you're supposed to  
put the tennis balls in the dryer with the sleeping bags to prevent  
insidious down clumping, but I wasn't sure if I was to put them in  
the washer, too.  Since the tennis balls were muddy and covered with  
dog slobber, I decided to wash them with the bag.  I washed the blue  
bag first, then put the bag and balls in the dryer on a low setting.   
I stopped the dryer every 15 minutes or so to shake out the bag to  
rid it of clumps, but I got the uneasy feeling that this was a waste  
of time.  The drying process went on forever and when I finally took  
the bag out it was still damp.  I spread it out over some cardboard  
boxes with a space heater, fan and dehumidifier (all left over from  
flood remediation) until it was dry.  I noticed that a little down  
had leaked from the bag into the dryer. I examined the bag, found a  
small hole and mended it with duct tape.

I examined the red bag for leaks, found none and repeated the  
cleaning and drying process.  I noticed that the red bag came out of  
the washer much dryer than had the blue bag.  I concluded that I  
probably neglected to push the special "max extract" button for the  
blue bag.  The red bag dried pretty much completely in the dyer, but  
left behind a lot of leaked down.  I decided to clean this up with my  
new high powered wet-dry shop vac (the one from Home Despot powered  
by a fuel injected Chevy V8).  Unfortunately, I am still not  
completely familiar with this piece of equipment so I hooked up the  
hose backward and blew goose feathers all over the basement, much to  
the amusement of my son's cat, Fish.   It turned out that the red bag  
had a rather substantial hole on the inside near the foot.  The red  
bag is still useable, perhaps, but some of the interior baffles  
appear to be down free, so I expect it will have some cold spots.

The blue bag, however, looks new.  I spread it out on the floor next  
to my nearly new TNF Squall Polarguard 3D bag I bought steeply  
discounted from REI.  I have concluded that the TNF bag's 20 degree  
rating is wildly optimistic.  What they mean is that, at 20 degrees  
F., you can survive in this bag, without losing any of your  
extremities to frostbite, just long enough to become discouraged,  
leap out of the bag and set the nearest snag afire to stay warm.  But  
I digress.  Side-by-side, the 30-year-old down bag, the bag I used  
every single day in the entire spring and summer of 1976 while  
vagabonding across Europe and on many shorter trips before and since,  
the bag that had been stored in its stuff sack for decades,  
definitely had more loft than the synthetic TNF bag.  I crawled into  
each bag for a comparison test.  The old down bag was clearly warmer  
and slightly more capacious.  Ah, I thought, but the old down bag  
will take up more room in my pack and will be heavier.  I tried  
stuffing the old bag into the new bag's compression sack. It fit just  
fine and, although I haven't weighed the two bags, it doesn't feel  
any heavier.

Bottom line: until I decide to buy one of those $400 wonder bags, I  
think I'm going to go back to my ancient Sierra Designs prime  
northern white goose down bag for my backpacking slumber.