Howdy folks, Ben from Snowys. I want to talk to you today about a common
question that comes up and that's whether to stuff or to roll your
sleeping bag to get it back into its compression sack. Now, got 2 bags with
me here today. Synthetic bag, that's for just general camping and
and a down bag for hiking. Now they're both about the same temperature
rating, just over one degrees comfort. What we recommend is to stuff the bag,
now there's a few reasons for that. I'll start with a synthetic bag, so when you
get your synthetic bag from new it comes folded in half like this
and it's really tightly rolled, like this. Now over time that does two things,
you've got a repetitive fold that runs down the middle of the bag here, so
you're consistently folding the synthetic fill inside the bag and then
when you roll it you're also creating tension through the bag because you're
always trying to get it tighter and tighter, so you're creating stresses on that, on
the synthetic filling here. Over time that can break the synthetic fill down
particularly up and down the middle of the back and front of the bag here.
Stuffing it gets around that because you can just grab the bag, stuff it inside
here with an irregular pattern and it creates kind of an irregularity within
the synthetic fill, there's no regular folds on there and it lofts up better
when you go to use it again next time, plus it's much easier to do. So the first
thing we wanna do is grab the foot end of the bag, scrunch it up in our
hands, get the compression sack and push that right down the bottom of the bag.
Now as you go, you want to make sure you're compressing it right down the
bottom, don't put it in loosely at the bottom because then you're having a lot
of hard work to try and pack it in tightly at the top. Now put it between your feet,
grab it up a bit under your arm and just start punching the bag down into the
compression sack. Once it's full on one side, give it a twist,
keep punching it right down to the bottom, work your way around keep giving
it a twist, supporting it with your feet, hold your fist in the top there and do
the top up. That's a whole lot easier than trying to roll it and feed it back
into the compression sack. This one's got a little cap to go over the top, a
compression cap - if we want to use the compression feature. For a general
camping bag not so important. Now a down bag is the same, same process. You got to be
a little bit more careful with a down bag because it's made with a lot of
extra fabric and battles inside but we want to
stuff that as well, rolling a down bag is, is difficult but
if you roll it you can tend to sort of create sheets of down that don't want to
loft up against, same as with the synthetic, if you roll it, you flatten that, it
creates flat sheets of, of insulation rather than allowing it to loft up. With
a down bag, once again, stuff it in just like the other bags. One tip is to turn
it inside out before you start. A lot of down bags have a water-resistant shell,
they don't breathe as easily. If I go and try and stuff this inside this compression
sack now I'll end up with big balloons of fabric up out the top, so the first
thing I want to do is turn this inside out, just undo the zip a little bit, get
my hand down to the foot, pull it through. The same process, start with the foot end,
nice handful there and stuff it into the bottom. Between the feet if you like, it's
a little bit easier with the down bag, don't necessarily need to
pinch it between your feet, you just keep stuffing and working your way
around the bag, pushing it right down to the bottom. Keep going,
just being gentle, don't pull the fabric as you go, you don't want to tear any
baffles or anything inside. Tighten it up, same deal we've got a compression cap
over the top of this one. Do that up and we're done.
So the answer to your question,
"Do I stuff or roll my sleeping bag?"
Stuff it in. It's easier for you, it's better on the bag,
it gives it longer life and it makes it warmer to sleep in.
Thanks for watching
We'll seeya next time.