How long can I leave my down bag compressed?

[wfinley]

How anal are you about leaving your down sleeping bags / coats compressed? I'm talking about big warm (-20 down) sleeping bags and big warm jackets (the Icefall and Ion) .

 

I know you're not supposed to -- but how many days before it's considered really bad? 2 days? 10 days?

[Arc]

........"Really Bad"= Anal x 2 Days

 

Seriously, I don't think there is a clear cut answer, however.....

 

I stuff my gear at the trail head, and however long it takes to get to my chosen camp is how long it's stuffed.

 

I made the mistake of stuffing the heck out of my -20 bag for a 16 hr transit to Mckinley, left it as is, at base camp hours after arriving, it was no fun making that puppy spring back into shape.......

 

......Compress+Time+Lack of Anality+Cold= No Fun

[wfinley]

16 hrs? Wow... I routinely leave mine compressed for 2 1/2 days and it hasn't seemed to suffer too much. Let's say your flight is 36 hours, followed by 12 hours in a hotel, followed by another 4 hour flight. Would you unpack and fluff while in the hotel room (for that 12 hr period) or would you just worry about it when you reach your final destination?

[cj001f]

I've left them compressed for up to a week at a time. The loft returns in a couple hours.

[archenemy]

When I was a kid, my dad gave me his down bag b/c I didn't have the money to buy one. It had been compressed in its little aqua green stuff sack since the early seventies--about ten or fifteen years. I cleaned it and aired it out.

I still use it as a back up occasionally.

 

I used his thermarest until it finally died the weekend before last . Stuff has a lot longer life span than we think it does...

[Figger_Eight]

It depends. Down is routinely transported by condensing it to the density of a brick, then shipped for days/weeks at a time with no loss of loft. However, it's perfectly clean. If you take a dirty sleeping bag full of body grease, cooties, spilled soup and whatever else and keep it stuffed with that stuff degrading the down inside, it will certainly affect it negatively.

[Couloir]

In my experience, its not so much how long it's stored at any one time, it's how many times it has been compressed. Eventually, it simply begins to recover completely at a diminishing rate.

[wfinley]

Thanks for all the responses. I think I'll be anal about my newer bag and coats... but if my 25 year old Marmot Mtn Works dies after this trip so be it!!!

[mccallboater]

I have a Wood Brothers Egyptian cotton shell - eider down bag circa 1922. I still use it occassionally in the summer. It was compressed in it's attached stuff sack for around 45 years when I pulled it from an inlaw's attic. Gave it a day and all the loft returned. True Goose down is incredible stuff. I keep it in a storage bag now. It survived two kid's worth of sleepovers over the last 10 years, plus the occasional outdoor journey. Hemmingway raves about a bag like this in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" but mine is a little mummy bag. I can't imagine squeezing two people in there to feel the earth move, as he describes with much detail.