So how can you sleep well on that? Our tent with the Thermarest mattresses near Matlock Lake in the Eastern Sierra The system For an average height person it comes down to about mid-thigh if measured from the top of the head. Here's the caveat: 'short' means it's only 49' (119cm) long. This is by far lighter, smaller and better insulating than anything else out there. The short version weighs a whopping 8 ounces and it packs down to about the size of a quart bottle. It's thick and insulates really well (R-3.2). When researching these pads, one stood out pretty quickly: the Neoair Xlite by Thermarest, so I bought two when I found them on sale. I spent countless nights as a kid on regular old air mattresses while camping, and yes, they were leaks sometimes, but it was never a big deal. Many people are very wary of them for the (somewhat rightful) fear that they can be develop a leak easily. The mattressĪlas, I decided to look for regular, inflatable air mattresses. Our goal was not to carry any major item on the outside, and mainly, all the ones we tried were very uncomfortable. Usually you can see them on the outside of people's packs. As there's nothing to deflate, so they're huge. These pad have huge advantages: they are very light, very cheap, insulate relatively well and chiefly, they simply can't fail. This is why many 'serious' sleeping bags have zero or almost zero filling at the bottom, or some are even open, like ours, and technically become a quilt.īack in Dark Ages of our backpacking history (dark = heavy) we carried self-inflatable 'Gear Guide' mattresses what were huge, weighed 4 pounds and had an R-value (explained below) of around 2.ĭuring the Age of Enlightenment, when we 'enlightened' our load, I put a lot of time into finding the smallest, lightest and best insulating mattress there is. Lofty materials, like the filling of a sleeping bag do not insulate at all when compressed – it's mostly the air between the bits of filling that insulates). The ground being usually pretty hard is one thing, so some soft material is not a bad idea, but the main job of a mattress is insulation. What's between your body and the ground is just as important as what's around you and the surrounding air. The other two main components are the sleeping bag (there's our trusted and beloved Nunatak Dual Arc Alpinist) and the mattress. Em calls me her personal furnace - you could say I'm an integral part of her sleep system. Me, on the other hand, am the exact opposite, I sleep awfully pretty much all the time, but my metabolism is very fast.

She only needs is to be warm, she gets cold very, very quickly. I woke her up a few times during small earthquakes. She can sleep well if the environment is noisy, if it's bright, if the ground shakes. They lasted so long, we're just about to buy the new, tapered version).Įm is one of the best sleepers I've ever known. (Note: this review is for the older, square NeoAir Xlite. The old Guide Gear matteress hanging on the bottom of Em's huge pack around Onion Valley Intro The gray lump in the lower left corner is my pillow. The inside of the Big Agnes Fly Creek UL2 with the Nuntak Dual Arc Alpinist and the Termarest Neoair Xlite.

Neo air x lite