Make Your Own Gear: Multi-Pad-Ground-Sheet Integration System

In an effort to save pack weight, I carry a minimal sleeping pad set up. In the past, this has been a small inflatable pad for my torso and a cut down foam pad for my legs. Before bedtime, I would carefully arrange these on the ground cloth. When I woke in the morning, these individual pieces would have migrated out from under me, especially the foam pad for my legs. I slept with chilly feet on a lot of nights because the conductive heat loss without the foam pad is dramatic, even in the summer.

I was also carrying a stuff sack in the hopes of adding an extra bit of protection to my fragile inflatable pad. Yes, that’s extra weight, but a sleeping pad is a very important piece of equipment, and I worried about it getting punctured. With a hole, they’re just about useless. But, simply rolling my ground cloth around my pad eliminated the need for a protective stuff sack, so I left that at home.

Then it finally hit me - all the stuff I sleep on could be efficiently connected in one tidy package. As a result, I’ve created a single unit pad with the inflatable torso pad, thin foam for my legs and a ground cloth.