Slumberjack makes tents, sleeping bags, clothing and other gear targeted at people who go outdoors to find something to bring home to eat. Having been raised hunting and fishing in Alaska I can certainly appreciate the appeal of reasonably priced gear that can take some abuse, and as a bonus Slumberjack gear can pull double-duty car camping with the family and standing up to a certain six year old who tries his best to dismember every piece of gear he comes into contact with.
The Slumberjack Wheeler Lake sleeping bags are built to take it. We looked at the 20 above version, which at over five pounds is designed for very short hauls and car or UTV camping. The Wheeler Lake is a good-looking bag in earth tone colors and with a nice camo interior that definitely appealed to the aforementioned six year old boy.
For the extra weight you get a bag that will keep most people warm easily at 20 above, and probably below that for most people. The Wheeler Lake is also a very roomy bag, thanks to the rectangular cut and the very generous 34x84 dimensions. There are two zippers that make ingress and egress painless; the right zipper as you lay in the bag is only about 16 inches long, and the left zipper goes all the way around the foot box so the bag will convert to comforter use if desired.
What surprised us was how much we liked the zipper and hood design. By unzipping both zippers 16 inches the hood lies open and flat, like a traditional open top bag. The hood however has two very cool tricks hidden in its design. First is the shallow pocket that will keep a pillow in place when fully open. Second is how that pocket, when both zippers are up all the way, converts to a really nice hood that you can further dial in with a drawcord. We'd love to see this feature on some high-end mountaineering bags, because of the flexibility in comfort and venting that it allows. Kudos to Slumberjack for a useful innovation that we hope becomes more popular.
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