Even More Essential Gear: Sleeping Bags and Tents

Rest is essential on a backpacking trip. Without rest the fun and good memories become more difficult to produce. So in order to sleep well at night, or during an afternoon snooze, you must be warm and dry. A good sleeping bag and tent will give the warmth you need to sleep even if the temperature outside drops below freezing or you are in the middle of a wicked rainstorm.

While trekking across a section of the Wind River range my cousin and I ran into a nasty series of storms. At one point I had about 1 inch of snow/hail accumulated on my shoulder. Once we were able to set our tent up, get out of wet clothes, and into dry sleeping bags we had a good, and much needed nap. On another trip, my dad and brothers backpacked in the Uinta mountains for five days. Of the five days it rained five days. Despite the rain, they were able to get the rest they needed because they had dry sleeping bags and tents.

Sleeping Bags:

So what constitutes a good sleeping bag?

• keeps you warm even in freezing conditions
• packs well in or strapped to your backpack
• does not add too much weight to your pack

I can tell you that the canvas bags with cotton insulation are poor choices for backpacking. These are heavy when dry, extremely heavy when wet, difficult to put in or on a backpack, and even more difficult to dry out should you drop it in the lake or let it get rained on.

A typical backpacking sleeping bag will look something like this:

The fill material should be goose down or some synthetic chopped fiber like Hollofil. The bag should also come with its own stuff sack so the thing can be rapidly packed and unpacked.

Tents:

Backpacking tents should also be lightweight, able to keep water out and easily stow-able on or in the backpack. There are many good brands out there, the problem is finding one that is not ridiculously expensive. Places like REI make lots of money selling ultralight tents to trendy granola crunching backpackers. I like these expensive tents. I think they would work well and allow one to carry more stuff like a camera or in my case more food! However, the price keeps me from buying into the granola way. Any two man tent with aluminum, fiber glass or graphite poles works fine as a back packing tent. Here is a good example for 48$ on amazon.

An even cheaper, and of course less glamorous tent is a tube tent. I used one of these on my first backpacking trip. I spent a few nights with two other deacons in a tube tent and I was perfectly warm. A tube tent is a giant garbage sack with two open ends. It weighs like a pound and takes up as much space as a new york steak. I just checked amazon and they were $5-10, hard to beat. Here is a picture so you know what I am talking about.

The common theme to all backpacking equipment is lightweight, easily stow-able, and functional. Make sure any equipment you send your son with has these characteristics and all will be well.