Greg,
before you do anything about your sleeping bag, spend $5-$10 on a closed
cell foam sleeping mat, place that between your air mattress and your
sleeping bag and 90% of your problems will be solved. If you don't like
lying on the foam add a towel or something in between. I've slept with
this arrangement at Sturt national park in sub zero temperatures and
been totally cosy. Camping stores like Ray's outdoors will have them
and they are literally about $5 and are equally as effective as the
multi hundred dollar self inflating foam matresses like Thermarests.
They are only 6-10mm thick but that is enough to keep you cosy. I sleep
in conditions like this every month during winter.
Sleeping bags work by trapping air between the insulation material, but
when you lie on them it is squashed out and you have zero insulation.
Closed cell foam is what it says it is, the cells are closed and the air
is trapped and can't be squashed out so it continues to insulate if you
lie on it. Air in an air mattress doesn't help you as it it is not
trapped, so convection continues to work and you lose heat from below.
Regular foam like you find in a cheap foam mattress is open cell foam,
it's not the same and is bad as an air bed.
To fine tune your setup, get a silk liner, it keeps your bag a lot
cleaner and clean bags insulate better, if your body oils get on the
insulation it tends to be less effective, particularly down, polyester
is less affected. . Next throw an old wool blanket over the top it
acts well as a barrier to keep moisture from condensing on your bag.
Pulling in the draw cord at the top of your bag also helps, and stops
air escaping there. Down bags are generally the best for cold
conditions, but quality synthetic bags are pretty good these days and
are still work OK when damp and are easier to wash.
regards,
Chris Ross
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