Initial Report

After spending over a week away from my home I was disappointed to discover that my neighbors who had intercepted my Mt. Washington Sleeping Pad weren't home when we arrived there. So my husband picked the package up for me during the day and it was waiting for me when I got home from work last night. The box was in perfect condition and felt like there wasn't even a sleeping pad in it. The pad inside was brick red in color. It was rolled up and secured with two black straps. My husband was able to go to the post office to have the pad weighed. The pad plus the straps was 10.2 oz and the straps alone were 1.5 oz. This would leave the sleeping pad at 8.7 oz which is slightly more than the 7 oz stated on the website. The pad seemed to be about what I was expecting after checking out the website. It included a tag that had a few specs including the 7 oz weight and the dimensions of the sleeping pad (0.625 x 20 x 60"). The tag also included some information on the environmental friendliness of the material the pad is made out of. None of this information added to the information that was available on the website. As noted in other testers reports, the tag did not state what side of the pad was for sleeping but typically with egg crate mattresses the sleeping side is the bumpy side. After examining the pad I did notice a 1/2" slice in the bottom of the pad that I would guess was made by a razor. It shouldn't affect the pad at all and the material appears strong enough to prevent the slice from growing larger.

Report #2
After examining my Mt. Washington sleeping pad and lying down on it in my home I have a few initial observations. Once unrolling the pad I noticed the first problem. After being rolled up in the packing box for some amount of time, the pad was unwilling to flatten out completely. I was hoping this would be remedied by leaving the pad unrolled for a period of time or by lying down on it but even after leaving it unrolled all night (I slept in my bed tonight) the pad still has a definite curl to it. Because of the light weight of the pad I would prefer to use it on longer backpacking trips and so it will be primarily stored in the rolled up position. I will be interested to see how sleeping on the pad and then re-rolling it several times affects its ability to lie flat.
The pad is made out of a very dense and flat foam. After lying on the pad for just a short time, it didn't seem a whole lot different than lying on the hard ground. I am used to using an air-mattress like the Therma-rest so this may just be the case with foam mattresses. I will be interested to see how sleeping on the pad will differ on my bedroom floor versus a shelter floor and a tent floor. Despite the pad being very thin, it is quite bulky when rolled up. I plan on strapping the pad to the back of my backpack, in which case I would not need to use the straps that are provided. If I do strap the pad to the outside of my pack I am not sure how it would do with getting wet (if it starts to rain before I get my pack cover on) and with potential snags from brushing up against trees. It would have been helpful to include information on keeping the pad clean and how it handles getting wet in the instruction tag.
The material the pad is made out of seems like it would be excellent for keeping my sleeping bag in place. Also, the bottom of the pad seems as though it would stick well to the floor of a shelter. This is helpful for me because I tend to move around a bit in my sleep and my Therma-rest usually moves with me, causing me to wake up in a different place than I went to sleep.
Finally, I would like to comment on the length of the pad. I am 5'9" and with my head off the top of the pad, my feet still hang off the end. It seems to be an awkward length. It is not a 3/4 length pad, nor is it a true full length pad. At this length you miss out on having the insulation value of having your whole body on the pad but the weight value (and in this case the bulkiness value) of having a 3/4 length pad. I would suggest either extending the length of the pad by about 6" or offering it is two lengths.
I plan to test this pad in my home on my bumpy floor, in a shelter setting on the Appalachian Trail, and also in my tent while camping. The nights are still rather cold up here in Maine so I hope to get a feel for the insulation properties of the pad as well as how comfortable a nights sleep it would provide. I am excited about the weight of the pad and hope that it allows me to sleep well enough to justify not bringing my Therma-rest pad along.
Thank you for your patience in me posting these reports.
Emily Durrell

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