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Camp Chairs?
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Home › Forums › Gear Forums › Gear (General) › Camp Chairs?
- This topic has 80 replies, 50 voices, and was last updated 7 years ago by Dean F..
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Aug 3, 2015 at 5:02 am #2218682
I have the Helinox Ground Chair. It's heavy – 22.3 ounces – but it's really comfortable. If I know I'm going to have a lot of time in camp sitting around a fire I'll throw it in my pack.
Aug 4, 2015 at 7:28 pm #2219067When I was younger, I used to sit on the ground. Recently, I have an uncomfortable back after camping for several nights. So now I carry a Keith titanium stool or a smaller Logos aluminum stool when I think it’s needed.
The keith stool is about 10.5oz with height of almost 1’ at use when the logos is 7.7oz/8”.
The logos is lighter but a bit too low to sit on comfortably for long.
Both of them can be easily fixed on the outside of a backpack without changing weight distribution of the pack too much.Mar 10, 2017 at 4:06 pm #3455733Agreed… go as light as possible… but have soemthing.
Mar 10, 2017 at 4:54 pm #3455744Helinox chair zero seems to be the way to go.
Mar 10, 2017 at 9:11 pm #3455780So, for those who do not read MYOG, the chair was finished and posted here at:
https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/81152/It is a ski pole version of the old LaFuma canoe chair.
A steel copy can be found at: http://w.comfortchannel.com/prod.php?node=2602&title=camping-beach-chair-original-travelchair-duck-steel-blackBut the original LaFuma might be hard to find.
This design, unlike the Alite, Helinox and REI ‘pedestal’ types, can be rocked backward by using the feet. The Alite MayFly and Helinox Ground chair are about as close as you can get to this chair, but tried one and it felt a little wobbly; and they are heavier.
Why is it worth a little over a pound to carry one of these? There are several reasons:
Being able to lean back and relax is one.
And having the butt elevated several inches off the cold ground is another.
And the mesh seat and back don’t hold water, so they won’t soak you.
And the low seat allows the chair to be partway inside the tent under the vestibule when it rains.It also folds up with one jackknife fold for attaching to the back of the pack.
Lafuma used to hinge the front legs, but this one doesn’t, so there is a little ledge that projects when the chair is belted to the pack. Onto this ledge goes the rolled up air mat, with the carbon tent poles protected inside the stuff bag.A flaw in the LaFuma design was that eventually the steel rails on each side of the seat would bend out of shape, as pictured in the first link above. This was solved by slipping carbon tubes into the rails during assembly.
In case the link fails, here are a couple pix:
Don’t understand why someone doesn’t make these. Perhaps all the ones made of less tempered aluminum that quickly failed gave them a bad name.
Mar 13, 2017 at 3:30 am #3456287If the weight isn’t a deal-breaker, I can endorse the REI Flex-Lite. I’ve been using one for about two months straight now (I’m deployed again), and it’s holding up great. You can lean back on it easily. Hell, I’ve slept in it, with my head leaning back against a car. The few guys here who bought those horrible three-legged stool things all bought Flex-Lites after seeing the rest of us use them
When I’m hiking, though, I use a 6oz Hummingbird hammock.
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