Our sleeping bags have been a point of long discussions. They are going to keep us warm during the cold days. We were looking for down sleeping bags, although it is quite controversial, and we wanted to save as much weight as possible. This brought us to the idea of a quilt sleeping bag. We came across Katabatic Gear and were impressed by their sleeping bags in quilt style and their experiences with them in the outdoors so we have chosen the Katabatic Sawatch sleeping bag for the versatility, temperature reach and the low weight is perfect for bicycle touring.

According to Katabatic the idea behind a quilt style sleeping bag is to eliminate the insulation that is on the bottom of a conventional sleeping bag. With a conventional sleeping bag, any insulation under your body is crushed. Since insulation must have loft and trap air to be effective, the crushed insulation under your body is wasted. So why not leave the insulation out of the bottom of the bag? That is what a quilt style sleeping bag does, but it goes one step further. By eliminating the zipper, and leaving the bottom of the bag open, versatility is significantly increased. The sleeping bag can act as a simple blanket, laid over you on a warm night; or a mummy, closed up snugly against the cold; or anything in between.

We have not experienced this type of sleeping bag before, but we are eager to try it out and see if it works for us. We chose for the Katabatic Sawatch quilt style sleeping bag. We also ordered the bivybag and the hoods. With these accessories we can easily sleep without a tent and we can also brave the cold.

We will use the Katabatic Sawatch together with our thermarest sleeping mat the NeoAir™ All Season and together with our tent MSR Hubba Hubba HP or Bivy bag we should be able to be comfortable in most environments.

We have chosen for following sizes:

Martin with 185 cm has a 6’6″ and fits him well and Susanne with 178 cm has a 6″ also a good fit.