Last time I went backpacking, I poked around for an hour looking for a campsite
that might have ground soft enough to get a good night’s sleep upon. Such places
were available, but only by trudging throug hip-deep, tick-infested grass. Why
not just camp out on a developed site? Well, I’m still experimenting with the
idea of keeping pack weight to an absolute minimum; one way to do that is to
leave your comfy Thermarest at home and use a super-light "pad" that
does a fine job of insulating one’s body from the cold, hard ground, but provides
next to zero actual padding. Camp on soft grass or on a bed of pine needles,
the theory goes, and you can get by with a far lighter pad.
If you can’t find such a spot, you’re in for a bumpy night. After one too many
such nights I decided I needed some air between my hips, shoulders and the ground.
I knew from reading Andy Howell’s
blog that he has a TorsoLite
pad from Bozeman Mountain Works. I decided to try one on for size myself.
The TorsoLite weighs a mere 10 ounces, only two more than my foam pad and 10
less than my full-length Thermarest ProLite3. It’s dramatically smaller, providing
padding only to the shoulders and fanny. I’ve slept on the ground enough times
to know these are the only places that really need the padding anyway.
So far it passes the "how does it feel on the kitchen floor" test;
the tryout on a forest floor comes this weekend at Tahoe National Forest.
TorsoLite
reviews at Backpackgeartest.org.
The Torsolite does take a little getting used to. By the end of my Scottish Coast to Coast using it had become quite instinctive. Yes it is small, but remember that you often have to put stuff under your feet with a 3/4 Thermorest. After it became second nature to spread packs, clothes and what have you around my feet I could appreciate Ryan Jordan’s Alaska trick of not taking a ground sheet.
Here’s a lighter (less than 4 oz.) alternative I’ve been happy with in similar situations:
http://www.gossamergear.com/cgi-bin/gossamergear/nightlight_torso.html
That pad is certainly cheaper at 16 bucks, too. The TorsoLite is $60.
I still think, though, when you’re dealing with hard-packed ground, there’s nothing like the cushion from an inflatable pad. Other side of the coin is a non-inflatable won’t develop leaks.