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Reviews > Sleep Gear > Pads and Air Mattresses > Pacific Outdoor Equipment Kids Mat > Colleen Porter > Initial Report
Product Description: A scaled-down sleeping pad aimed at kids (well, at the parents of said kids). The top is a bright, cheery, yellow 50-denier diamond ripstop decorated with forest animals (moose, bear, mountain goat, fox, and owl), their footprints, and a growth chart printed on it. The underside is screaming neon orange in a much heavier, non-ripstop fabric. Included are an orange stuff sack (also decorated with animals & footprints), a velcro strap, a patch kit, and a permanent marker (I assume for marking the child's height on the growth chart). Field Information: The POE Kid's Mat will accompany Paul on all of his camping and backpacking trips for the next four months. This will include California, Montana, Arizona, Texas and possibly New Mexico. Elevations will range from sea level to at least 8000 ft/2400 m. Temperatures will range from just above freezing to over 100 F/56 C. Weather will range from hot and dry, to hot and humid, to cold and wet – I anticipate several thunderstorms during our stay in Montana, and Glacier should be characteristically moist. The California coast will alternate between blazingly hot days and foggy nights. Texas will probably be quite humid and hot. First Impressions: Seems like a cute (but not too cute) little sleeping pad for a kid. Paul, age four, loved the animals and footprints. The only thing about the growth chart that interested him was reading the numbers to me. He insisted that we roll out the pad and that he be allowed to take a nap on it. Well, he never napped, but he and his brother (age thirteen months) crawled around and laid down on it until the novelty wore off. Now we need to take it camping! The colors are very bright and cheery. The pad itself seems comfortable, and Paul fits on it very well, although at 41.5 in/105 cm tall he is already almost as tall as the growth chart - it tops out at 45 inches/114 cm. We won't be able to measure him on the chart for much longer, and Paul is one of the shortest four-year-olds I know. The growth chart is cute, but I don't think it will be very useful to parents of children much older or taller than my son. I have already slept one night on the pad, to make sure it had the same amount of cushion I would expect from an adult's pad of the same thickness. I found it quite comfortable, and since I weigh at least four times as much as him, I'm confident the padding is sufficient to give Paul a good night's sleep. Test Plan: Paul will be the primary tester. I do have another son, just over one year old, but I can still get away with putting him on a foam pad. Paul will use it with blankets and a pillow for most of our car-camping, and with a down sleeping bag on our backpacking trips. Paul is not gentle on gear. I’m going to sew him a down sleeping bag (I have the nylon and down, now I just have to dedicate the time), and I’m a little nervous about whether he’ll wreck it or not. He will most likely jump on the pad, roll around on it, roll it up, throw it, stomp on it with his boots still on, and all manner of other thoughtless (but very child-typical) abuses. He didn’t manage to wreck the TorsoLite pad we tested a few years ago, but he’s bigger and more inventive now. So I hope the Kid’s Mat has been designed with abuse in mind. I will attempt to draw out from Paul
whether or not the pad
is comfortable for him (I've already established that it's comfortable
for me), but the honest and ugly truth is that Paul would sleep just as
easily on the bare ground. Kids are
enviable – they sleep anywhere, in almost any position.
So I anticipate we will focus mainly on
durability and the pad’s usefulness as a child-specific piece of gear. So we're going to use this at every opportunity and
report back on how well the Kid's Mat holds up. Many thanks to both Pacific Outdoor
Equipment and Backpackgeartest.org
for the chance to test this fun little sleeping pad. Read more reviews of Pacific Outdoor Equipment gear Read more gear reviews by Colleen Porter Reviews > Sleep Gear > Pads and Air Mattresses > Pacific Outdoor Equipment Kids Mat > Colleen Porter > Initial Report | |||||
