Wet Down Bag

[kyratshooter]

So You bought the best down bag on the market, good to -30.

And now the leak in your survival shelter, and there were several plus the small stream running down the middle, has it soaked.

It has been raining, mixed with snow, for two days and you will not see sunlight/warmth for another month.

What do you do now?

Let us say a survival scenario and you can not bail out and go home.

[tundrabadger]

How am I fixed for fuel? if I've got a decent amount, and if there's still a dry spot somewhere I could do it, keep a small fire going...small so I don't, you know, light the bag, the shelter or myself on fire, and also so that, while the bag is drying, i can get close enough to actually keep warm. Suspend the bag, spread out so it catches the maximum of dry heat.

What kind of landscape is this? Because if it's prairie or tundra, I'm changing my answer to "die of hypothermia"

[1stimestar]

Do you have a tarp to shelter a small fire with? You can hang the down bag over the fire yet under the tarp (leaving enough room between hung tarp and hung bag for air flow). It would take forever.

[madmax]

I don't have any idea how long a down bag would take to dry in a wet environment. Forever? I'ld go primitive with a fire reflector (or 2) and 1st keep the fire going, 2nd see about improving that shelter (maybe moving it out of the stream, too). Then get your clothes dry.

...not a fun scenario by any stretch.

[hunter63]

Run to town and put it in the biggest dryer they have at the laundromat......That's what we do.
Don't forget the tennis shoes or the dogs tennis balls, so the filler doesn't get all clumped up in the bottom.

I guess if that wasn't an option...the fire dryer may have to do.....

BTW even condensation or damp rainy weather will get everything wet, even if you shelter doesn't leak.....

[randyt]

stick my head between my legs and kiss my but goodbye?

[Zachary Fowler]

Maby hanging it sidways and puting like 8 hot rocks in it at 10 inch intervuls. Change out the hot rocks every hour and rotate the bag a quarter tern each time.

[hunter63]

Maby hanging it sidways and puting like 8 hot rocks in it at 10 inch intervuls. Change out the hot rocks every hour and rotate the bag a quarter tern each time.

Hunter63 saying Hey and Welcome...


Hot rocks assumed fire....have we determined we have fire yet?

[WalkingTree]

And a few of those in Alone 2 got the down, with no bivy. If I remember right, that is. But then, I was thinking, that constantly very humid place...will a bivy and full tarp coverage help much?

One time when I was in the sticks in the fine commonwealth of Ken-tuk-eee, and it rained a good amount, and since the place caught the rain for it's water anyway and needed to be sparse with it's energy usage...I washed a big load of clothes in the rain in a big garbage barrel. Hung it up to dry. The rain didn't hardly go away for a month. Those clothes hung for a month, stayed wet, and smelled like mildew. Great times.

Anyway, I was thinking, something I'd want to do anyway...I'd make me a kind of big ole box out of stones, or logs, open at the top and the top is a grid of green branches. I'd keep a low fire at the bottom of the box and have clothes - and so my sleeping bag in this case, making sure the down inside is spread out - laid out on this stick screen to be warm and dry out some. Would try to cover the whole thing from the rain. For that matter, I have at least one shelter design that I'd try which allowed me to use my tarp for other things, so I'd use the tarp for this whenever I used it and it was raining.

Tell me if I get a B, or C...hope it's not an F though. Otherwise, I'd say just don't use down in the first place.

[finallyME]

Task #1... fix the shelter so there isn't a river running through it.
Task #2... build up a dry insulating layer of stuff under you to lay the bag on and sleep on.
After that , do what 1st timer said. You can also lay in the bag at night with the fire going. You body will help it dry out, along with the fire. The fire will also help take the moisture out of the air that is in the shelter.

I am a big fan of down bags. But, if you are planning to improvise a shelter and not use a tent with a bath tube floor, then a down bag might be a bad choice. David brought a bivy with his bag..... great choice.

[WalkingTree]

Yea. Try like heck to not get certain things wet in the first place. Prevention is good medicine.

[ronjnk]

I have winter and summer down bags. I understand the advantages and disadvantages of down versus other but would choose down if given the choice. While hiking the AT. in winter, there were many times my bag was damp. My body heat at night drove some moisture out. I'm talking damp now, not saturated.

Assuming we've taken care of the leaking shelter, certainly draping a bag over a line where some type of warm air can circulate would help. I like the warm rocks idea but would be careful that they are only "warm" and not sizzling since I suspect most down bags have a nylon shell. Mine does. No point burning holes in the sleeping bag.

