Have you ever used a top bag on your tod? If so, how did you get on with it?

Are there any particular drawbacks to sharing a top bag with a sleeping partner? As long as she doesn't frequent this forum, you can be completely honest with us.


I hav'nt used a top bag by myself. I don't have one. I am a convert though. Down under you should be in an airbed.

Fortunately or not she does frequent this forum so this is the edited version. There is a draught channel down between 2 bodies which is not filled with down when the bag is pulled tight between. The rab has a collar which fills that a little.
Single top bag users talk about having to learn to turn over inside the bag. 2 people sharing a sleeping bag have to do that anyway.

I have to go I will continue in part2

That's the trouble with posting at tea breaks at work.
People who zip 2 single sleeping bags together end up with too much room. Maybe only one bag opened out is only just big enough for 2, but we use it in a Laser which is only just big enough for 2 as well. In fact the 2 exped mats have to be squeezed together otherwise they overlap the ground sheet at 2 corners. I inflate them in a sort of corset that compresses those corners as it squeezes them together.
A top bag solution rather than a quilt may help with a marginally narrow down filling. I understand the rab 200 top bag is too spartan with too much bottom sheet and not enough down filled top. Our bag (it started life the same as David Albon's) has adjustable elastics to crumple the bottom sheet and encourage the down filled part to stay under the edges of our bodies. Even camped on snow at -2C, in high winds, we do not need them tightened. We do not put the downmats in the top bag. This makes draughts a certainty. I have no good record of when we open up the zips. We usually keep the footbox connected because The bottom sheet I have made has a small down filled section at the foot. Without that both of us only have half a footbox.
You do need good hats and we now have Eddy Meecham masks in reserve.
We are not warm sleepers, particularly her, in fact I Know I would theoretically be warmer sleeping with Mick F.D., if only he would give in.

Women maybe dont have the metabolic rate to be warm sleepers.

LOL Derek!

Have you and your partner thought of using a double bivvy-bag from Oware?
It would solve some of the draught issue, and create a very cozy micro-climate.

I looked at that bivvy bag Mick but we dont have a draught problem. The bottom sheet solves it when it is cold and tightening the elastics to pull the down in closer has not been needed. The laser for 2 is pretty cosy at any time. Our top bag has about the same weight per person as yours and was made, or remade, in Britain. How much down is there in in your quilt?

There's 8 ounces of down in the quilt. That's about the same as my Rab Quantum 250, but as none of it is being compressed, much warmer.

I'm surprised someone like PHD doesn't offer quilts. I've e-mailed them in the past, but they don't seem interested.

"At around what temperature would you stop using your bags as quilts and start zipping them up? Do you think that a warmer quilt would suit you at this temperature, or do you find that there's something inherently superior about a fully enclosed bag in lower temperatures. Also, what shelters do you use your unzipped bags in?"

I've never actually measured the temperature below which I would zip the Combi up, but I would estimate it at about 6-7C. I find that above that sort of temperature it doesn't really bother me if an arm or leg escapes from under cover; in fact, being able to easily stick a limb out is an advantage, because I hate getting too hot. Even at home I often sleep partly uncovered, near an open window.
I'm not sure a warmer quilt/bag would take me to a temperature much lower, because then a leg slipping out from under cover would probably cool me down a bit too much, especially if it came into contact with the chilly ground rather than my OMM sleeping pad. Of course I could be wrong about this, but reckon it would would take some fairly expensive experimentation to find out for sure.
I've slept underneath the Combi when using a tarp and in my Laser Comp, with the door tied back.

