Brooks Range Alpini 15

Companies that sell premium products at reasonable prices should be celebrated, and we were ready to throw a parade for Brooks Range. “It gives those with champagne tastes and beer budgets the opportunity to taste the good life,” said one tester after a few days on the foggy Oregon coast.    

Materials
Soft, lightweight Pertex Quantum is some of the best stuff to use when making a sleeping bag. It has a very low denier, which makes it silky to the touch and rarely leaks feathers despite its thin-ness. The Alpini is insulated with 850-fill down, as lofty as it gets, providing peerless weight-to-warmth ratio. Combined, the materials make for a very compressible bag, even with a relatively roomy cut.

Features
The Alpini also stands out from other similarly constituted bags because of the features. The two-way zipper is extra long, so it can be vented very deeply, and used more easily as a splayed-open blanket. The draft tubes along the main zipper are extra beefy, and there is a unique halo-shaped collar that encircles the head and neck. Both add a remarkable degree of cocoon-like comfy-ness.

There is also a small cargo pocket inside for storing contact lenses or whatnot. We did, however, think the zipper backing strip could be a bit stiffer, as the zipper snagged more than others.