Apologies if this has been answered already elsewhere, or if it's in the wrong area.
On my last trip, I was expecting lows in the 40s. What I got was a low of 25F, which was approaching the limits of my 20F quilts and clothing. I wasn't cold, but didn't have much room left in my insulation.
Two lessons learned: I need to get better at forecasting, and camping in the lowest part of a valley tends to test your insulation.
I am not quite ready to fork out $$$ for winter quilts, so I'm looking for alternatives to extend my temp range should I find myself in a similar situation (or colder) in the future. Being a lightweight wannabe, I don't want to carry stuff that I won't use if I can avoid it (including thick insulation clothing layers). Multi-use is preferred. So my questions for all you awesome hangers:
1) I am open to stacking summer-weight quilts over/under my 20F quilts (though that's a lot of bulk and weight that I may not even use). That way I would have summer and shoulder season quilts, which would probably get more usage by themselves than a dedicated set of winter quilts. I see that many of you frozen-butt types seem to have multiple quilts and/or sleeping bags when camping in the cold. Enlightened Equipment has a blog post where they advocate stacking top quilts. It seems like it would work pretty well, but of course there are gotchas. What are they? How do you stack underquilts?
2) I just bought the sock from WB, thinking that if it adds 10F to my insulation, I could pretty much weather the exact situation I had on the last trip with room to spare, insulation-wise. When I went to bed it was 39F, and if I had a sock I would have deployed it, theoretically giving me an in-hammock low of 35F instead of 25F. My 20f quilts would have been toasty. This is a light and compact option, and I don't think it would bother me too much to just bring the sock as backup when the temps might get lower than expected.
3) What about space blankets? My HH SS employs a mylar space blanket over the CCF and it seems pretty warm. In a low-temp crisis, would breaking out the space blankets help overcome the marginality of my gear? You all seem to be really smart about vapor barriers and condensation, what would I have to do to prevent moisture issues when using space blankets under/over/in between?
4) I have heard that a CCF pad between the UQ and my backside can dramatically boost the temp range. Anyone have experience with this? That's great, but what about the TQ?
Thanks in advance!
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