Thank Heaven for SD

I own two Sierra Designs Tents and three Sierra Designs Sleeping bags. One of the tents and two of the bags are over fifteen years old. The tent was just used in April, 2009 and the older sleeping bags in June of 08. But that is not the story. The story is a new bag I got to review. Sierra Designs
Wild Bill 20⁰ Extra Long sleeping bag. Thank heaven for my Sierra Designs
Wild Bill 20⁰ Extra Long sleeping bag!

I was on a March-April Grand Canyon River trip. That time of year historically in the canyon the highs are in the 80’s and lows in the 50’s. On this trip the 80’s were never seen and the fifties were a rare sunny day. During the day you are rowing an 18′ boat so keeping warm is not hard. At night things were different.

Three of the nights fronts came through, three mornings we had snow less than a thousand feet above us. It was also windy. So windy that some tents had several inches of sand in them in the morning even after being buttoned up tightly all night. I slept in the open all except one rainy night, when I used my 15 year old Sierra Designs Tiros Pro. (A fifteen year old tent that has done more than ten Grand Canyon River trips, 2 trips to South America, and lots of stuff in between.) All other nights as usually I throw down my Jack’s Plastic Welding Pack Pad (Silverback, I am decadent) and throw down a sleeping bag. As I said earlier, thank heaven for Sierra Designs
Wild Bill 20⁰ Extra Long sleeping bag. One night I finally put on a bivy sack because it was so windy. But light rain, sleet, snow and wind did not keep me from staying comfortable and warm. And no sand came through the bag or the zipper.

And it fit. I’m big and the extra long bag had plenty of room. I could pull me knees up (if the boat was rocking to keep me from rolling off) with plenty of room. The hood covered me up as much or as little as I wanted and on many nights included my full size pillow. (I told you I was decadent.) At the same time I was able to fit it easily into a large stuff sack which squashed it down to an 8″ by 9″ sack.

What a great sleeping bag. I got to looking forward to going to bed at night. As the evenings grew chilly I knew I could be nice and warm in a few minutes. The Snag Free Zipper Tracks worked great. I tried several times to zip up the inner liner of the bag in the zipper with no success. The bag was a left hand zip and I’ve never used one before. For a few nights getting out of the bag was an exercise in route finding and zipper control (or mind control). But not matter what I did the zipper worked easily.

Not sure what the liner was but it did not make you shiver when your skin touched it and it did not crinkle and wake you up when the boat moved. Some nights I was in and out of the bag 3-4 times as I checked on boats and each time the bag was wonderful to crawl back into as well as easy.

Thanks Sierra Designs.