Why Lamilite Stays Warm, Wet or Dry

When you are cold in a sleeping bag, and you note how flat it is, your consciousness retains that information, and you associate flat bags as not warm bags. Therefore, you choose not to buy a flat bag, or one that you know will go flat very quickly.

INSULATIONS AND LAMILITE

I have been using Lamilite since mid-October 1986. For all intents and purposes it is no different today than it was when I first used it. I have looked at all of the various fiberfills that have come along since and found that they are, for the most part, similar to the products that were being made when I first entered the business of selling fiberfills in May 1961.

Lamilite has continued to enlighten me with its functional abilities as an insulation. The first of its many characteristics is its ability to maintain its loft--with your help. Since the fiber is silicone-coated, it slips and slides away from whatever it touches. But if it is subjected to excessive oil (body oil) and dirt, the fibers will begin to stick together. Therefore, when you wash your sleeping bag, you clean the fibers so they can once again slip and slide away from each other, thereby ensuring continued retention of loft.

The density of Lamilite is significantly greater than any of the other fiberfills or down, so the movement of heated air, which is rising from your body, is stifled for a very long time. But, the moisture emitted from your body has no trouble finding its way through the fiber to the outside of the bag. This appeared to me as a riddle, until I realized that the heat contained in the bag is adequate to keep the moisture in its vapor state until it reaches the outside surface of the bag where it condenses.

Water as a liquid has shown that it has absolutely no adverse effect on the Lamilite. Many times in the field, people who own Wiggy bags have experienced their bags getting wet to the point of being soaked. In all cases they have found that they sleep warm and dry, and that the bag is dry in the morning. The silicone coating will not allow the water molecules to attach themselves to the fiber, so the water simply runs out of the bag.

Here is an example of how well the fiber works in warding off the effects of water on it: A group of 11 men left Anchorage, Alaska, on snowmachines to travel the ice pack from Nome to about the Alaska- Canadian border. They started up the Iditarod trail two days before the start of the Iditarod Race. It was a fundraising activity. On the second day one machine broke through the ice, and the fellow driving it broke his back in, I think, three places. He was pulled from the water, undressed and placed in his sleeping bag, a Wiggy Antarctic FTRSS, which all 11 men had purchased from me. The temperature was -28 degrees. When the rescue helicopter arrived, he was warm. One month after he was operated on, he was back at work on a part-time basis. I believe he is alive today as a direct result of Lamilite's abilities to trap and retain heat. His friends, who have lived in Alaska for 30 years or more, couldn't believe that he survived, and in such good fashion.

Water does not affect the function of Lamilite.

Also, Lamilite is remarkably compressible. I will only mention the stuff size of the Antarctic model: the extra long wide body (90 inches X 34 inches), weighing 7 pounds, fits into an 11 inch x 23 inch compression stuff sack. Knowing how small the Antarctic bag stuffs should give you an idea of how small the warmer temperature bags can be stuffed, which are lighter in weight.

When I first started using this fiber, all I knew was that it was the best insulator available. I now know, both from personal use and, more important, consumer use, how good Lamilite truly is.