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Drying clothes in sleeping bag?

I have been watching some elk hunting videos on you tube and the guys are packing everything in and sleeping wherever they end up at the end of each days hunt. When they get rained on they just jump into there sleeping bags and supposedly stay warm and the clothes dry overnight. I have camped a lot but pry never below 40 degrees at night. I am always by the truck and have multiple sets of clothes so I have never had to consider this. I have also always been taught that fewer clothes are better to keep from sweating which makes you colder. So, the sleeping in wet clothes boggles my mind but is probably what people do. Just hoping you back country hunters can expand on this topic some. Do you sleep in your clothes? What about when they are wet? What other options do you use for wet clothes? Does this only work with the high end clothing? Does the type of bag, pad, liner make a difference on what you do? For base camps at your truck would you ever consider this option or just use buddy heater or truck heater to dry clothes?

Works just fine in a Synthetic bag. Don’t do that in a down bag.

Go to bed wet, endure some time feeling clammy and wake up dry.

Where does the moisture go? Most of my bivy hunts are turning into ultra light spike camp hunts and I play the weather as best I can to avoid rain.

When I was in the Army and stationed in Alaska we did this all the time to dry out our clothing. I would just put it at the bottom of the bag down by my feet, I would sleep curled up in a ball. In the morning the clothes were nice and dry. That was using the old Army extreme cold weather bags that were down filled.

I've done this with a synthetic bag on Kodiak several times.

Works even better if you are wearing polyester clothes too.

If you're in a synthetic bag, it'll breath and your body heat dries you/your clothes off.

Wow, never heard this before... Thanks for sharing...

What a decent synthetic bag for this to work?

I never do this....I actually had a Alaskan guide do this and he also put the bag over his head while sleeping. The next morning he was complaining he was cold all night. I was second guessing my hunt decision right there. I will put on damp clothes in the morning and let them dry on my body before I put anything in my bag.

I’ve never done this but my understanding is it works on high end synthetics. It doesn’t work on wool.

it really depends on how wet your clothes are.....

Ive done it a lot. Works really good for drying out socks, t-shirts.

Synthetic bag

Done it in AK too. It sorta works if the clothes are just damp, not if they are soaked. Synthetics dry better than wool, and don't do it at all with cotton! You need a serious cold rated synthetic bag. Don't sleep in the clothes. Keep a spare set of dry base layers in a dry bag that you wear on your body. Then the damp clothes go inside. I tend to move them around once body heat warms them up. It's better than nothing.

It obviously works best in very cold dry air. Drying wet socks and boot liners for double boots. But will work in wet weather too. Just takes longer. The tent has to be vented properly also or you’ll have Hoarfrost all over inside snowing in the AM.

ElkTalk podcast #10 with Sitka's product mgr

I saw a survival video a couple years ago and was surprised that they recommended the same thing. They basically said if you get all wet in cold weather that you should get in your bag with the wet clothes on. They said specifically not to take the wet clothes off. The guy even demonstrated it by getting wet in cold weather and crawling in his bag til dry. But they also had synthetic clothes and sleeping bag.

I was surprised because I had always understood that you should get wet clothes off to get warm in a sleeping bag.

I do it routinely with a 20 and a 0 degree Slick bag. I wear my damp clothing to bed. I don’t just stuff then I’m in the bag.

I’ve also done it in a Wiggys.

I’m not advocating for you to be careless with moisture management or not using rain gear but this is certainly a good way to get your stuff dry for the next day.

Anyhow, works great for me.

I have a -20 synthetic sleeping bag and have dried synthetic clothes many a time using this approach.....as long as I was just drying synthetic fabrics (smart wool, capilene, thermax, polypropylene, etc), and not WET wool (damp wool maybe, WET wool - no way). I don't even consider taking cotton fabrics on the extreme hunts. I tend to wear what I want to dry....but if I have extra stuff to dry, I put it in the bag with me as well, usually under me (for more padding), but it won't dry as well as if it were on top of me.....less loft, I guess). Originally, I always tried to put most of the extra stuff to be dried down by my feet, but I personally noticed that the stuff up by my body core tended to dry out faster.....so on more recent hunts, I spread the extra stuff out near my body core. If anything is REALLY wet, remember to wring it out first

This is pretty common among Alaskan guides. I would imagine a synthetic bag would perform better through multiple cycles than down.

Only way to go!

I did it on a 8 day late August Alaska range sheep hunt. 4 straight days of sleet and rain and 50+mph winds layed the tent sideways and had 2 inches of water in the downhill side of the tent. I used a zero degree synthetic bag. All my clothes were synthetic or a wool/synthetic blend. I went to sleep in my baselayers and hiking pants with my thicker fleece top, synthetic heavy hiking socks and beanie every night. Synthetics insulate while wet and your body heat pushes the moisture out away from the body heat. It took me roughly 4 hours to “dry” my clothes out this way. The clothes I wore were dry and the sleeping bag where my body was would also be dry except for the edges of the bag where the moisture was pushed. I rang out my sleeping bag and had water running out like a wet towel and I still slept warm and dried out but good god do you smell after a few days.

The best info you can find would be to google the special forces and seal training where they do winter exercises in Alaska and wade into freezing water then get into their synthetic bags until their body heat dries their gear out.

I did it last year, even wore my boots, was pretty wet, I stayed warm and woke up dry except my socks and I think had I taken off the boots and just had them in the bag I would of been better off. I was wearing first lite guide pants and their Merino tops, Kifaru slick bag which has insulation that maintains 99% of it's insulation value wet. First time I tried it and it worked sweet! Temps in the upper 20's I guess.

It works but as others have pointed out, within reason. You can't go to sleep as if you fell in a swimming pool, in a damp environment, and expect to wake up toasty and dry. But it works extremely well for damp clothes from sweat. If you do it for a week straight it starts catching up to you and your bag can become damp too (whole reason everyone keeps saying to not do it with down). Synthetic bags don't breathe any better than down bags, they just continue to insulate once you saturate them by transferring moisture from your clothes to your bag.

I use down about 50% of the time up here still, but on fly in or truck camp hunts, I don't leave home without my zero degree wiggys bag. Love that thing.

Yes, But will it dry Spider-Man or Reno 911 clothing trevor.

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