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My uncle in Flagstaff swore by a $3 blue foam pad over my $120 inflatable, and he was right
Back in 2016 I bought a fancy inflatable pad for a trip to the Grand Canyon and felt pretty good about it. My uncle, who has slept outside more nights than I have been alive, poked it once and told me it would pop by day three. It did, right on a tiny rock at Mather Campground, and he handed me his old blue foam pad that weighed nothing and never failed him. Now I want to know, does anyone still carry closed cell foam as a backup, or am I the only one who got burned by a leaky valve?
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the_phoenix27d ago
But that foam pad thing is way more about luck than gear. Your inflatable popping on day three doesn't prove the pad was bad, it proves you didn't check the ground before you laid it down. I've run the same Big Agnes pad for like six seasons now, probably 200 nights, and it's still holding air fine because I take two minutes to clear sticks and rocks and I throw a thin ground sheet under it. Closed cell foam is bombproof for sure, but it's also bulky as hell strapped to your pack and it sleeps like a brick, so calling it "better" is a stretch. You got burned by one bad night, that's all.
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