|
| Home | Guest - Not logged in | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
» Register
» Login
Gear Reviews
Documents
Tools
» Contact
|
Reviews > Sleep Gear > Sleeping Bags > Sierra Designs Glow and Volt > Coy Starnes > Field ReportSierra
Designs Volt
(sleeping bag) Field Report July 3, 2006  Coy Boy hanging out in the Volt
Tester Bio I live outside a small town in northeast Alabama. I also enjoy hunting, fishing, canoeing, and most other outdoor activities. Backpacking is my favorite pastime. I consider myself a knowledgeable backpacker but I am not an expert. I enjoy hiking with my friends and family or solo. I limit my hiking to areas fairly close to home, usually within a day's drive of home. I hike throughout the year and actually hike the least in the hot humid months of summer. My style is slow and steady and my gear is light. However I will sacrifice weight for comfort and durability. A typical 3-season load for me is around 20 lb (9 kg) not counting food or water. I usually sleep in a hammock and cook with an alcohol stove. My backpacking trips are usually 2, 3 or 4 days in length. Product Information
Product Description The Volt came with a large mesh storage bag and a stuff sack of thin translucent like material, which looks like silnylon. Sierra Designs describes the Volt as Warm to 15 degrees with PrimaLoft Sport for maximum compressibility, this synthetic ultralight goes from base camp to rock ledges without worrying about a thing. The Volt is in the Ultralight series which consist of both down and synthetic bags. The Volt uses PrimaLoft® Sport for insulation. From the manufacturer's website PrimaLoft Sport is the perfect combination of high performance insulation and value. This technology combines ultra-fine and multi-diameter fibers for specific performance characteristics. The specially treated ultra-fine fibers help to form a water resistant insulating structure, while the multi-diameter fibers help to build loft. Performance Traits PrimaLoft® Sport is the most compressible synthetic insulation available. The Volt I am testing is the long version which is 2 in (5 cm) roomier at the shoulder than the regular version. The Volt features: * 1/2 Zipper * Draft Tube * Foot Box Venting * Jacket Hood * Removable Pad Locks * Shingled Construction * Snag Free Zipper Tracks Field Testing Locations and Conditions I used the Volt for six nights so far. I used the Volt with my hammock the first five nights and the remaining one night inside a 2-man tent. I used the Volt the first two nights in the woods here in Northeast Alabama. The next three nights were during 4 day, 36-mile (58 km) hike on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia. The last night was in a 2-man tent back in Alabama on a local trail. The coolest nighttime temperature so far has been 44 F (7 C) and the warmest has been 77 F (25 C) at 11 PM just recently when I used the Volt inside my 2-man tent. It did cool on down to 67 F (19 C) by morning. I experienced thunderstorms on two of these nights but did not get the bag wet. Field Test Results  My first night in the Volt was uneventful. It dropped
down to 52 F (11 C) but I was neither too hot nor too cold (think
Goldie Lock's potage). I was pleased to discover that the Volt
worked well pulled over me and my hammock. To accomplish this, I
threaded the hammock through the foot zipper and the hood end as I hung
it.  I then got in my hammock and pull the Volt on much like
I pull on a pair of pants except instead of two legs imagine one.
I would say it was like putting on a dress but I have no experience so
I can not say for sure. The photo at the top of this report shows
this fairly well and you can see where I have threaded the hammock
through the foot zipper. Here is a close-up of the head end of
the same setup. Notice how it seals off pretty well but still
leaves some room around my head and neck area. This may be a big
reason I did not melt in this setup. A few nights later I was pleased but not surprised that the Volt kept me warm on the coolest night that I had an opportunity to use it (44 F (7 C). A few weeks later, as I planned and then went on a hike to the mountains of North Georgia, I was hoping for cooler testing weather and just missed sub-freezing weather by two weeks. The coolest two nights were 58 F (14 C) and the other was just a tad warmer. On both the coolest nights some thunderstorms rolled through early on but it warmed up to around 64 F (18 C) by daylight. As a result I cannot really comment on how the Volt will perform in cold weather and obviously not down around the temperature it is rated for, i.e., 15 F (-9 C). On the plus side, I found that using the Volt pulled over my hammock was not the sauna experience I expected. Whether this means the Volt is a warmer weather bag than specified is undetermined but I suspect that my hammock arrangement had a lot to do with staying cooler in the Volt. I have studied it and the best explanation I can come up with is that by sleeping with the bag suspended under me I was getting much better ventilation under me than if I had been sleeping on the ground inside the Volt. For comparison, I looked at how my legs feel in the summer in blue jeans when sitting on a leather couch in a warm room. The tops and sides of my legs will remain fairly comfortable while the part in contact with the couch will sweat. This plus the slight opening the hammock creates at the head end probably allowed me to stay reasonably cool. On the night it went down to 44 F (7 C) I actually ended up flipping the bag over and covering my head with the hood. On the three nights on the AT when the lows were around 58 F (14 C) my head stayed outside the sleeping bag (the hood was actually hanging below me). On all the nights except the 44 F (7 C) night I usually slept with one arm or the other outside the bag. I even noticed that occasionally I had both arms outside the bag but with most of the bag pulled up to about my neck otherwise. I used just a little insect repellent on my arms, face and neck and did not get any skeeter bites. I have discovered one other bonus when using a sleeping bag pulled over my hammock. I am not very flexible and I normally have a little difficulty getting in and out of any mummy bag on the ground and even more so in a hammock in the regular fashion. But now I can even have the bag zipped most of the way up and still get in and out easily. I normally keep the zipper zipped up to the point where it starts closing back in above my shoulders. If I want to get out of the bag I just unzip it back to that point and slide the bag down. I can do this in just a few seconds. This is real handy for those midnight nature calls or if heaven forbid, a bear came along to check me out. I hear a person in a hammock is just a giant taco to a bear:') On the night in the tent I was hot. I started out sleeping on top of the bag and used my tee shirt and a pair of swim shorts as makeshift cover. After a few hours it cooled down enough to need to get inside the bag. This worked fairly well but my lower half was quite warm and I did sweat a little. I kept the top part of the bag flipped as open as the half zipper would allow. I could not really tell if the foot zipper was allowing much ventilation or not but to be honest, a 15 F (-9 C) bag in 70 F (21 C) weather is most likely going to feel a bit warm. Durability One advantage of using the Volt over my hammock is my bag never really touches the ground. I do not smash the underside insulation at all. I am also not stressing the walls of the bag as much as when sleeping on a pad. I did occasionally want to bend a knee and found my knee pushing pretty hard on the bag walls but this did not appear to harm the bag in any way other than compressing the insulation a little. For all practical purposes, the bag still looks brand new. It is still lofting like it did when new. I have stored it in the generously sized storage sack between trips but it did spend four days in the provided stuff sack which by the way is sized large enough to make stuffing it a reasonably easy chore. It does have a slight smell and I will wash it after a few more nights of use. Likes so Far
Dislikes so Far
Continued Testing Now that it has turned hot weather I will most likely be unable to test the Volt in what would be considered reasonable temperatures for its rating. As a result, I will just use the bag, leaving it open as much as possible, and hope the foot ventilation allows me to stay comfortable. Thankfully, the Volt does not seem all that hot when used over my hammock. I will also wash the Volt and report on how it handles this. Read more reviews of Sierra Designs gear Read more gear reviews by Coy Ray Starnes Reviews > Sleep Gear > Sleeping Bags > Sierra Designs Glow and Volt > Coy Starnes > Field Report | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||