My diy bivi bag has seen better days and I am looking at replacement options. My current bivi has a ground sheet base so I fit my exped inside it and it's well protected. I am looking at the alp kit hunka bivi but I'm not sure if i could fit the exped inside or get into it when it's in?

What do other people use to protect their precious sleep mats?

XL Hunka will fit an air mat / bag / you inside, with room to spare but standard one won't.

Mat on the outside, consider some Tyvek.

Is it easy to get into a hunka xl with a mate in it? My other bivis had larger entry points. Tyvek! I have some of that strangely.

duncdan wrote:Is it easy to get into a hunka xl with a mate in it? My other bivis had larger entry points. Tyvek! I have some of that strangely.

Mate? I presume you mean mat

Yes, it's not too bad, not like rolling in and out of bed but it's not a struggle as the opening is pretty big and with the extra length it lies beyond the mat so you can use the entire opening.

Check out Ti Goat bags, built for large Americans. I have a Large Thermarest x-therm and it was tight on a hunka xl but fits in the ti goat bag with room for my shoes helmet and other bags. It also is three way, eg fully open, fully closed or meshed. Approx 208g and packs away small. It arrived in 6-8 days and cost 150ukp shipped. I've used it a lot now ad the quality is excellent. http://www.titaniumgoat.com/products.html

My sleep mat is always outside my bivvy.

I have an exped synmat and after puncturing it on some particularly tough vegetable matter I started using one of those cheap n cheerful blue tarps as a groundsheet. It is a 6x4 and slots in between my bar bag harness and dry bag when not deployed.
Prevents soggy knees too.

Lots of food for thought. Thanks! Oh and yes mat not mate ooops

Scot do you use anything under the mat? Do you slide off the mat without wrapping it all together?

Nothing under it and I don't slide off. Maybe I'm lucky with pitching or maybe I'm just careful.

If you look in the Classifieds section there's a Hunka XL for sale. Not by me I hasten to add.

That's! !!! Thinking that might be the way to go

In a previous life (well it feels like a lifetime ago now) I used to do a lot of Alpine climbing which has some similarities with bikepacking in that you are trying to get as much use out of as little kit as possible.

We always used to have sleeping mats outside the bivy bag but that was as much because we'd use closed cell foam mats (Karrimat and similar) so they'd protect the bivy bag. In addition you'd often be sitting on a ledge so needed to bend and fold things.

Things are a bit different when bikepacking in that generally you are now aiming to protect the sleeping pad which is usually inflatable. Hence the need for a bigger bivy bag to be able to get everything inside.