When all else fails, I'd warm up some of those rocks and put them in the sleeping bag with me. Although I've never tried that trick, my experience with my own body heat driving out moisture tells me the warm rocks will help with that. At the very least, the warmed rocks will give me a warmer cocoon to lay in.

As walkingtree states, prevention is best. I had my sleeping bag in it's stuff sack. Then the stuff sack was in a plastic bag. The sleeping bag was in the bottom of my pack and then on rainy days which were numerous, I had a pack cover over my backpack. That sleeping bag was critical and I protected as such.

[hunter63]

Spent a week...on a primitive canoe -in bow hunt...
We wanted to use our rendezvous gear...tent was a lone pole Tipi with rain fly.
Rained all week, temps in the 50's.....sleeping gear was canvas bedroll and wool blanket.
I believe those blankets did well on staying kinda warm.

Nothing leaked....but just the dampness got into everything...fire (no stove) was a burn wood, to dry wood, to keep fire going.....
Of course we had to go out in the rain to get more wood to dry......
Candle lanterns did well on drying out the interior....to a point....by the end of the week everything was damp.

Packed it in on Saturday, a day early.....was a long cold wet miserable week, not much time to hunt.

Wet gear is most likely the most dangerous situation you can get into as even 50 degrees is cold....so shelter and fire is very important.

[WalkingTree]

So a question for the more experienced/knowledgeable folks is...a down bag is a pretty good choice? I had the impression that it'd be low on the list of best all around choices.

burn wood, to dry wood, to keep fire going

I feel like if I were to have any kind of wall, to break wind or reflect heat...it would be a perpetually cycling wall of future firewood close to the fire.

edit - doing overdue online research...can depend on the environment and situation. I'm thinking this is another thing that I'd be tempted to custom make myself. Buy a load of feather in bulk, choose the right kind of shell material. Make outside waterproof to an extent if possible. Do some baffling inside to keep things distributed, unless that'd just make it even harder to redistribute when necessary. Incorporate some mesh or something inside to hold things, like include a few hammocks or light netting to be part of the inside (?) Make the shell so I can unzip the whole thing and just open it all up, making sure that it's made to be really secure when zipped up. Something like that...

...unless they already make ones like this. Or it's cheaper to custom make instead of buy.

[kyratshooter]

WT we used to stand the wet firewood on end in a circle around the fire. It worked as a reflector and dried the wood slowly at the same time.

Generally we did this around a small fire built under a tarp to protect if from the rain.

And our tarps were not the little ground shelters used by most. We had them on 8' ridge poles so there was plenty of room under them. One of my "porches" is 16'x24' of 12oz. marine grade canvas.

Re-enactors tend to go for big tarps to use as porch area in front of their shelters because we camp "rain or shine" and the tarps provide a gathering/workplace/food prep area outside the shelter during bad weather.

I have a "rondy" coming up next weekend that has the distinction of being rained on for the past 15 years and having rain a total of 17 years out of the 20 it has been held. And we just keep going, and going, and going like we had no sense at all.

[WalkingTree]

As opposed to rondys or camping...for having to dig-in or be on Alone, I'd want really badly to have my tarp free for other things, and not rely on it for shelter - but that's because of how I'd design the shelter anyway. Initially I'd use it along with some quicker debris hut, or even part of getting myself up in a tree (??) if I thought I needed to and it was safe, etc...because building a real shelter takes more time and energy than a person has on the first day or two if you're also needing to obtain food and water. But eventually, my shelter wouldn't need a tarp, and would have so much done to it already that a tarp would be obsolete. Feel like if it still needed a tarp, then I didn't do it very good. And these pretty little things I see with little sticks tied together as a flimsy skeleton onto which they weave leaves or just lay some bark onto, and sometimes you can even still see daylight all through it's walls...and they say that they're fixed up for the long haul in high wind, winter, and big rains...just don't make no sense to me.

[crashdive123]

Since they are not "backpacking", but rather plan on being stationary for the most part I would not have chosen down for my sleeping bag. There are better options for climates that are so wet, albeit heavier options. Weight would not have been a determining factor for me.

[WalkingTree]

Heh...in a place so wet constantly, even if no rain hits you - a bag a little heavier, when you're not lugging it around anywhere but staying put...or battling a permanently damp or wet bag for 2 months or so. I'll take the former.

[1stimestar]

Of course, if it's not raining, you can just drape it over a bush.

Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.

[finallyME]

check it out... the Alaska bush.