The Sitka Kelvin Aerolite 30 Sleeping Bag is one of the most innovative big game hunting focused sleeping bags available today: With its jacket-like hood and arm and foot holes, it’s meant to be worn nearly as much as it is designed for sleeping.
To get us a closer look, Sitka sent Man Makes Fire a review unit. After testing the Kelvin Aerolite in late summer camping and archery elk season in Idaho, this is what we learned:
The Sitka Kelvin Aerolite 30 Sleeping Bag
The Sitka Kelvin Aerolite 30 Sleeping Bag is both a sleeping bag and a hunting layer you can wear on cold mornings or chilly glassing sessions.Sitka is known for its awesome hunting pants and its excellent camo patterns. In fact, Sitka may be the most important company to change how many hunters now think of hunting apparel: Hunting clothes are now considered gear you choose on purpose to help you succeed. It’s actually part of Sitka’s marketing message — turning clothing into gear — but I also believe it’s baked into Sitka’s mission as a company.
And this, it turns out, leads to the innovative Kelvin Aerolite 30 Sleeping Bag. Most sleeping bag designers and manufacturers focus on creating sleeping bags that keep you warm at night while you’re protected inside of your tent. They don’t think about what happens when you wake up. Or what happens during the day. And they rarely, until now, consider what that means for backcountry hunters.
Sitka’s Kelvin Aerolite 30 Sleeping Bag is designed to be an extension of your Sitka clothing system — and that means more than simply being a bag you can wear.
The Sitka Kelvin Aerolite 30 Sleeping Bag is a weird sleeping bag. There’s no getting around that. But it’s also surprisingly effective.
Let’s talk about the basic design features, then get into how it excels . . . and figure out if it’s the right bag for you.
The Basic Design
A main two-way zipper lets you stick your feet out to walk around while wearing the rest of the bag like a massive hooded vest.Sitka isn’t the first sleeping bag designer to add arm-hole zippers or a foot box you can open. For instance, the Sierra Designs Mobile Mummy series has been around for years, aimed primarily at backpackers. The Sitka Kelvin Aerolite 30 Sleeping Bag, on the other hand, is more rugged and built with exceptional quality.
First, the Kelvin Aerolite 30 has two arm holes that let you poke your arms outside of the sleeping bag.
Second, the hood fits more like a jacket hood than a typical mummy sleeping bag hood. The snugger fit also means that if you roll over onto your side while sleeping, the hood will move with you.
Third, the foot box opens up near the bottom so you can poke your feet out. This is great for temperature regulation at night, but the key point is to let you stand and walk around in the bag. To keep the material out of your way, a clip lets you lift and tuck the excess material behind your legs.
So far so good. You can poke your arms out of the bag and walk around. But why? Aren’t sleeping bags for sleeping?
How to Use the Sitka Kelvin Aerolite 30 Sleeping Bag
The hood fits less like a typical mummy sleeping bag hood and more like a down jacket hood.The Sitka Kelvin Aerolite 30 Sleeping Bag is a weird sleeping bag. There’s no getting around that. But it’s also surprisingly effective in the right situations.
The Kelvin Aerolite 30 excels in cold-weather situations — or in unexpected cold weather situations. How is this possible, you might ask, when the bag only has a 30-degree comfort rating?
Sitka expects the Kelvin Aerolite 30 to be used primarily by hunters who are likely hunting with several additional layers. Backcountry hunters, of course, definitely pack multiple layers. This means that in very cold weather, you’ll be sleeping in your base layers, maybe your pants, and maybe even a puffy jacket like the Sitka Kelvin Lite Down Jacket.
Either way, backcountry hunters know that early mornings before dawn are cold. As excited as they are to be out hunting, many hunters dread exiting their warm sleeping bags, getting dressed, and freezing while they make coffee and get ready for the hunt.
The Kelvin Aerolite 30 is designed to let you do that from your tent — for example, boiling water for coffee underneath a well-ventilated vestibule.
Once you’re out of your tent, you could wear the Kelvin Aerolite 30 around camp as you get ready for your hunt. Once you’re up and moving a bit, your body temp will rise and you can ditch the bag.
