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The original was posted on /r/Ultralight by /u/AlfredRowley on 2024-03-09 23:50:23.

I’m currently bikepacking, not hiking, but I figured this might be the best place to ask.

Because I’m travelling long-term, I mix up sleeping in a tent with sleeping in hotels quite often, which means sometimes I don’t use my down sleeping bag for days on end.

For the last 2 months I have been taking the sleeping bag out of the stuffsack every couple of days just to let the down “breathe”, even though I don’t always use it for sleeping. Lately I was hesitating if this is actually a healthy practice.

Here is why I think it might not be good for the down: Like many materials, I can imagine that the down fibers have some kind of “fatigue” limit. By stuffing it and taking it back out of the bag many times the fibers compress and decompress many times and ultimately lose loft. I think maybe it might be better to leave the sleeping bag in its stuffsack when I sleep in hotels, just to reduce the amount of compression cycles the down would have to go through. Then I would only take the bag out when truly necessary.

Does this make sense? Or was I just doing fine taking the bag out of the compression sack every once in a while?

Thanks!