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DMH Montague jumbo hooded sleeping bag

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Thursday, 04 October 2007

An ode to my DMH sleeping bag:

For many months, you have kept me warm in the cool of night,
hugging me tightly when I pull you close...

Your soft brushed cotton flannelette lining,
so velvety soft on my skin...

But now that heat has replaced the cool,
the time has come for us to part ways for a while...

I'll always miss that smothering warm embrace,
when things finally cool down between us,
I'll come back to you with a welcoming smile

DMH Montague

There were a few reasons I chose the DMH Montague hooded sleeping bag as my ideal sleeping bag of choice. I think some readers would be surprised to learn that before embarking on the trip, I owned a couple of sleeping bags both worth over $500. One was worth over $700. But I had a good reason to leave these behind and it wasn't just that they were too warm for my needs. These bags were designed for sub-zero conditions: one being a -7 bag, the other being a -10. I bought them purely for mid-winter mountain hiking expeditions and for that they were great. But like all good hiking bags, they were lined with soft-touch nylon or polyester, and given just a little bit of warmth, this stuff always made me sweat.

That's one of the reasons I was so interested in the DMH Montague - it's one of the few models left on the market that you can buy with a brushed cotton flannelette lining. Because it breathes a whole lot better than the above mentioned synthetic linings, it's much less likely to produce inadvertent perspiration. It's also more comfortable on the skin.

Roughing it in style

I chose the jumbo model, which provides much more room to move around in than standard sized sleeping bags. Even though I'm hardly the kind of body shape that needs a jumbo size, it's good to have room to move around. And with both a neck collar and hood drawstring available, I was able to use either of these to trap body heat inside if required.

For such an inexpensive sleeping bag, I have to admit that I'm pretty impressed how well it has held up to constant use night after night (for 3 months of consecutive nights). The #5 nylon coil autolock zips (of which there are two - one running down the side, another for the feet) still operate smoothly, with no crimped coils whatsoever. The nylon outer doesn't have any tears or holes in it either and this is pretty good testimony to how tough it really is. Admittedly this did surprise me, because it really has a soft look and feel about it and doesn't look anywhere near as strong as many of the 'rip-stop' outer fabrics you see on sleeping bags these days.

In fact, so confident am I in the durability of the outer fabric, I've recently recommissioned the sleeping bag for a new use (whilst I'm so far north that it's simply too hot to use as a sleeping bag). Now I'm using it as an underlay in the rear of my car. It's helping to prevent sand and salt get into the carpet-like fabric of my car and doing a great job of it. I store a whole bunch of items on top of it and so far I'm yet to cause a tear. I'm pretty impressed. So much so that I'm now willing to bet that it'll still be in one piece when the time comes to start using it for it's intended purpose again. In the event that I do damage it while using it for a purpose other than what it was designed for, I'll go ahead and get myself another one, simply because it did perform so well for what I originally acquired it for.