The down in an Exped down mat UL7

[Jennifer Mitol]

Is very poofy.

I was sleeping just fine in my stratospire 1 with my pooch, when it was time for a midnight bathroom break.
Unfortunately my pooch seemed to be having a bad dream or something because when I sat up it freaked him out – he jumped up and landed on my downmat.

Apparently the down is in the TOP of the mat – because as the mat slowly lost air from the puncture in the top ALL THAT AMAZINGLY POOFY DOWN just poofed out of the mat! I couldn't find the hole, I was suffocating in a tornado of down as it blew up into my face…and once I managed to escape my tent and vestibule looked like an absolute goose disaster.

The good news is that it was funny enough that I was able to avoid being really angry about my really expensive mat.

[Valerie E]

LOL!!!

Reading your post, I could clearly visualize all the clusters of down swirling around the tent!

So, are you going back to the Synmat now, since it's less messy? ;^)

[Andy F]

Good thing you didn't get busted for goose poaching.

Maybe your dog saw a feather, knew it was a bird, and pounced!

I saw on a Discovery Channel survival show that the best thing to do in this situation is to inhale as much down as possible. It will fill your lungs, giving them an R-value greater than the original mat.

;-)

[Steven Paris]

Please say there's a photo of this . . . .

[Eli Zabielski]

I used a UL7 every day in my apartment until a zipper snagged the pad and tore a quarter sized hole in it last Fall. Then my room was a similar goose explosion.

[Franco Darioli]

Just when I thought only cats are weird…
One of the cats that visits me either sits on my lap and purrs or runs away when he sees me.. at random.
( he was trying to milk me this morning)
Anyway, this is the inside of a Downmat :

BTW, one review quoted 7 oz of down fill inside the std DM7.
I suppose the UL7 has a similar amount and that is a LOT of down.
A YouTube clip of that eruption would have been nice

[HkNewman]

That's 700 fill down, so it's pretty fine stuff anyways and under pressure in a sleeping mat being used? The old MYOG types would be careful working around the stuff go it didn't cover their sewing room.

[Daniel Pittman]

Oh that sucks! Down stuck to everything… you'll be finding it in the darndest places. We had a down duvet rupture last winter. It's no joke.

[Jennifer Mitol]

What made this the funniest was the pressurized air from inside the pad pushing it all out in this awesome volcano! It took forever for me to actually find the little hole – and it really wasn't THAT big – because the down was obscuring everything!

It was in my mouth, my nostrils – that stuff was shooting up directly into my face.

And no – sadly – no photos exist. It would have made a GREAT video tho…….

[Gary Dunckel]

No need for a video of the event, Jen, as you've painted a pretty clear picture of what happened. Though I'm sorry about the mat, and your gimpy ankle, I still smile when I think of the down volcano. It must have been a crappy night's sleep after the mat flattened.

But do you suppose that it's time to take Charlie-Dog to an animal psychiatrist? Maybe get some dream analysis/therapy, or perhaps a class in Puffy Stuff Behavior Modification?

[Jennifer Mitol]

Ha Gary!

Since this is the SECOND exped he's managed to stomp on (the first was a synmat – not NEARLY as dramatic I must say)…perhaps I need to figure out how many CCF pads I'll need to stack to give these middle-aged arthritic bones a good night's sleep with that dog in there with me…..

[Stephen M]

Jen,

Strap a CCF to the top of your pad, also Exped will repair your pad cheaply.

[Stuart .]

I no longer let my dog anywhere near my Expeds, after he had a panic attack when he got himself trapped under the same bed as I was storing my Synmat UL7 LW. No amount of tenacious tape could save that pad.

Thanks to your eloquent description, Jen, I can now imagine what the scene would have looked like had it been my Downmat 7 that was under the bed…

Somehow I doubt a NeoAir XLite or XTherm would have fared any better in similar circumstances.

[Gary Dunckel]

I think we need to take up a collection to buy Charlie-Dog a set of dedicated sleeping socks–made of Neoprene, with titanium foil inserts. Oh, and does he also chew on things? If so, we'd better make a matching muzzle to go with the doggie socks. A girl needs a good night's sleep out there, and a pad she can be proud of. She already has a dog that she can love, pretty much, most of the time, except sometimes when he…

I'm still giggling over my Aquarian vision of that feather volcano.

[Author]

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