NEMO Kayu 30°F

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