It's getting close to camping time here in the Midwest. I love camping. I love loading up the car with my tent, sleeping bags, coolers filled with various meats and beers, and heading into the wilderness. Had I not been recently gifted a pair of new, cold-weather sleeping bags, I'd consider building my own from the UK's PHD Mountain Software.

The company's website has a slick Flash interface for constructing your own sleeping bag, and offers two "trails" to getting it done: the "free route" -- if you know what you're doing -- or the "guided route" for the novice. Since I don't know the first thing about building a sleeping bag, I chose the guided route.

From there you're given various features to choose for your future sleeping bag: minimum temperature, outer fabric, inner fabric, stuff patterns, width, length, colors, and many, many others. Make your selections, submit your order, and you're done.

The prices, unsurprisingly, are not cheap. The bag I built was 270.00 GBP (about $530 USD), and I'm sure it could have been much higher had I selected more add-ons. But this might be the perfect thing for the hardcore camping or mountaineering enthusiast with some extra cash to burn. For now, I'll stick to my Keltys.

• PHD Mountain Software's Design Your Own Sleeping Bag
  

Filed under: Camping, Internet Tools