Travelite 320 - An Adventurer's Dream

As part of our recent brand relaunch, we ensured some of our more iconic products were reintroduced too. The Travelite Down Sleeping Bag has long been a Mountain Designs customer favourite since it first appeared back in the 90s, and the 2019 range was designed to remind adventurers of the benefits of a quality sleeping bag and a good night’s sleep inside it. Read on, and see whether Australian Geographic Adventure gear expert Justin Walker came back well rested after he put our Travelite 320 Down Sleeping Bag to the test.

Mountain Designs Travelite 320 Sleeping Bag

What's more treasured by adventurers than a good night's sleep? Okay maybe there's a couple of other things, but a decent kip after a big day in the outdoors is definitely up there as a daily goal when you're out there, and the best way to achieve this is in a comfortable sleeping bag. For Australia, a good three-season sleeping bag generally does the job for all but the middle of winter in the southern states, which makes the Mountain Designs Travelite 320 down bag a great option.

Aussie born-and-bred Mountain Designs has just been revitalised, and the company has brought some exciting kit back onto the market, not the least of which is the Travelite 320. The bag is impressively light and offers a robust outer shell along with RDS 650-fill down insulation. Down is still the best insulator for bags and offers the additional benefits of being lighter than a synthetic fill of the same weight, as well as being able to be further compressed, therefore taking up less space inside your pack.

The Travelite 320 uses box-wall baffling construction, combined with a curved baffle design to ensure the down fill doesn't move around in the bag, which could otherwise leave potential cold spots. This results in a decent warmth-to-weight ratio, aided by the bag's tapered rectangular shape. Another advantage of the tapered rectangular shape is you're not constricted like you would be in a mummy-shaped bag, but there aren't big empty spaces that your body has to work hard to heat up.

The bag is rated to a ‘Comfort’ level of 4°C, with a low limit of -1°C and an impressive ‘Extreme’ rating of -16°C. This means the Travelite 320 is suited to most conditions during our autumn, summer and spring. We tested the bag in late summer/early spring on the east coast of NSW and found its combination of lightweight and temperature ratings to be perfect for the conditions. We had one colder night on test but added a sleeping bag liner, which made it snug enough to get a good night’s sleep without any issues.

The bag's construction is very good - the stitching is tight and the outer shell has coped well with being jammed into - and then pulled back out of - a compression bag without any resulting damage. The compact size when packed is also appreciated on an overnight hike when using a smaller-than-usual backpack, leaving ample space for a stove, change of clothes and other essentials.

It's heartening to see Mountain Designs back on the radar for those looking at purchasing adventure gear, and with its past reputation for quality construction and smart design, it looks like a great new beginning for this Aussie adventure icon, with gear such as this sleeping bag showing the way.

To read  Justin’s full gear review on our Travelite 320 down sleeping bag, head to Australian Geographic Adventure.