It is late November, most leaves are already on the ground after a beautiful autumn. There are still some bright yellow and red leaves on the trees, high up in the air. Actually, they are not so bright, they seem to miss out the sunlight to show their true colours, thereby brighten up all spectators wandering around forests or cities. It is a grey time, the clouds are so equal distributed and makes you feel like you live inside a grey balloon, using black and white filters on your photo’s do not even matter so much.
So that is how it looks the last week but I could not have been more excited to go out! It is pretty cold and nobody likes to enjoy being outside. Me, on the other hand see this weather to finally test out my new camping gear. Yes, camping gear, I am going to sleep outside in this cold and grey time. I spend so much time investigating what type of sleeping bag I wanted to purchase, but I could not find a bag which is warm, cheap and light enough to buy. But then I got in the lovely world of quilts, those are much lighter and cheaper than sleeping bags without compromising on warmth. A quilt is basically a sleeping bag which is stripped of unnecessary parts. There is no hood, which is for side sleepers useless anyway, in my experience. Also, they cut out the part where you usually sleep on. This does not make it colder because as soon as you compress the material and pushing out the air by laying on it, the isolation is diminished and thus you are carrying useless weight. Cutting out on those parts, and zippers, you save both money and weight. But it is not only that, as it serves more as blanket, you can toss around and move more freely than cooped up in a sleeping bag. When reading about those quilts I could not think of people still going for sleeping bags.
So, I bought an Enigma 10F/-12C, from Enlightened Equipment, and took it out for a test night. When it arrived by mail I was already super happy, I almost threw it in the air as it was so much lighter than expected. Upon unpacking the box I put it on and got so hot immediately, but the cats were a little bit afraid of me so I decided to jump around while they were curious but still running away from me. After this silly time I took the accompanying straps, placed the loop one on my pad, clicked the quilt on to it and it worked like a charm. I was ready to take it outside!
In the tent, temperatures close to freezing point, I started with my intended sleepwear: merino wool long sleeved shirt, a cotton/wool legging, cozy home socks, gloves and a beanie. While reading my book before going to sleep this was fine, my hands outside of the quilt were however extremely cold and putting them under the quilt warmed them up before I ended a page. By the time I wanted to sleep I did got a bit cold. So I also wore my fleece sweater and inner layer of my jacket. Like this I was extremely comfortable and I only woke up because of some owls screaming it out. Perfect night I would say!
Putting the quilt back in the delivered stuffsack was really easy and it packed small, I would advise using a compression bag as it could have been much smaller than the stuffsack. After I had everything back in my backpack, I hiked 30km and I was enjoying being outdoors, just loving for those opportunities.
Hike, and sleep, on!
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