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Reviews > Sleep Gear > Sleeping Bags > Sierra Designs Wicked Fast > Colleen Porter > Initial Report
Age: 31 Gender: F Height: 5' 8” (1.73 m) Weight: 137 lb (62 kg) Email: tarbubble at yahoo dot com City, State: Irvine, California Biography: 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. Initial Impressions The Wicked Fast makes a very good first impression. It feels silky, soft, light, and puffy. It seems a bit fatter than a comparable sleeping bag that I was fondling at REI the other day, so I felt around inside the bag and measured the height of the netting strips used to baffle the bag. I made two interesting discoveries by doing this. First, the netting used in the baffles will stretch when pulled on. Second, the baffle strips are at least 2.25 in/5.72 cm high, which is higher than I had expected them to be. I like the stretchy quality of the baffling strips, because to my simple brain that signifies they should be able to endure more abuse than a fabric with no give to it. The fact that the baffles are thicker than I had expected gives me hope that the Wicked Fast might actually keep me comfortable at 30 F/-1 C. On to additional features. The hood is pretty cool - the most fitted hood I've ever seen on a sleeping bag. Most hoods I've seen are kind of an arc that spreads from one side of the bag to the other. This bag actually has shoulders, and the hood rises from those shoulders like, well, a jacket hood. Which is exactly what Sierra designs calls it - the "Jacket Hood." The hood is stuffed... well... there's no way to describe it but FAT. It is such a fat hood that it stands up on its own. The bag is laying on my bed as I type this and from the side it looks like there is a head inside the hood. The cinch cords on the hood seem simple to operate so far, and the hood can be cinched down quite nicely to cover everything but my nose and mouth. the hood is the second feature which makes me hope I'll truly be warm enough at 30 F/-1 C.
The zippered foot vent features a very tiny, semi-hidden zipper that can only be unzipped from the outside. I say "semi-hidden" because the zipper is sewn in in a way that I typically see done in women's clothing, so that the zipper is not readily visible on a garment. But on the Wicked Fast, it's a black zipper "hidden" in nuclear orange fabric. So it looks kind of like the closed mouth of a salamander. I wish the zipper opened from both the inside and the outside, as I have no problem accessing the zipper from inside the bag. I am able to fit both of my feet through the vent, but as the vent is not very large (9 in/23 cm long) I need to keep my feet close together when using the vent.  The main zipper is 35 in/89 cm long, leaving 36 in/91 cm of sleeping bag without a zipper. So far I'm very impressed with the anti-snag stiffener that Sierra Designs uses. I haven't snagged the zipper yet, but only time will tell if this truly is a snag-free bag. However, there is no draft tube behind the zipper. Since a draft tube is a feature listed both on the Wicked Fast's product page on Sierra Designs' website AND on the included hang tag, I consider this a serious oversight. The Pad Locks are a neat idea. They are simply two thin ribbon straps that are designed to keep the Wicked Fast attached to a sleeping pad. The straps are attached to the bag via four small loops sewn along the sides of the bag. The first two loops are sewn in about 15 in/38 cm down from the "neck" of the sleeping bag - one loop on the left side, one on the right. The other two loops are sewn in 23 in/58 cm below the first two. Each ribbon strap feeds through two loops, runs underneath the bag, and is adjustable via a triglider. The ribbon straps can be removed, as they are not sewn closed at their ends but rather use hook-and-loop to attach to themselves once they have fed though the loops. Since they add only 0.4 oz/11.3 g to the bag, I don't think they're too onerous a burden to carry along on each trip. And in my perfunctory use so far (on the floor of my living room), they seem to work quite nicely. The only potential problem I see with the Pad Locks is that I am NOT a static sleeper and suspect that the Pad Lock system will not work for a roller like me. Time and use will tell. The fabric used for the bag is soft and silky. It's so pleasant to touch that my one-year old son flings himself onto the bag every time I take it out, then rolls around on it with what can only be described as an expression of joy. It's too bad that the overnight temperatures here have not dipped much below 65 F/18 C for the last week - too warm to spend more than a couple of minutes inside the bag before becoming positively damp from sweat. The exterior fabric does have a DWR finish, although this is not mentioned on Sierra Designs' website. I have only tested this by sprinkling a handful of water onto the bag and then leaving it for a few hot hours in my upstairs bedroom (we've had a miserable, humid heatwave here). When I came back, a very small portion of the fabric had wetted through, but the majority of the water was still beaded up on the outside of the fabric.
Anticipated Field Conditions This promises to be
a busy summer. July 14-21, I’ll be
camped on the California
coast. Then, I’ll be in Montana for two or three weeks of August,
visiting Glacier National Park
and staying at the shore of Flathead Lake. In late September, I’ll be striking off to Dallas, Texas,
car-camping along the way there and back. This will give me the
opportunity to
use the Wicked Fast in bone-dry deserts, a desert river valley, and the
Rocky Mountains. If I’m lucky, I’ll
encounter at least
one good desert monsoon. We plan on at least one family backpacking
trip this
summer, and then hopefully a grownups-only trip in early September. The family trip will likely be in the San
Gabriel Mountains of southern California,
and
the “grownup” trip in the Sierra Nevada. Elevations will range from sea level
to at least 8000 ft/2400 m. Temperatures
will range from just above freezing to over 100 F/56 C.
Weather will range from hot and dry, to hot
and humid, to cold and wet – I anticipate several thunderstorms during
our stay
in Montana,
and Glacier should be characteristically moist.
The California
coast will alternate between blazingly hot days and foggy nights. Dallas
will probably be quite humid and hot. I estimate I will spend a
minimum of 12 nights using the Wicked Fast, and am hoping to get as
many as 20 nights on the ground during the four-month test period. Test Plan I’ll be using the Wicked Fast with a variety of sleeping pads. I own a Bozeman Mountain Works TorsoLite pad, a Cascade Designs ProLite ¾ length, and several foam pads (including a Z-Rest and a Ridge Rest). As I will have ample opportunities this summer, I’ll be able to use each pad at one time or another. I have also recently obtained an Oregon Scientific Handheld Weather Forecaster, a digital thermometer device that can record overnight low temperatures & conditions, so that I will have a more accurate understanding of how the Wicked Fast performs. Given the wide variety of locations & weather I expect to encounter during this test, I believe I will be able to thoroughly test this bag. I'll also be using it in a variety of shelters. I own several lightweight single-wall tents, as well as tarps of varying sizes. I own a ridiculously big car-camping tent, as well as a more modestly sized car-camping tent. I'm certain to be using the Wicked Fast in several of these, and I harbor a fantasy that I'll be able to use it under nothing but the sky (weather and mosquitoes permitting). It may even be used in a cabin or two. Given my experience with it so far, I'm actually concerned it might be too warm. Will the half-zipper and small foot vent be enough to adjust the temperature on, say, a 45 F/7 C night? I'll be reporting on the features of the bag as listed above - warmth/thickness, hood effectiveness, foot vent, zipper,Pad Locks, and on anything new that comes to light during the next two months. Thanks to Sierra Designs and BackpackGearTest.org for the chance to test this sleeping bag. 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 > Initial Report | ||||||||
