Sleeping Pads

Beginner's Guide to Backpacking

Sleeping Pads
Regardless of the sleeping bag you choose, the insulation will always smash flat beneath you. To prevent a close encounter with the cold, stony ground, you need a sleeping pad, which fortunately will set you back far less than your sleeping bag did, unless you insist on buying a down-filled air mattress from Stephenson.

As a kid, you may have slept in your backyard on a slab of open-cell foam or a three-inch thick air-mattress that made you dizzy as a top from the effort of inflating it. If either of these two items are still lingering in your closet, let them linger. Open-cell foam – the kind that crushes under body weight to about one-quarter of its original thickness – is generally too heavy, water-absorbing and bulky for backpacking. Normal air mattresses, while comfortable in warm weather, are chilly when the ground is cold because air circulates freely inside them, drawing heat from your body through convection.

For years, all I ever used as a sleeping pad while backpacking in the summer was a sheet of half-inch-thick closed-cell foam. Closed-cell foam is lightweight and cheap, doesn't absorb water and is highly durable. It's also rather uncomfortable to sleep on if you, like me, have spent years being spoiled rotten on an acre-wide Sealy Pamperpedic that hogs three-quarters of the bedroom floor. In the backcountry I always secretly envied my friends the luxury afforded by their Therm-A-Rests – essentially, air-mattresses filled with open-cell foam – even as I derided them as heavy, leak-prone, even a touch bourgeois. My friends just smiled, indulging me in my tirades. Finally my inflated ego collapsed under the complaints of my bruised hips, and Cora and I bought a pair of Therm-A-Rests.

What luxury! Sure, they weigh 2 pounds 5 ounces each rather than 10 ounces like my old closed-cell foam pad, but the comfort is worth it (or maybe I'm just so much more tired after lugging the extra weight up the trail that I could sleep on porcupine hide). The open-cell foam prevents convection, so the pads are warm, while the waterproof, air-tight shell keeps the foam dry. After our first tantalizing taste of backwoods luxury, Cora and I plunged further into decadence and bought Therm-A-Rest Chairs, 10-ounce fabric and webbing devices that convert a Therm-A-Rest into a legless chair that sits directly on the ground. No more aching backs while cooking dinner or lazing about watching the sunset! Therm-A-Rest is no longer the only brand of foam-filled air mattress available, but they do have a proven track record. A leaky or inferior brand could prove to be a let-down.

Therm-A-Rests do have one drawback. Although they’re quite warm enough for three-season use, they don’t provide enough insulation for winter, in my opinion. For winter camping, I use two half-inch thick closed-cell foam pads stacked on top of each other.

I find a pillow even more essential for comfortable sleep in the woods than I do at home. Rather than carry an actual pillow, I stuff an extra sweater into my sleeping-bag stuff sack, the stout nylon bag that comes with every decent sleeping bag.

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