A quilt is a sleeping bag stripped of its extra parts. The Backpacking Quilt is intended to be as lightweight and space-efficient as is reasonably achievable with this design. Anyone who wishes to lighten the load and lower the size of their sleep system will appreciate this minimalist design. Quilts reduce bulk and weight by removing excess warmth and material from the bottom of the bag, where it would otherwise be located. You lie on your sleeping mattress with the Backpacking Quilt spread over you, but the quilt does not wrap around your body as a traditional blanket would. Instead, the bottom of the quilt is left open. The only areas of your body that receive insulation from it are the top and sides. Your sleeping pad provides you with insulation from the cold, hard ground.
Because down loses its insulating properties when squeezed under your body weight, this design does not compromise on warmth. Most blankets do not feature hoods or full-length zippers to reduce their weight. In place of a hood, a drawstring or a neck collar serves the same purpose of preventing heat loss around the neck. If you want to keep your head warm while you sleep, you should wear a hat.
How a Backpacking Quilt Function
A Sleeping bag and a Backpacking Quilt perform the same way as any other insulating material: they fluff up, also known as a loft. This lofted insulation is responsible for retaining the heat that your body produces. However, when wearing a sleeping bag, you invariably end up resting your upper body on the upper portion of the bag. Because you and the sleeping pad are compressing the portion underneath you, it isn’t able to loft up very much, and as a result, it isn’t doing a very good job of keeping you warm. On the other hand, your sleeping mattress is “lofting up” and acting as an insulator between you and the cold ground. Why should you even bother using the insulation on the bottom of your sleeping bag if it isn’t doing much to keep you warm? The solution to this problem is a Backpacking Quilt.
In the hopes that they would maintain everyone just as heat as a sleeping bag would, quilts get rid of the insulation in the bottom of a sleeping bag, which is typically redundant and mostly worthless. This results in significant weight and space savings for the pack. However, quits are frequently more than just a simple covering. They frequently include foot enclosures, similar to those found on sleeping bags, to prevent your toes from being exposed to the cold at night. They can come equipped with draft collars and cinch cords, which secure the quilt over the top of the sleeping bag.
Backpacking Quilt over a Sleeping Bag
One of the most enticing advantages of a Backpacking Quilt is that it allows you to sleep in the same position as you do on your own bed at home. This means you can sleep on either side, on your stomach, hang a leg out, or in any other position you like. None of the constraints that tend to come with the jacket form of a sleeping bag, and there is no more getting tangled up in ribbons when you turn over because a quilt stays in place even while you turn. Additionally, if you have a large frame, you will value the additional space a quilt provides to move about. But if you’d rather be as comfortable as a bug in a rug, a sleeping bag will keep you from being disturbed by any chilly drafts.