Hi Eddy,
I don't use a quilt, but my normal bag is a Macpac Topbag. The bottom sleeve takes the standard width sleeping mats, but I find it at its most comfortable with a Prolite 3, short length as that gives me a bit more room for tossing and turning. A full length Prolite 4 makes the bag much more efficient, but less comfortable for me.
I haven't found the usual criticism of cold spots to be a problem.
It has only let me down once, at Easter last year on a cold snow covered camp at Bynack Lodge. I had taken some Ikea flooring insulation to augment the Prolite 3 for my body and to insulate my feet, but the latter element failed badly. I had cold feet all night, but the rest of me was toasty. But that wasn't the Topbag's fault, merely a bit of experimentation that didn't work.
The Topbag also gives me flexibilty in colder weather, as I can fit a PHD ultra in it which greatly uprates its performance. When I have to do that, I dispense with the pad in the sleeve, instead I use a Synmat.
I find that I turn within the Topbag, instead of turning the Topbag with me, but that's something I do now without thinking.
I have tried OMM Duomats velcro'd together in the sleeve and that's something I might follow up on this year. This gives me even more room than with the Prolite 3.
But just to show that I am not a total lightweight freak, I am thinking about buying a Buffalo Superbag. Something I have always thought about, but never had with me when the conditions suited it.
I find our weather up here in Sunny Scotland to be too fickle to have one system, be it clothing, footwear, stove, tent/tarp/bivy, sleeping bag, etc.
For a longer trip (more than 4 days) I go light, but for weekenders, the weather forecast dictates what goes in the sack.

From what experience I have of when we close the zips I am of the same opinion as Guy, just above freezing I would zip up to keep my arms and legs from getting out and getting too cold.
Reading Steady Eddy's post makes it clear that there are 2 ways of using top bags. I think I was ambiguous on an earlier post. Our top bag does not include a sleeve for the downmats, if it did it would be bound to make draughts because the downmats are stiff when inflated and would stretch the top bag out sideways and make triangular draught tubes down each side of the bag. Our Bag does include a sleeve for the foam at our feet. This foam is 6mm or 9mm evazote and is not very stiff. Anyway if there is a triangular cavity at each side of the foot box it has no entry for cold air.

When I got home last night I measured our bag. I took a point about at the elbow. The bag was 61-2" 156cm wide laid out one layer thick. The undersheet at the same point stretched out, elastics released, is 33" 85cm wide. The bag with the extra foot zips weighs 940 gram and the base sheet from memory weighs 90 gram. It has 400 gram of 800 UK fill down. The circumference of the top bag zipped together is therfore 240cm (120 wide doubled and laid flat) our mats are only 100cm wide, the groundsheet of the Laser comes to a point in the middle at 105cm. Compared with Mick's quilt we only have 4" more quilt width to cover 2 people but if we had Micks quilt (57" 145 cm wide, 224 gram of down) in our Laser you would not be able to lay it out flat anyway. Our down in grams per cm width =2.56, Mick's quilt by my calculation 1.54. So Mick has the space to spread out, or almost squeeze in another person, where we may have 60% more down over us, but little spare width. Like I say a top bag may be an alternative to a very wide quilt as 2 different ways to stop side draughts.

Your not quite correct regarding my quilt Derek. I couldn't squeeze in another person. It isn't a rectangular quilt, but a tapered, or as Nunatak describes it, an Arc shaped quilt. Jacks r Better make traditional rectangular quilts. The sewn in footbox is too small for another pair of legs. The quilt tapers out from the footbox to maximum width (55" not 57") at about waist level.
It isn't wide enough to completely encircle me.
The Nunatak website shows the design quite clearly.

Eddy

I tend to switch from zipped up bag to 'unzipped-spread like a quilt on top' if I feel to hot. This can happen at any time of year, but rarely in winter. I remember a very muggy, damp evening on the WHW in October '06. I was camped in woodland overlooking Loch Lomond and had to unzip to regulate temperature. I was glad my bag has a long zip or it would have been very uncomfortable. Next night completely different and was zipped in.

My tent of choice is an Akto (though I am hoping to test a Henry Shires Tarptent soon) & I tend to use a silk bag liner & at present, sleep on a short Thermarest Ulralight with my empty pack down at my feet.

David