Reviews > Sleep Gear > Sleeping Bags > Sierra Designs Glow and Volt > John Waters > Long Term Report

September 4, 2006

Contents:
Biographical Information
Product Information
Field Conditions/Completed Test Results
Summary

Tester's Biographical Information

Name: John R. Waters
Age: 57
Gender: Male
Height: 5 ft 9 in (1.7 m)
Weight: 178 lb (81 kg)
Email Address: exec at bysky dot com
City, State, Country: White Lake, Michigan USA

Backpacking Background

My backpacking began in 1999. I've hiked rainforests in Hawaii, Costa Rica, and Puerto Rico, on glaciers in New Zealand and Iceland, 14ers in Colorado and Death Valley's deserts. I hike or snowshoe 6-8 miles (10 km-13 km) 2-3 times weekly in Pontiac Lake Recreation Area, with other day-long hikes on various SE Michigan trails. I also hike in Colorado and am relocating there, which will increase my hiking time and trail variety tremendously.

My daypack is 18 lb (8.2 kg); overnights' weigh over 25 lb (11.3 kg). I'm aiming to reduce my weight load by 40% or more.

Product Information and Picture (from manufacturer's website)
http://www.sierradesigns.com

Manufacturer: Sierra Designs Style: Ultralight synthetic mummy bag Model: Volt Type: Ultralight Manufacturer Temperature Rating: 15 F (-9 C) Insulation: PrimaLoft Sport Trail Weight: 2 lb 8 oz (1 kg) Fill Weight: 29 oz (822 g) Inside Length: 84" (2 m) Zipper Side: Left Stuff Size: 9" x 19" (23 cm x 48 cm) Shell Material: 20D Polyester Liner Material: 15D Polyester Shoulder Girth: 60" (152 cm) Hip Girth: 56" (142 cm) Footbox Girth: 39" (99 cm) Sizes: Regular and Long MSRP: $209.95 USD

Features:
For an in depth description, including warranty of the Sierra Designs Volt Men's Sleeping Bag, please refer to my Initial Report.

Product Information (from tester)

Color: Gray and Orange
Size: Regular - fits up to 6 ft (1.8 m)

Field Conditions/Completed Test Results

Testing was primarily done on a recent trip to Cañon City, Colorado at an altitude of 5687 ft (1733 m) above sea level. The terrain is high desert. It's actually a 35 acre ranch parcel that my wife and I just purchased early this year and now we are in the process of adding infrastructure (driveway, electric, etc.). Surrounded by 30,000 acres of state and federal land, the nearest neighbor is 2 mi (3 km) away and, seriously, there is no sound but that of wind, birds and coyotes. From everywhere on the ranch you cannot see or hear a soul.

WEATHER CHART FOR CAÑON CITY TRIP

Test Results

Hot days (105 F/41 C) and cool nights (52 F/11 C). How does the Sierra Designs Volt Sleeping Bag perform under such a temperature swing?

Recently, I camped for 3 nights north of Canon City, Colorado at approximately 5700 ft (1737 m) above sea level. The area is arid, high desert. The ground was hard packed sand and slate with no grass cover. I packed in with the SD Volt compression strapped to the underside of my pack. This bag compressed down nicely. I could have pulled the backpack's straps even tighter around the Volt than I did, but there was no need to. I don't like to put too much stress on things.

When the Volt was stored, I kept it hanging in our gear closet loosely stuffed into the provided mesh storage sack. To head out on the trail, the Volt was removed from the mesh bag and stuffed into the provided orange nylon stuff sack. The nylon sack is only 9" x 19" (23 cm x 48 cm) and has a nylon dust flap that goes over the opening that remains after the draw string is closed as tightly as possible. It's a compact and lightweight unit that easily straps to a pack on the outside.

After setting up my tent, it was easy to remove the stuff sack from my backpack, pull out the Volt and flip it out onto my sleeping pad. There was no issue with settling of fill or empty fill spots that I could see after storing the bag for over 30 days. Also, to get to the destination, the Volt, stuffed inside its orange nylon stuff sack, was packed very tightly inside my airline luggage next to other gear. So it was handled roughly and survived quite well.

The Volt has ground pad locking straps to connect the Volt to the sleeping pad. I was using a Mountain Hardware Superlight 60 pad and tried connecting it to the bag to make one unit. The process works well. The Volt stays on top of the pad and only slides off maybe 10% of the width on either side. I never completely slid off the pad through 2 nights of sleeping. But, as I mentioned in my field report, I move around a lot and it's my personal preference to not be tied to my pad because when I use a pad lock, I have to turn inside the bag; not turn the entire bag (because the pad would end up along side of me), so for the 3rd night, I removed the pad straps. Yes, I did slide off the pad and I did find myself sleeping half on and half-off the pad, so evidently those straps do serve a purpose well, but on the other hand I was able to sleep better on my side.

In desert climates, when the temp is 105 F (41 C) during the day and I go to sleep at dark, around 10pm, the outside air temp is still around 80 F (27 C), but will drop off to the mid-50s F (10s C) around 3AM. With a constant breeze of between 5 to 15 mph (8 to 24 kph), it can get chilly at 3AM. So what happens is that I hit the sack warm then need to get warmer during the night. That requires some flexibility in my sleeping gear.

