Many diehards continue to deny the changing of season and find their worth in the glory of skiing as many peaks as possible before all the snow melts. Good for them. Many others, however, are looking forward to the upcoming spring sunshine, and the changeup that goes with it: road trips and the pilgrimage to warmer regions, sleeping under the stars, chasing adventure up a splitter crack, and exploring deep desert canyons. Much of these adventures come with the annual rebirth of car camping.
That’s right. Each spring throngs of people leave their wintry haunts in search of fair weather adventures. What do they have in common? The subtle and explicit virtues of camping as they portend to makeshift outdoor accommodations, firepits and steaming morning coffee sessions. It’s a long list. Everyone has his and her pet indulgences with camping.
Much like climbing, skiing and other adventurous pursuits, car camping is its own animal. Hundreds of thousands of savvy backcountry folks pride themselves on having their car camping scene high and tight. And it’s a marvel to see someone who’s made enough mistakes over their camping career pull up to the campsite and school everyone on the latest and greatest tricks, blending old school know-how with outside-the-box technology, gadgetry and vision. Some mistake this for “glamping”. No, it’s just smart. Some call it being organized. I’ll accept either.
For those who know their way around a campsite and have certain predilections for sleeping, Brooks Range has developed an unconventional series of sleeping systems: the Cloak, a smart alternative to camping traditionalism. The Cloak is a zipper-less down blanket with multi-purpose applications for wide-ranging camping needs and preferences. Treated with DownTec™ weatherproofing, these 850+ fill goose quilts provide premier loft with maximum compressibility and minimal weight penalty.
Newest to the family is the Cloak 20 Wide, a steppingstone between the 30° and the 15°, but not in the way you think. The 20 has the same 15° rating, but it’s wider by half a foot, which make it more snugly. All Cloak bags feature a foot box that accepts sleeping pads to slip snugly into its base so as not to slide off mid-sleep somewhere throughout the night. A heavier draft tub circumscribes the bag’s quilted body, and rests warmly over the body to help seal in the sleeper without the feeling of being overly tucked in, just enough to mitigate optimum body temp throughout the night.
Just like inspired camping, the Cloak is what you make of it. Whether you’re crushing it in an Airstream or crash padding an air mattress in the back of a Chevy truck—and everything else in between—the Cloak series perpetuate the idea of making adventure fit your own whims.
