Folding Sleeping Pads by @cahlen on 3Speak
▶️ Watch on 3Speak --- I recently experimented with the Nemo Switchback, one of several folding sleeping pads on the market, and I am very impressed with its comfort, warmth and packability. --- DO...
Tags: #outdoors #camping #backpacking #survival #minimalism
Hey everyone, Cowan here, and in this video I'm going to tell you about my new sleeping pad. So for those of you who are not aware, I am an extreme minimalist who spent three years leaving it outside anywhere, basically four season, anywhere from negative 15 degrees Fahrenheit to like 110 Fahrenheit without needing to rely on anything other than what I carry. in my backpack, okay? So I'm really serious about the gear that I carry with me. I want it to be light, I want it to be compact, I want it to be durable, and I want it to be good at what it does. So, just to give you a sneak peek, you can see my new sleeping pad is sitting back there, right there, that gray thing, but it's actually orange, okay? So previously, I had actually constructed my own sleeping pad because the other sleeping pads that were out there, weren't really doing it for me, okay? So inflatable sleeping pads will always end up getting a hole in it. Even after just a few nights, they seem to get a hole in it. And if you're sleeping, if you're just going camping a few times a year, then maybe that's going to be fine for you. But when you're sleeping on it 365 days a year, it's just not something you're willing to put up with because even if you want to fix the holes it's not an easy process and you're going to need things like running water and soap to be even able to find the hole and you're going to need specialized glue and patches in order to fix it okay so I don't recommend inflatable mattresses even though they are super comfortable and they're super warm But the durability issue just makes it a non-starter, okay? So what I ended up doing was getting one of those Thermarrest, Ridge Rest, which is just a closed cell foam, full-length sleeping pad, which you roll up, and I would cut it in half, and then I would put a layer of insulated bubble, it's like bubble wrap, but it's got aluminum on each side, and I would put that on the bottom of the pad, and then I would tape it with basically... outdoor duct tape, okay? So gorilla glue makes a duct tape, which is designed for being outside. It actually gets stronger when it's exposed to UV light. And it creates an extremely durable product and extremely warm product, but it creates a very heavy product, okay? So my old sleeping pad was probably two and a half pounds. which is a lot for a half-sized sleeping pad, okay? It was only half size. It goes from my head down to my bottom, okay? I don't need a sleeping pad for my legs. Okay, so I saw some new types of sleeping pads out there that fold up. and that's what I have now, and I figured, you know, they're not too expensive, I'll give it a try, and if I'm able to sleep outside when it's really cold with this thing, then I'm going to swap it out and start using it, okay? So, I'll tell you more about how that went, but first I'm actually going to take off my backpack and show you this thing. Okay, so here it is, and again, I cut this thing in half, so you can see it's folded up, you can unfold it very quickly, right, and then you can fold it back up again extremely quickly. right? So, very easy to deploy and to pack up again. Another nice thing about it is, okay, so like for the old thermarrest, you have to roll them up, and you're not really getting any space savings there, so one of the problems with the thermarrests is that they're very bulky. The thing about this is you can see when it folds up, the little buttons that poke up have little divots in between them, and those divets match up with the holes, the divvets and the bumps match up on the opposite side. So basically you're getting maybe, maybe not only, maybe not half, but, you know, approaching half of the size or volume that you would have normally gotten with a sweeping pad, okay? So this is taking up very much, very little room. This is also extremely lightweight. Okay, the full thing before I cut it was about a pound. So this thing is half of a pound, okay? So it's extremely light, right? So I went from two and a half pounds to half a pound. And for those of you who are into ultralight backpacking, you know, two pounds drop from one piece of equipment is a really big improvement. Okay, so let's talk about comfort. This thing is extremely comfortable to sleep on. A lot of people have trouble with foam sleeping pads, but like I said, I've slept on it for, I slept on foam sleeping pads for over three years, so I'm pretty used to it. And this thing was extremely comfortable, and I would say maybe even more comfortable than the sleeping pad that I made in terms of, you know, like pressure and having, you know, points that are pushing on your body, which are causing pain, that type of thing. So this thing's extremely good in that regard. As for the cold, I have not tested it down to the extreme low temperatures that I have actually lived through before, like, you know, below zero Fahrenheit, but I have tested it down to about 20 degrees Fahrenheit, which is well below freezing, and I didn't notice any cold coming up from the bottom, okay? And this is technically not supposed to be a swimming pad that can be used below freezing, but like I said, I had no trouble with it, I didn't notice any cold coming up from the bottom. Now again, I'm very used to sleeping on these things, and I'm used to sleeping out in the cold. So if you're someone who, you know, is living inside all year and you go out for a hiking trip in extreme cold, and you pull this thing out, you know, you might not be warm, but you're also not very used to it. Okay, so a tip, a thing to know, you don't need a full sleeping pad, because like I said, you don't need your legs to be covered. You can either, if it does get cold, you can roll up on your side and bring your knees up to your chest and just lay on your side and you'll fit on this thing, or if you want to stretch out, you can stretch your legs out and put your sleeping bag. out underneath your legs, which will probably be mostly empty because when it's cold, you're probably going to be wearing all of your clothes. So your sleeping bag's not going to be bulky, and that will help shield you from the cold, okay? Some other ways that you can use this thing. So for those of you who have followed me for a while, you know that I'm a meditator. I studied to be a Zen monk for almost a year at one point in my life. So I like to be able to sit on the ground and to cross my legs and sometimes meditate, or sometimes I'm just doing activities while I'm in that position. So I'm going to show you how I do that with this thing. Okay, so we're down on the ground here, and what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna pull out two of the sections and leave the rest of these stacked up on top of each other, okay? I'm gonna put that on the ground, then I'm gonna sit right on that pillow, basically, and then bring my legs in and Basically, I got my own Zabutan here, right? A meditation platform just from this little thing, right? Normally you would have a big cushion that you're sitting on, and then separately you would have a big pillow that you're sitting on, which would be, those things would probably be like five to 10 pounds together if you're at like a normal Zen center or something like that. But this does all of that by itself, and it's half a pound. Okay, so the only downside that I can really see with this thing is that I think it's not going to be super durable. A lot of through hikers, people who hike the PCT... or the Appalachian Trail, right, they hike across the entire country from Canada, Mexico, or from east to west, all the way. A lot of them use this thing, and it survives that entire trip. So that's pretty durable, but from my point of view, 365 days for years at a time of sleeping outside, I don't think this thing is going to last forever. But one of the nice things, it's basically what's going to happen is it's going to compress, and then it's not going to be as warm anymore. But one of the nice things is that because I cut this in half, by buying one of them, I now have two of them, right? And they're not very expensive. So I don't really see that as a very big problem, unless we get to a point where I'm not able to purchase anything from anywhere, either because it's not available or because I'm blocked off the internet or something like that. And then I'll have to figure something else out. But in the meantime... This is about as good as it gets, I think. So, anyways, I hope that's useful to you, and I'll see you guys later.