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Reviews > Shelters > Tarps and Bivys > Integral Designs South Col Bivy > Kelli Wise > Long Term ReportIntegral Designs eVent South Col Bivy - Long Term Report April 20, 2004
Personal biographical information Backpacking background: I've been car camping and hiking for 20 years and sport climbing for 10 years, but am new to backpacking. My backpacking style is lightweight but not ultralight. I am striving for a suitable compromise between safety and comfort. The majority of my hiking experience is in Western Washington so I get a lot of wet weather experience. Field information: For the field report, Western Washington, coastal, lowlands, below 1000’ (305 m).
Product Information
Listed weight: 20 oz (567 g)
Features A little explanation of the eVent fabric is warranted here since it is one of the main features of the eVent South Col Bivy. eVent is a "lightweight Direct Venting fabric" manufactured by BHA Technologies, Inc. The eVent fabric, unlike other ePTFE (expanded Polytetrafluoroethelene) laminated fabrics, does not require a continuous layer of polyurethane (PU) over the surface of the ePTFE to keep oils out hence reducing the breathability of the fabric. The eVent manufacturer calls this a "Dry System" and states that "Since there is no polyurethane layer covering the open-pore structure of the material or causing moisture to condense into it, perspiration vapor is free to pass directly through the fabric." This means that the fabric should stay dry on the inside.
Field Use: As stated in previous reports, my long-term goal is to use the bivy as an alternative shelter where my hammock is either not allowed or impractical. I also wanted to assess the bivy’s potential as an emergency shelter for unexpected nights out. My long term testing has been done to help me decide if I will be taking the bivy as my primary shelter on a 12 day hike this fall. The weather has warmed up considerably since my Field Report was filed, night time lows are consistently about 34 F (1 C) and the rain has become more typical of our spring weather: intermittent showers with some clearing on and off through the night. Torrential downpours are more typical of winter, November through January, and I did not spend any nights in heavy rain. I tried several different configurations of sleeping bags, sleeping pads, and clothing. Elevations were below 1000’ (305 m). In my Initial Report, I noted that placing a 25” (64 cm) wide sleeping pad inside the bivy made for very cramped and constricted conditions. In my Field Report, I laid the wide sleeping pads (2 of them for insulation) on the ground and laid the bivy on top of the pads. In the last 4 months, I invested in a Therm-A-Rest ProLite 4 S sleeping pad, which is 20” (51 cm) wide and 47” (119 cm) long and 1.5” (4 cm) thick. I placed this inside the bivy with a small, blue closed cell foam sit pad for my feet. The coated nylon floor of the bivy is not at all slick and grips the sleeping pads quite well. This makes getting the sit pad into position a little difficult but once it’s in place, it stays in place even as I move the bivy around getting the self-inflating pad into place. The 20” (51 cm) sleeping pad was easy to get into the bivy, even with the small opening. The narrower pads work much better inside the bivy and I never felt constricted in the bivy as I had with the wide sleeping pad. The coated nylon floor is also very effective at keeping things from sliding around inside the bivy. The result is that my sleeping pads were in the same position in the morning as when I went to sleep. With the bivy lying directly on the cold ground, with no ground cloth beneath it, and the sleeping pad inside, I noticed a few drops of condensation formed on the coated nylon floor. This should be expected since the nylon is in direct contact with the ground and is quite cold. My sleeping bag shell was damp where it came into contact with this condensation. I still find that the South Col eVent Bivy adds quite a bit of warmth to my sleeping bag rating. As I’ve stated in earlier reports, I am a very cold sleeper. Even with an old synthetic sleeping bag, which has lost quite a bit of loft, I slept very comfortably down to 34 F (1 C) wearing only shorts, t-shirt, and socks but no hat. With a down bag rated at 15 F (-9 C), I had to unzip the sleeping bag a few inches because I was too warm. One question I was asked was how well a sleeping quilt would work in a bivy. A bivy seems like an ideal setup for a quilt since it should prevent drafts from finding their way in under the sides of the quilt. I don’t have a sleeping quilt, but I do use my sleeping bags as a quilt in a hammock. I took my old Polargard 3D sleeping bag, once optimistically rated at 15 F (-9 C), closed the foot section with the zipper and laid it across me as a quilt. I am 5’ (152 cm) tall and this bag is cut for a sleeper up to 5’6” (168 cm). I did find that the bivy was very effective at keeping drafts out from the side but I did have a problem with cold air finding its way down my neck due to the hood opening, which was mostly open, and the inability to snug the bag up around my neck. I would recommend that anyone using a quilt in a bivy keep this in mind and either have a