Shocking Blue

Don’t be mislead by the Shocking Blues muted "Baby Blue" color. Its name comes from the incredible technological and design innovations encased in the bag.

This "Midnight Special" was developed in the mountain village of Belcaire in the French Pyrenees, the Shocking Blue revoutionized the conception of sleeping bag design, once launched at the OR in Salt Lake City in 2001.

To illustrate the technical points in the Shocking Blue, we shot a video presented on the home page. Simply, we took a pair of scissors and decapitated a Shocking Blue at point of the the neck just below the draft collar. This allows you to see a baffel system as simple as logic: The challenge was the complexity of assembling 91 different pieces in 3D, with a simple inside stitch on all baffels, just like a football. A challenge that the sewing team in Belcaire faced sucessfully.

As you can see, the interior of the Shocking Blue, is mounted using pre-cut anatomical shaped baffles, but this is not all: Thoughout the bag, the baffle height varies, with a smaller height on the leg section and hence a increased height on the body/chest section.

The hood of the Shocking Blue, is a 3D development, where the outside fabric is connected to the inside, of smaller dimension by a piece named the connecting half moon. On standard constructions, with identical dimensions, the two pieces are connected in a by stitching the out-side and inside fabric together. This creates a cold spot on the forehead. The 3D half moon technique, offers maximum isolation to the extreme forehead.

Impossible to understand a twisted French mind...don't you think Tom? (German Everest 2003)

As the Shocking Blue is a cylindrical Tubular Bell design, the draft collar is incorporated like the separation wall between the cockpit and main cabin of a aircraft fuselage. We cut a hole in this down filled wall, big enough to seal of your neck with a down jacket on. A inside opperated semi elastificated adjustment system, allows you to close the last micro openings, sealing of the body section into perfection. According to our prestigious French history, this collar system has been nick named a "Marie Antoinette draft collar".

To be able to sit centered in such a "Marie Antoinette" bag (as we don't only sleep in a bag), a small zipper is placed on the opposite side of the main lateral zipper. Once zipper opened, you can sit perfectly centered and in great confort.

The Cylindrical wall construction of the "Marie Antoinette" is the only solution, that has no influence at all on the anatomical baffel system, once you seal of your body section. The calculated baffle shape, keeps perfectly it's annatomical shape, once totally sealed in.

Black toes are no fun, unless you are planning to organize a cocktail party with your friends (see Olan page) so, we designed a "Pyreneean foot box". In principe it's a reversed trapezoidal and slightly angled down box, that follow the natual flex of the feet in a resting possition. This angulation creates a de-balanced relation between the volume of the top compartment and the one placed on the back of the sleeping bag. We solved this by placing two compartment on the top, corresponding to one on the back offering a well balanced compartmentation.

The angled reversed trapezoidal footbox, is natually calculated and mounted using pre-cut anatomical baffels. The end result is a foot box caple of holding itself up. Therefor there are NO direct contact with the toes and the top of the footbox. Total liberation.

The technology of the baffel system in the Shocking Blue, creates a amazing comfort and performance level. All physical and direct contact is removed in the foot box, witch is exactly the same effect on the leg section. The down filled membrane is auto-expanding away from the body. On the body/chest section, due to the width of the bag, the down membrane has a slight touch. Contact without any weight.

What you feel using this bag, is a total weight liberation, as if the down membrane is strangely "floating" over your body. And as you start to warm up the bag with your body heat, this effect is re-inforced, kind of like when you heat up a hot air baloon.

And as you liberate the down filled membrane, away from the body, you offer a total liberty to the mature Gray Goose cluster, to expand in all directions, with a maximum liberty giving it a serious increase in performance.

The Shocking Blue is designed to be in use in high altitude in combination with the Combi full suit. (This offers the posibility of some serious layering) Today the 48.6oz (1380g) Shocking Blue, is starting to become a "standard bag" in the C4 and C5 camps.

But, this also places the bag, as certainly one of the best performing down bags in the 4 season category, for winter camping in the Rocky Mountains or any place else, where you start your day by de-freezing your boots.

Holy shit Tom..."St. hot as Hell" knocked of 600g of a standardbag! (German Everest 2003)

Words fail to demonstrate the full capabilities of the Shocking Blue so we invite you to watch the video by clicking the “watch video” button at the top of the page.

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