Field Report

Field Report
Sierra Designs Wicked Fast Sleeping Bag

September 13, 2006

Tester: Colleen Porter
Age: 31
Gender: F
Height: 5' 8” (1.73 m)
Weight: 137 lb (62 kg) Email: tarbubble at yahoo dot com
City, State: Irvine, CaliforniaBiography: I’ve been backpacking for 11 years, usually with my husband. We used to be heavyweights, but having children forced us to go lighter, and now on my own my 3-season base weight (without food, water or fuel) hovers around 13 lb/6 kg, and is getting lower. On family trips the weight usually doubles. I make some of our gear. My typical haunts are the mountains of southern California, the Sierra Nevada, the Grand Canyon, plus the Mojave and Colorado deserts. Yup, gotta carry a lot of water.

Product Information
Manufacturer: Sierra Designs
URL: http://www.sierradesigns.com/
Listed Weight: 1 lb 7 oz/652 g on the website, 1 lb 8 oz/680 g on the hang tag
Tested Weight: 1 lb 8 oz/680 g with the Pad Locks on. The Pad Locks weigh 0.4 oz/ 11.3 g and the stuff sack weighs 0.6 oz/17 g.
MSRP: $239.95 US

Product Description: A sleeping bag rated to 30 degrees F/-1 C. It is constructed with 20-denier polyester on the exterior, and 15-denier polyester on the interior of the bag. The insulative material is 800-fill goose down. It is a bit of a riot of orange and grey - the outside of the bag changes from light grey, to a rather nuclear orange, then to a darker grey for the bottom. The interior is a rust orange. The zipper runs half the length of the bag, and in the footbox there is a zippered vent. It features a "jacket hood" (Sierra Designs' term) that is more fitted than other hoods I have seen. The baffles are continuous from top to bottom. For a more detailed description of the bag, plus pictures, please see my Initial Report.

Field Conditions: So far, I've logged six nights in the Wicked Fast. I've used it in the San Gabriel Mountains of southern California, on the shore of Flathead Lake in Montana, and in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of central California. Elevations have ranged from 2900 f/884 m to 9,990 f/3045m. Overnight temperatures have ranged from 40 F/4.5 C (my best guess) to 68 F/20 C (confirmed). Weather has been mostly dry and clear, but the coldest night was also somewhat damp. I have used the Wicked Fast in a siliconized nylon tipi tent, under the open sky, and in a Tarptent Squall 2. Most testing took place in the TarpTent.

Field Performance: No pun intended, but the Wicked Fast has been a mixed bag. It has features that I love, features I'm lukewarm on, and features I despise. First off, I love the Jacket Hood. It's warm and cinches perfectly so that only my nose and mouth are exposed. It does a respectable job of staying in place as I relentlessly roll over and over during the night - except when using the Pad Locks.

The Pad Locks only work in certain situations and set-ups and I found myself loathing them on my last trip. To clarify - I first used them when I slept on a dock on Flathead Lake in Montana (no tent of any kind). The night did not get very cold, the dock was flat, and I was on a sleeping pad that was 16 in/40 cm wide and 48 in/122 cm long. The Pad Lock system is obviously designed for sleeping pads that are the standard 20 in/51 cm wide, so I didn't cinch it any tighter than that and hoped for the best. I was able to sleep without much tossing & turning, the bag stayed in place atop the pad, and all was well. The only problem is an obvious one - with the bag held in position over the pad, the bag and therefore the hood opening will not turn along with the sleeper. Any time I rolled onto my side, the hood opening did not roll with me, and i was quickly awakened by breathing my own warm, moist breath inside the bag.

That doesn't sound too bad, but let me tell you about how the Pad Locks drove me insane on my last trip. I had elected to bring my TorsoLite pad, which is a trimmed-down self-inflating pad with the following dimensions: 32 in/81 cm long, 1 in/2.5 cm thick, and the width tapers from 17 in/43 cm to 12 in/30.5 cm. This is probably not the most common sleeping pad out there, as it is a specialty item that won't be found at your local outfitter's, but in ultralight circles a torso-sized pad is not uncommon. The Pad Locks simply did not work with this pad - it was too short and too narrow. If I cinched down the Pad Locks tight enough to stay on, the bag became so tight I was immobilized. One night we slept on especially challenging terrain (sloped) and as I slid in my sleep the pad Locks would catch on the pad and begin rolling it a bit on the edges and pulling the side of the bag underneath me, which woke me up every time. Even on flat terrain, the TorsoLite was continually slipping out of the pad Lock straps and then when I would roll over, I'd bring the bag and half the pad with me. So I gave up on the Pad Locks for that trip and will not be using them with a torso-sized pad again.

The zipper jams up just as much as any sleeping bag zipper I've ever used. It's true that it has never snagged on the anti-snag stiffener, but it still snags on the fabric on the other side of the zipper and it still gums up when I sit up in the bag and then try to unzip it.

Speaking of zippers, the lack of a draft tube behind the zipper is, for me, a big drawback. On the coldest nights I've used the Wicked Fast, I've had to resort to bringing my down jacket into the bag and using it as an improvised draft tube. Laying in it on a cold night, while using my TarpTent, the draft coming through the zipper was obvious. I'm not certain how much weight a draft tube would add, but i can't see that it would be significant. Now that I know that the Wicked Fast is, for me, absolutely not a 30-degree (-1 C) bag I can plan on using my jacket or other clothing as an improvised draft tube if I know I'll be pushing my temperature limits on a trip with this bag. Using this bag inside a fully enclosed tent of any kind would probably help with the draft problem, but as a compulsive ultralighter I'm very rarely in a fully enclosed shelter.

The foot vent is great, a feature that I like very much. The only changes I would make to it would be to make it large enough that the user could actually hang their feet out of the bag (not sure if that's technically possible without making major changes to the structure of the bag), and to make it possible to work the zipper from the inside of the bag.

The bag is holding up well under a fair amount of use - it's been left compressed for longer than is advisable on a couple of occasions, been left in a hot car, had my sweaty, dirty body crammed into it, had children roll around on it, ended up partially in dirt when I rolled halfway off my groundcloth, and it still looks good. I haven't experienced much dew or condensation in my testing so far - just a very light dew when I slept at the lakeside. By sunrise, some of the dew had permeated through the bag, but it was a very small percentage compared to the dew that was still beaded up on the bag.

So I'm not in love with the Wicked Fast just yet. I still have two more months to see if it grows on me and can find a spot in my kit.

Thanks to Sierra Designs and BackpackGearTest.org for the opportunity to test the Wicked Fast.

Read more reviews of Sierra Designs gear
Read more gear reviews by Colleen Porter

Reviews > Sleep Gear > Sleeping Bags > Sierra Designs Wicked Fast > Colleen Porter > Field Report

All material on this site is the exclusive property of BackpackGearTest.org.
BackpackGearTest software copyright David Anderson