REI Minimalist Bivy Review

Not sure you want to dive head first into bivouac camping with an expensive bivy sack? You might want to get yourself the Minimalist Bivy from REI. It gives you most of the benefits of a bivy sack in a relatively inexpensive package that won't set you back too much if you decide to go back to traditional tent camping.

What is the Minimalist Bivy you ask? It's basically a sack that you slip your sleeping bag in and it replaces your tent. It's waterproof, weatherproof and lightweight. It offers you protection from the elements without all the weight and bulk of a traditional tent. That said, considering it's cost and weight, you will be giving up a few things that a more traditional bivy sack offers. Mainly, the Minimalist Bivy doesn't offer waterproof and weatherproof protection for your head, just a mesh screen to keep the bugs off you.

Not only that, but it's pretty easy to get around the lack of the head protection with a simple shell jacket placed over the sack to give you that protection. You can even set it up like a small tarp over your bivy sack so you don't have the jacket so close to your face.

When it comes to the Minimalist itself, the bivy sack is constructed of a nylon ripstop shell that is treated with the waterproof REI Elements laminate. The seams on the fabric are sealed to prevent leakage. The head opening features a mesh bug panel that goes from roughly your shoulders to just above your head. If you’re sleeping somewhere that bugs aren’t a problem, the mesh can be rolled up and help down by a toggle. The mesh panel is surrounded by a built-in gutter flap in the nylon material that prevents any water from rolling down the nylon material and onto the mesh material and onto. The bivy sack with the included stuff sack weights in at just over a pound. When it comes to storage and/or carrying the sack, it can be compressed significantly from it’s outstretched 31x88 inch size.

One word of caution if you have a warmer type of sleeping bag. The Minimalist adds about 10 degrees to the insulative value of your sleeping bag. So if you’re sleeping with a 60 degree bag, it’ll be like using a 50 degree bag and so on. This means you may find that a colder weather bag you use might just be too warm when you use it for summertime camping in the Minimalist. In the wintertime this can be a handy feature – providing some extra warmth on those cold nights even if you use the Minimalist inside a tent (for extra insulation and extra protection from any condensation in the tent).

I try to use the Minimalist when the weather is forecast too be good. But just in case, I always carry my shell jacket and on the few nights it's drizzled, I've propped the jacket over the opening of the sack, which provided more than enough protection. I haven't had any problems keeping my sleeping bag dry otherwise. All in all for the price, I've enjoyed this bivy sack and it makes for a good general purpose sack during good weather. I've also used it on colder weather trips and winter trips where I'm extra concerned about keeping my sleeping bag warm and staying dry. In those cases, I've used the Minimalist as an extra layer of protection around my sleeping bag while I've been sleeping in a tent.

My Take

I think that the Minimalist Bivy from REI is a good way to get introduced to bivy sacks. It's not that complicated, it's easy to use, it's lightweight and it works well in most weather conditions. The only word of caution is the lack of head protection, but that's easily remedied with some creative draping of your shell jacket.