You slugs!

[Thomas Kight]

OK, so here I am at the beginning of my UL career, standing in the backyard pitching tarps, hanging hammocks, sleeping with or w/o groundsheet, with or w/o bug net just trying to generate both experience and questions.

So last night I throw down a sleeping pad under my newly-pitched tarp. Sleeping is fine, but the morning brings an underside (of pad) full of little slugs and their slime trails. I scraped the little buggers of leaving the pad looking like some Harry Potter troll sneezed on it.

So I'm thinking to myself: What do my new BPL friends have to say about all this. It's not a crisis, and maybe the philosophy is "I don't care bout no stinkin' slugs." But, it certainly strikes me as unpleasant carrying around a snotty sleeping pad. Do I just suck it up and embrace my inner slug? Or simply consider that ground sleeping in dampish environments is not the best choice.

Any practical or philosophical wisdom is welcome.

Tom

[mark henley]

Tom,

A True UL backpacker would have picked the slugs off the Sleeping pad and cooked them in their morning oats.

Protein can be heavy.

[Roger Caffin]

I never, ever put my mat directly on the ground. I always have a groundsheet under it.

[Ryan Gardner]

I've always been paranoid that my mat would get punctured if I placed it directly on the ground. I'm currently using a POE Ether Thermo, so if it springs a leak, I'm sleeping directly on the ground. I've used a GG polycro ground cloth a few times but I still find it a little too thin to ease my mind. I now use Tyvek – my full length piece weighs 4.1 oz. When the ground is dirty (what ground isn't dirty?!) or muddy, I roll it up and put it on the outside side of my pack slipped into the mesh water bottle pocket. (A little bungee on the top holds the top part of the Tyvek in).

I've found this keeps the things that go inside my pack from getting nasties (like slug juice) all over them, and I can sleep without worrying about a thorn ruining my mat.

[Author]

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