Fuel for Thought

A Warm Night’s Sleep

I use the Espar heater to knock off the chill, and my sleeping bag arrangement regulates the comfort level. I mix and match two Slumberjack sleeping bags. One is a 60 degree bag, and the other is a 40 degree bag. The 40 bag is usually inside the 60, and depending on the temperature, I may be inside both bags, or on top the 40 bag but inside the 60. I found early on that the most important layer is underneath it all. In the earliest, pre-Espar days when I was still sleeping on the floor, I just put on more clothes when it cooled off. One trip to Canada for the first cold front of the season made me rethink my strategy. By midnight I was inside my 30 degree bag, wrapped in a moving blanket, and wearing a week’s worth of clothes, and I was still cold. I could feel the cold getting sucked out from under me and into the floor. Too stubborn to idle the van because it wasn’t that cold, I remembered a scrap piece of reflectix insulation that was left over from when I insulated the walls of the van. That one little three foot long piece of aluminized bubble wrap was all it took. It was enough to protect my torso from the floor, and I could feel my body heat not leaving my body through the floor of the van. I felt like a rotisserie chicken nicely and evenly being cooked on all sides. When I woke in the morning I was curled in a fetal position on that beautiful piece of silver bubble wrap. After that adventure I eventually ended up using two Therm-a-Rest mattresses. One was an air mattress and the other was foam. Together they were rated at R4. I regulated the temperature, not by my covering, but what I slept on top of. I’ve since settled on a Therm-a-Rest Woman’s Trail Pro. I picked the woman’s model, because of it’s smaller dimensions, and at the time it was one of the few models with a reflective layer inside. The R-value wasn’t a marketing gimmick. The 5.1 rating easily out performed the previous double mattress setup. In warmer weather it is too hot. I can feel the heat getting trapped between me and the mattress.

Here is another use for reflective stuff. I keep a couple survival blankets on hand. They are poly tarps with an aluminum reflective material bonded to one side. In my current arrangement, I sleep crosswise in the van. My feet rest on one wall, and my head is a couple inches from the opposite wall. When the temperature went below the twenties, I was still getting cold. An extra sweat shirt sort of helped, then it occurred to me that it was the wall that was making me cold. I leaned a folded survival blanket against the wall above my head, and I have no need for the extra sweat shirt.

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