Sunday, October 7, 2018

Gear Review, My Mattress for the Long trail

When thinking about hiking the long trail I really didn't want to spend a lot of money on equipment/gear, this is possible but usually means you sacrifice weight to do so. Anyone planning a long trek or a thru hike will understand this. There is a balancing act between inexpensive vs not effective and this as stated before will depend one persons desires. 
When it came to choosing a air mattress for my sleep system the first one I purchased was the Naturehike Air Mattress  (orange). I watched reviews on you tube that said for the price which was about $50 Canadian this would be a good light mattress. Upon receipt It seemed fine, I inflated it and rested upon it on the living room floor. In this location it was a good mattress, it was slightly different when hiking with it. We all know you can't have optimum conditions in the wilderness. Of course rocks and roots are a part of everyday life, based on this I found that this mattress was not good for me. The rocks and roots found a way to push up through the mattress. It wasn't great but better than with nothing at all. I suppose in hindsight it is good for the price.

My next decision was to go to REI and see what was available. the nice part about REI is that you could try the mattress prior to purchase, albeit in a controlled environment but you could try before you buy. After trying a few we decided on the Nemo Cosmo Air Sleeping Pad  20R.

In our opinion this was a great choice some of the elements that I liked were as follows, First it was easy to inflate as it had an integrated foot/hand pump built in. No batteries required. simply unroll and begin. if you decided to you could oral inflate but I can't see why. During the pack up time I would pull the plug after getting up and the mattress would fully deflate while I was preparing breakfast. Very easy to roll up when deflated. I end up being a side sleeper most of the time because my charming wife will not allow me to sleep on my back and snore. Really I move around quite a bit and this is big enough to allow for this movement. There is plenty of loft so you don't feel the rocks or roots when you fall asleep. It is an insulated mattress but I cannot speak about how the insulation works as we were hiking in warmer temperatures. The mattress is relatively quiet as well, some of the others we tried sounded like you were sleeping on a chip bag. Overall very happy with the mattress. Now a said at the start I didn't want to spend a lot of money but ended up purchasing two mattress to find the one that works.....Wish I had of read this review...or at least had the chance to try all the mattress first. I might have just bought one as opposed to two But such is life.
The Nemo Cosmo that I used 

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