UKH

Can anyone recommend a sleeping bag that would keep you warm enough to spend a comfortable night or two in a snow hole but be compact and light enough to not take half the ruck sack up, as to be used say on a Winter ML assessment on the Cairngorm Plateau?
The Rab Ascent 900 is toast but a bit bulky!

In reply to Charlie_Leeds:

Marmot Helium and of course a goretex bivy bag.

I know it does the job very well because my my colleagues and I have done hundreds of nights snow holing on winter MLs in them! Previous to that the preferred choice was the Rab Premier 500, no longer made.

Remember it is not very cold in a snow hole, snow is great insulator. The temperature where the snow meets the ground is always zero deg..... A decent sleeping mat helps a lot.

In reply to Charlie_Leeds:

Try the PHD range of bags here; http://www.phdesigns.co.uk/down-sleeping-bags

Their bags tend to be light and very compact for their warmth. The Hispar range is particularly good.

Obviously, the rating you want depends on how warm you like to be.

Rich.

In reply to Charlie_Leeds:

Can't comment on snowholing, but I made a quinzhee in a field whilst visiting relatives in Germany over xmas. It was my first experience of sleeping in snow so I took a thermometer with me - it was -5 outside. After spending 1/2 an hour getting ready for bed with a tealight for illumination it was +4 degrees inside, and when I woke up in the morning it was +1.5 degrees inside (I blew the tealight out when I went to bed) and about -8 outside. I was warm enough in a 3 season synthetic bag on two karrimats (no bivvybag). The door wasn't really blocked up but there wasn't any wind.

In reply to Richard White:

Watch the zips on the Hispar, in fact on a lot of PHD stuff. On the Hispar they "save" weight / money by not laminating the material either side of the zip so the damn thing always jambs. Doesn't make sense since Western Mountaineering laminate their bags and they are as warm and slightly lighter and I think better finished other than some bizarre colours, but then its dark so who cares.

In reply to m0unt41n:
I spent ages looking at different sleeping bags and the ones that came out on top in terms of warmth/weight and best quality were phd and the western mountaineering bags. In the end I went for the western mountaineering.
I can confirm that its an impressive bit of kit. Really well made and lofts like no other bag I've seen before. It's got a microfibre shell that seems really weatherproof i believe that their shells are that good they aren't switching to hydro down like some other brands. There's a good review of the wm antelope on outdoorgearlab.com. Another good thing is that they feature continuous baffles which means that you can move the down from top to bottom or vice versa depending on conditions which adds to their versatility