Under the long term testing conditions, I went to sleep in my underwear lying on top of the bag (sorry, no photos) with a gentle warm breeze, absolute silence and millions of stars overhead. Sleeping on top of the Volt sleeping bag, which was on top of the pad, was pretty darn comfortable and if the temp had not dropped, I would have been content to sleep just like that all night. However, as arid desert nights go, with humidity at 15% to 18% and that breeze still blowing, I was awake at 2AM feeling chilly.

At 2AM half asleep, I wanted to be able to get into my bag for warmth without having to fuss. There is a certain amount of such fussing though with any half-length zipper sleeping bag. The issue is that there isn't enough room inside the tent (when the foot of the bag and the head of the bag are within inches of the tent wall) to scoot my 5 ft 9 in (1.7 m) body into the opening. So I had to move the top of bag down towards the foot of the tent so I could get my feet into the opening and then pull it up like I was putting on a pair of pants. It's the same issue with any bag that has a limited length zipper. But it worked fine because the material is so slippery. I easily slid into the bag, pulled it up and was ready to generate Zs again.

This is a VERY warm bag. So at 57 F (14 C) I needed to be vented. This is a challenge if the side zipper is all the way up. I found it quite difficult to reach the foot vent with the side zipper closed up to my neck. I suppose there may be users that can make that happen, but I could not do it as hard as I tried. I am in good shape and can easily touch my toes, grab my ankles, do sit-ups, etc., but I could just not get to that foot zipper as long as the side zip was up.

So to open the foot vent, I had to unzip the side zipper and wiggle myself so that my butt was moved up to the head of the bag and then I could pull the loose bottom half of the bag up to where I could reach the zipper. Finally. It was my 3AM work-out. But of course, on occasion, not to make my life easy, the zipper jammed on the zipper sheath of the foot vent. Now I'm very warm from the contorting and just want to get this done so I can vent my feet and get to sleep. In order to un-jam the zipper, I had to see the zipper, so I had to move my butt higher up towards the top of bag so I could grab the foot of the bag up to bring it up to my face. Of course, it's dark, so I had to reach over now and get a light so I can see where it was jammed. After a few minutes of tugging and moving the zipper back and forth, it was finally free again and I opened the foot vent. Not what I intended to get involved in at 3AM.

To make things worse, after I got the foot vent open and I lay back down, the side zipper jammed on its sheath when I went to zip it back up. Since it was about 80% closed, and the bag is narrow, I was again doing contortions to get my right arms out of the bag and to work myself around to a point that I could see where it was stuck. Had to get the light again and fuss with the zipper for another minute or so and it was free. So for the rest of this trip I was careful to slowly zipper things closed and open and to be sure that I manually cleared the zipper track from the sheaths during the process.

The foot vent worked as well as the other times I used it. The additional airflow made things much more comfortable. But again, as I reported before, since the bag is fluffy the vent opening will close almost completely unless I stick my feet out. There isn't anything to keep the opening open.

I did use the hood one evening when the temp dipped down to 52 F (11 C). Otherwise, I did not use the hood on this trip except to act as a light shield because I wanted some extra sleep. It was too warm to get that wrapped up in the hood when it was over 55 F (13 C).

As reported before though and as with most mummy bags of this design layout, I found that side sleeping can leave a major opening on my back when I sleep on my right side facing away from the zipper. The Volt is no different. To side sleep warmly on my right side (the zipper is on the left when lying down) the zipper needs to be all the way closed when rolling onto my right side or I'll get a draft on my back from the open space because it's behind me and I can't pull the top and bottom material together to fill the gap as I can when I am laying on my left side.

Except for the early morning hours, I found that I was sweating at times and that I would get warm, have to open the side zipper then have to zip it back up, and so on, because I would get cool, get into the bag, warm up to sweating, unzipper, cool off then try and get warm again, etc. But even though I was sweating, the bag never got damp or uncomfortable.

Each morning a simple shake of the bag turned inside out then a stuff in the stuff sack and it was ready to move on to the next site. It was extremely simple to work with and, other then the zipper issue gave me no trouble at all.

There are no broken or snagged threads. The bag's liner still looks new and shows no signs of pilling. The zippers operate smoothly but under certain instances will snag. This is likely due to the very thin and loose material around zipper opening with nothing to hold it back. I have not needed to wash the bag yet, and have not been sloppy enough to get any stains on the bag. The bag still looks new after about 9 days of actual overnight use.

Comments
The Sierra Designs Volt Sleeping Bag is definitely a cool weather sleeping bag. I would not even think of bringing this bag along if the early morning temps were going to be over 60F. I would use a different bag. For under 60F though this bag is comfortable, packs well and is lightweight. Unfortunately, the temps where we were during this test period were not at the low end of the bag's specified range, so I didn't get a chance yet to see how this performs in snow and freezing climates. I am sure that I'll be able to do that in the next few months. And I look forward to it!

Thank you to BGT and Sierra Designs for the opportunity to test this product!

John R. Waters

Reviews > Sleep Gear > Sleeping Bags > Sierra Designs Glow and Volt > John Waters > Long Term Report