means of snugging the quilt around your neck or wearing a scarf to keep out the drafts. Otherwise, the quilt-in-a-bivy was quite roomy, warm, comfortable and, without zippers to fumble around with, was very easy to get in and out of. Another question I was repeatedly asked was whether or not you can change clothes in a bivy. I am planning on using the South Col eVent Bivy on a trail where it is required that overnights are to be spent in established campgrounds. This requires at least some attempt at privacy since it’s unlikely that anyone on the trail came out specifically to watch me change my clothes. There is also the possibility that I will need to put on rain gear or take off wet clothes and the only shelter I may have in an unanticipated overnight would be the bivy. So, I tried changing my clothes while fully zipped up in the bivy with the hood opened just enough for ventilation, 6” (15 cm) per the manufacturer’s instructions. I discovered that it is very doable although not very comfortable and there is the risk that I might end up with my underwear on backwards. I am about average in girth, not too big and not too skinny, but I would imagine that changing clothes would get more difficult for larger users than for thinner users. A note for the ladies: tight fitting sports bras, especially if they are damp from sweat or rain, are nearly impossible to take off in the best of circumstances and the inside of a bivy is most definitely not the best of circumstances. It will takes a great deal of effort to accomplish this but I have the advantage of being nice and warm from the effort. Besides the sports bra, getting socks on my feet was the most difficult thing to do since it’s difficult to pull my legs up within the confines of the bivy. Difficult, but not impossible. Next up: storing gear inside the South Col eVent Bivy. I’m about 26” (66 cm) shorter than the South Col eVent Bivy, so that should leave a lot of room to store my gear and keep it out of the rain. I have described how the hood section has plenty of leftover room to store my headlamp, shoes, hat, gloves, etc. This amounts to about 9” (23 cm) of space above my head that is accessible from outside the bivy, when I’m setting up, and while I’m in the bivy with the zippers closed. I love this space. It’s incredibly convenient and I can just reach up over my head, fumble about in the dark, and find my headlamp. The coated nylon floor keeps things from sliding around too much and every thing stays dry. Even with the hood completely open and folded flat on the ground, I can tuck items in that space for easy access. Storing gear in the bottom of the bivy is a slightly different proposition. The gear must be put in the bottom of the bivy before I get in and I was not able to access it while I was zipped up in the bivy. There just wasn’t room for me to bend over and reach down below my feet to grab anything. Of course, there’s plenty of room for gear, I just have to make sure that I won’t need any of it until I am up and out of the bivy. There isn’t really room for my backpack unless I use it under my feet (which is a real possibility), but there is room for several stuff sacks of gear and the stuff sacks for my sleeping bag, tarp and bivy. There are advantages to being short and gear storage space is one of them. This brings up the most common question: Do you get claustrophobic in the bivy? In one word, No. I have no experience with other bivies, but the Integral Designs South Col eVent Bivy is pretty roomy. I really hate tight fitting mummy bags and I wake up feeling exhausted in the morning because I’ve spent the night fighting the bag, so I was concerned that a bivy would contribute to this. I have a roomy cut down sleeping bag which I find is quite comfortable and I use my synthetic sleeping bag as a quilt, so I have found ways around my distaste for tight sleeping bags. The South Col Bivy is bigger than my sleeping bag and allows me to move around and reposition the sleeping bag or quilt when I’m zipped up inside, so I have no issues with it being constricting around my torso. As for how claustrophobic I feel with the hood zipped up, the hood wire does a fair job of keeping the hood off of my face and the extra room at the top of the hood and around the sides of the hood keeps me from feeling that the walls are closing in on me. I do prefer to have the hood open as wide as weather will allow because the air inside the bivy can feel a little stuffy (although it’s quite a bit warmer than the outside air) and I like to be able to see the stars and smell the fresh forest air. If I suffered from claustrophobia, I wouldn’t use a bivy unless I used it with the hood completely open and a tarp pitched overhead for protection from the rain. As for the hood wire hoop, I’m somewhat underwhelmed by it. It’s nice having a wire hoop that can be folded up for easy storage, but mine is pretty misshapen now and I will never again get it to resemble a smooth curve. I have also found that the hood wire works better as the hood is more tightly closed. If the hood zips are mostly open, the hood wire doesn’t get enough tension on the fabric to keep the hood well propped up and the hood tends to collapse. It collapses backwards, laying flat against the ground away