Stephen wrote:
would imagine a good shaking would return the loft. Sadly not true; see below.

It was an article in the UK magazine Trail who had test carried out at the university of Sheffield. Can't find the article on line but did find this in the mag: So you would be stuffed if you unpack a bag and expect it to keep you warm the same day:

Dagny wrote
> "Surely any degradation of its insulating value is unlikely
> to be the dividing line between comfort and misery or life and
> death"
True in your case as you are using synthetic. Having the insulation of a down bag halved could be very serious.
This is one of those tragic cases where us gearheads can't justify spending more money; a cheap duvet will be better than the best down bag. Like when my wife collected the free sporks from the supemarket salad counter and pointed out I could throw them away or carry enough for a new one at every meal. So was a BETTER option than a titanium spork. The [censored]!!
qjs

"The squashing only effects the down in the short term. If left unsquashed down will spring back. However, it may take a while to spring back if it has been squashed for a long time. We did a test ages ago and squashed bags down for 6 months, then opened them for a day and they had not fully recovered and their TOG (temp rating) was way down. After waiting for a few days they settled back to normal. So squashing down bags for a couple of days is fine, but if you squash them for months at a time, then they will take a lot longer to recover. We have not got a time for how long they take to recover, as that will depend on the quality of down I suspect. So you'll be fine a weekend. But when storing a bag at home do not squash it. GT