NEMO Kayu 30°F
The most durable sleeping bag of 2021
For nights when you’re tucked into alpine boulder fields or cowboy camping on abrasive ground, the Kayu turns unlikely terrain into home. This bag’s DWR-treated, 20-denier ripstop nylon shell works with a 30-denier interior liner chosen for its silky finish. When we bivvied below 14,259-foot Longs Peak in Colorado, neither rocks nor sticks penetrated the footbox shell, which is enhanced with 40-denier nylon. On that near-freezing night, we stayed warm while we admired the stars thanks to the bag’s 800-fill down. Designers tweaked the previous iteration to widen the shoulder circumference one inch (the men’s version has a 63-inch girth; the women’s is 59 inches) and narrowed the hips two inches (55 inches for men, 52 for women), minimizing dead space while maintaining wiggle room. When temps rose above 40°F while we camped outside Moab, Utah, we opened NEMO’s signature thermo-gills (two zippered ventilation strips running 21 inches down the bag’s core, exposing just the inner lining) and never felt clammy.
30°F; men’s and women’s; regular and long