from my head, which is both good and bad. Good because I don’t wake up with the fabric laying on my face and bad because my head is uncovered and exposed to the rain. The triple zipper did give me a lot of flexibility in how I vented the hood and I definitely liked that. The wire is also easy to access, and replace, when I decide it has reached the end of its useful life. The wire appears to be standard Nomex covered wire used in housing construction, probably about 16 AWG, solid core, with the insulation left on. I’ve noted that I’ve had condensation in the bivy and I continued to experience this issue. Given that, oddly, every night I spent in the bivy had the same nighttime low of 34 F (1 C) and the local weather channel listed the humidity in town as above 90% (I expect that the humidity in my field locations was similar) I got the opportunity to try different configurations under rather consistent environmental conditions. What I found was that, despite whether I used a down bag, synthetic bag, bag as quilt, hood widely opened, I still ended up with a small amount of moisture on the inside of the bivy. It’s important that I mention that the outside of the eVent fabric was very wet with dew. My field test in my last report had one night with similar conditions but no real condensation and the only real variable was that the bivy was sitting directly on the ground when I experienced the condensation. This leads me to believe that the extra insulation afforded by the sleeping pads allows the eVent fabric to warm up enough to drive water vapor out instead of being chilled to the point of water condensing on the cold fabric. In all cases, my sleeping bag shell was slightly damp in small areas, especially the upper chest area that would be exposed to my breath. I noted dampness even on the footbox of my sleeping bag. This dampness was just enough to lightly moisten the outer shell material of the sleeping bag but I don’t believe that there was enough moisture to affect the down or synthetic fill. The sleeping bag and bivy dried out very quickly in the morning, especially in the sun. To dry the inside of the bivy in the morning, I simply turned it inside out and laid it out with my sleeping bag. Within a few minutes, it was dry enough to put away. One of the other testers uses his South Col eVent Bivy as his sleeping bag stuff sack and I wish that I had thought of that. Being waterproof, I am confident that I could fold my sleeping bag up in the Integral Designs bivy and keep it dry in my pack. It’s also large enough that it would allow my bag to conform to my other gear stored in my backpack. I currently keep the South Col eVent Bivy in a mesh stuff sack with my 5’ x 8’ (1.5 m x 2.4 m) tarp and tent pegs. The stuff sack that Integral Designs provides is very nice and light, and proved quite rugged when used, but I prefer to reduce the number of stuff sacks, and their weight, while keeping all of my shelter items together. I think I will be changing this strategy to use the bivy as my sleeping bag stuff sack. After 6 months of use, the South Col eVent Bivy still looks nearly new. There are no holes or tears in the fabric, the zippers remain in excellent working condition. There is a bit of dirt on the outer shell, which is probably more noticeable because of the light yellow color. The inside is easily cleaned with a shake to remove dirt, twigs and such and a wipe with a damp cloth is all that’s been needed to clean any remaining dust out. So how would the bivy fare as an emergency shelter? It’s lightweight, packs small and is easy to setup making it an excellent candidate for trips where the need for emergency shelter might arise. Setup time is less than a minute and can be done without having to really think about it. If in danger of hypothermia, this is a real advantage but I would add some short cords to the zipper pulls to make them easier to use if my hands were so cold that I had lost fine motor control or needed to wear mittens. It will stop a draft, get me out of the rain, add some warmth, and allow me to take off cold, wet clothing and put on dry. This would be an excellent addition to my emergency supplies when snowshoeing in the backcountry. Combined with a poncho tarp, it would make a complete overnight shelter for a backpacking trip.
Summary: Based on my experience with this product, I will be taking it on an extended trip this fall as my primary shelter, combined with a small tarp as a rain vestibule. I will also need a bug net as the bivy has no integrated bug protection. However, the bug net need only cover the top section of the bivy since I doubt any mosquito can bite through the eVent fabric. I can recommend the Integral Designs South Col eVent Bivy for those who are looking for a bivy. My only suggestion for improvement would be to add tie out loops to the bivy to keep it from blowing away in a strong wind. My only complaint is with the wire used as a hoop in the hood. It is not as effective as I would like and I’m having a hard time getting it back into a useable shape.
Pros
Cons I would like to thank Integral Designs and BGT for the opportunity to test the eVent South Col Bivy.
Reviews > Shelters > Tarps and Bivys > Integral Designs South Col Bivy > Kelli Wise > Long Term Report | |||