Feathered Friends sleeping bag reviews

A backpacker above the Cutthroat Lakes on the Doubletop Mountain Trail in Wyoming's Wind River Range.

The Best Backpacking Gear of 2025

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By Michael Lanza

Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness, Montana’s Beartooths, and Colorado’s Weminuche. Glacier National Park and the Tetons. The Grand Canyon (repeatedly). The Canadian Rockies. Southern Utah’s Owl and Fish canyons. The Wind River Range. The John Muir Trail and Wonderland Trail. Iceland’s Laugavegur and Fimmvörðuháls trails. New Zealand’s Milford Track, Routeburn Track, and Tongariro Alpine Crossing. These are just some of the places where I’ve recently tested the backpacking gear and apparel that I’ve reviewed at The Big Outside—so that I can give you honest and thorough, field-tested opinions that help you find the best gear for your adventures.

And that’s exactly how I came up with the following picks for today’s best backpacking gear.

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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 ultralight and 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
$789, 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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