Feathered Friends gear reviews

A backpacker at Evolution Lake on the John Muir Trail in Evolution Basin, Kings Canyon National Park.

The Best Backpacking Gear for the John Muir Trail

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By Michael Lanza

So you’re planning to thru-hike the John Muir Trail and making all of the necessary preparations, and now you’re wondering: What’s the best gear for a JMT hike? Having thru-hiked the JMT as well as taken numerous other backpacking trips all over the High Sierra—mostly between late August and late September, which I consider that the best time to walk the Sierra, to avoid snow and the voracious mosquitoes and blazing hot afternoons of mid-summer—I offer the following picks for the best lightweight backpacking gear and apparel for a JMT thru-hike.

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Feathered Friends Hummingbird UL 30 sleeping bag.

Review: Feathered Friends Hummingbird and Egret UL Sleeping Bags

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Ultralight Sleeping Bags Feathered Friends Hummingbird UL and Egret UL 30/20 $549, 1 lb. 5 oz. (men’s regular 30-degree) Sizes: men’s regular and long, women’s small and medium featheredfriends.com Sleeping bags often look very much alike—until you spend a night inside one and carry it in a backpack. That’s when the differences emerge, and besides price, those differences generally fall …

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Feathered Friends Snowbunting EX 0 sleeping bag.

Review: Feathered Friends Snowbunting EX 0 Sleeping Bag

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Winter Sleeping Bag
Feathered Friends Snowbunting EX 0
$679, 2 lbs. 12 oz. (regular)
Sizes: regular and long ($644)
featheredfriends.com

On chilly nights of camping, nothing’s more popular than a fat sleeping bag. When sleeping outside in winter—or wintry temperatures—the Snowbunting EX 0 has become my bag of choice. Most recently, I slumbered peacefully and quite comfortably through three December nights without a tent outside a backcountry yurt in Idaho’s Boise Mountains—one of those nights dropping into the single digits Fahrenheit, and another featuring several hours of snow falling intermittently directly onto my bag, inside which I remained quite warm and dry. Super warm and well built, at a moderate weight, this bag functions well, depending on the user, for trips in temps from around its 0-degree rating to around freezing.

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