Or . . . if you’re hunting in a situation where you’re sitting and glassing on cold, exposed ridges or mountain tops, you could wear the Sitka Kelvin Aerolite 30 all day.
The key benefit is that the Sitka Kelvin Aerolite 30 lets you use an additional versatile layer that previously would have been used only for sleeping.
Calls of Nature
Before you first wear the Kelvin Aerolite 30 Sleeping Bag during a nighttime call of nature, practice hooking the footbox into the attachment loops!There is another key feature of the Kelvin Aerolite 30 Sleeping Bag, and that’s how it can make midnight calls of nature a little less cold. Every hunter we know has had to pee in the middle of the night but hasn’t wanted to exit their warm sleeping bag. And sometimes trying to avoid the pee break leads to poor sleep. I know I’m usually better off if I just get up and get it done.
The Kelvin Aerolite 30 bag, on the other hand, will let you get up, step outside your tent and pee . . . and you won’t freeze doing it.
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Build Quality & Materials
The zippers are easy to use and snag-free.The Sitka Kelvin Aerolite 30 Sleeping Bag overall build quality is fantastic. I’ve tested a lot of high-quality down sleeping bags over the years, and the Sitka quality is very competitive.
The lightweight 20-denier polyester face fabric feels good on bare skin and seems reasonably durable. It has a DWR water-repellant finish to protect the insulation if you’re using the bag outside your tent.
Sitka includes long, lightweight zipper pulls that are easy to grab and pull. Sitka also includes anti-snag fabric strips along each zipper, along with insulated baffles to help retain heat. The zipper systems are very good, very easy to use, very consistent.
I’m a big fan of down sleeping bags because it’s hard to beat high-quality goose down for insulation, particularly in dry conditions. In very wet conditions, synthetic insulations can gain an edge. I’m impressed by the loft and warmth of the synthetic PrimaLoft Gold Insulation with Cross Core technology. It’s surprisingly light, airy, and compressible for its weight.
Sitka also says the insulation is infused with silica aerogel, which is a nearly weightless material composed of 95% air that acts as additional thermal insulation.
Sitka does a good job of placing the insulation in baffles that remove cold spots.
Despite all the zippers, the Kelvin Aerolite 30 only weighs 38 ounces — less than 2.5 pounds.
Sleeping and Walking Around
With all the zippers available, the Kelvin Aerolite 30 excels in letting you manage your temperature depending on the conditions. On warmer nights, I could unzip the bag from the bottom and poke a foot or leg out. Or drop some heat and gain some comfort by poking my arms out. Or leaving the arm holes open as vents.
One drawback to mummy-style sleeping bags on warm nights are the hoods. On warmer nights, I usually fold hoods back to move the material out of my face or I tuck a pillow in or over them. I could fit a small inflatable pillow into the hood when I didn’t zip it completely up.
On colder nights, the value of the Sitka Kelvin Aerolite 30 starts to deliver. I liked to sleep with both of my arms outside of the bag, which let me sleep on my back, sides, and even my stomach . . . while the bag moved with me. If you’re using the bag as an extension of your layered hunting clothes, this ability to move around could increase your sleeping comfort over a typical mummy bag.
To get up and walk, all you have to do is zip up the bottom zipper, find the aluminum latch hook at the bottom of the bag and slip it into a latch. The first couple of times you try this, you’ll futz around a bit — but you’ll eventually get the hang of it. (Just remember that if you’re wearing the bag during a call of nature, you’ll still want to check the wind and pay attention to your stance. It’s all relatively warm and doable, but it’s not as easy as opening a fly. Just saying.
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The Bottom Line
All-in-all, the Sitka Kelvin Aerolite 30 Sleeping Bag is best for hunters who want a sleeping bag that can do more than just provide a place to sleep. High-country backcountry hunters who spend more time glassing in cold places will likely appreciate it most, as will hunters who really like the idea of easing into cold mornings. It’s lightweight, packable, and well-designed — great as a lightweight sleeping bag and even better as a new kind of ultra-warm hunting layer. Highly recommended for those who understand its value and appreciate the mobility/warmth it can bring to the hunt experience.
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