A good night's kip???

With not very long to go until I head off once again to battle the mountains, headwinds and dirt roads of Ecuador... it is time to finalise some kit choices.

You may have seen posts on my fb page (www.facebook.ckm/OneChallengeAtATime) with some new kit that I am taking... including a water filter and a backcountry hole digger for when there is no other option but to dig a hole.
These are both pieces of kit that I haven't taken on a challenge with me before and it will be interesting to see how much use I have for either.

One piece of kit that I will be utilising over and over again will be my sleeping kit system. On the Tour Divide, I took a bivvy bag, air matt, and tarpaulin for backcountry bivvys.... on my first night rigging up the tarp to a digger!!!
Because I figure I will encounter more precipitation in Ecuador, this time I am taking a small tent instead of the bivvy and tarp.
My air bed on the Divide was an Alpkit Numo, which was extremely light, packed up very small and given that I had used and liked Alpkit kit before, had been confident it was a good kit choice.... errrr.... apparently not!
The airmat punctured at some point between midnight and 1am on my first night out and would not stay inflated after that, leaving me on the cold hard ground... less than ideal. Once home, I utilised the included puncture kit... to no avail. Somewhere there was a slow leak, which I could not fix. I read somewhere that it may have been a valve issue but not managed to confirm that.

So, with Ecuador fast approaching, I needed to buy some kind of sleeping mat... little did I know that this would require extensive research and a serious understanding of all the factors to consider. After all... a good nights kip at the end of a very strenuous cycling day is worth its weight in gold.

What follows is a considerations of all the factors that I considered and my final choice with the reasons behind it!!


Firstly, the main limiting factor... price!
Whilst I would love to afford the 6 inch thick, light as a feather, as compact as a postage stamp air mat, it has to come within a reasonable budget. This was partly why I bought the aforementioned Numo... it was pretty cheap at around £40. But given the trouble I had had with it, basically 1 reasonable nights sleep and the rest on the ground, I reasoned that perhaps spending a little more might be a good thing. you get what you pay for right? That said spending over £150 just on a sleeping mat was out of the question and so I reckoned on around £100. This took out what is reckoned to be the best one on the market, the thermorest neoair xlite.

Next up was looking at weight and packability. Given that I'm not the best climber on a bike, I try to equalise things out by packing as light as possible. So carrying a 1Kg mat whilst might give a better night's kip, would add unneccessary weight that I would be CURSING on many an incline. So it has to be light, without compromising on durability or insulation...
under 500g would be ideal.

Durability.... a heavy mat which stays inflated is better than a light mat which has a puncture... words from my bro showing even someone not interested in all this stuff can grasp the main point very easily... easier than me because I was still thinking of how each extra gram will make each meter uphill that more difficult!!
It seems that the thickest mats have 75 dernier (D) base... the most rugged of them... this goes to 30D for the ultralight mats... some have 75D on the base and 30D elsewhere.. basically its a trade off. Ultralight and risk a puncture... heavier but with less possibility you will wake up on the ground.

Next up comes the R rating... basically similar to sleeping bag temp ratings, the R rating is a measure of insulation. The higher the R rating, the warmer (in theory) you will be. I'm a cold person... once my feet get cold, i can't sleep. Indeed, once I camped higher up in the Peak District in March. I spent most of the night trying to rub warmth and feeling back into my white, ice block feet. Admittedly, I had no mat to speak of... it took half a day for my feet to feel the ground!! In summary... R rating... important. Especially as I may well be sleeping above 10,000ft.

Finally the miscellaneous issues... the noise it makes when you turn in the night... do you slip off the sides... is it comfortable for your normal sleeping position, is it easy to inflate and pack away. All these are not top in the considerations... but over 4 weeks, have the ability to put you in a bad mood.

So faced with these considerations, I then had a look to see what mats were available, read reviews and asked for recommendations on a bikepacking fb page. Unsurprisingly, I found lots of contradictory advice and opinions. What suited one person, was the worst thing ever for another. That said, I paid attention to which ones were recommended in replies to my post.  Thermorest mats were mentioned a lot, but they have a huge range each mat with differing plusses and minuses. It was hard to choose...
Two weeks of research and deliberations and I had pretty much settled on the Thermarest Prolite... and then I looked again at a recommendation from my post... the Klymit V lite. Cheaper than Thermarest, bringing it within my budget... it looked comfy. I went to the Klymit website... their range was similar to others... uberlite expensive down to heavier cheaper... only their insulated range was still pretty light.
Go to the link below to see the full range
(https://www.klymit.com/sleeping-pads.html)

The Klymit insulated static V lite seemed to tick all the boxes. Apparently packing down to around a small loaf of bread size, £90 on Amazon, and with an impressive R rating of 4.4 and weighing in at 565g... this seemed to be perfect.... I deliberated a few more days before taking the plunge. I could get lighter mats but none with as good an R rating. Durability may be the only factor where I have to keep my fingers crossed but with sleeping mats... you literally can't tick every box.

Skip forward to today and it arrived in the post... very exciting.

First impressions... it was more compact than I had imagined...

I took it out of the bag and unfurled it... not as flimsy as I imagined... a patch 'kit' in the bag... just a stick on patch... one stick on patch (either they think its durable... or they have skimped on the patches... time will tell)

It blew up with 17 good breaths... a few more than the stated 10-15... but not enough to make me dizzy (at sea level anyway).

The V's looked comfy... I lay on it... it was comfy (at least on my house floor) ... I tried side, front, back... all nicely comfy. ... and not much horrible crinkly sounds as I turned. The side rails, such as they were did not feel like they would stop me falling off the side but the mat was wide enough to feel as though I wouldn't.

I was impressed from initial look and feel... now for the true test... would it go back in the bag easily.... I rolled the air out of the valve, which turned to let air out quickly and then turned for inflation... nice.
It deflated quickly and rolled up easily... I did unfurl and roll up again to get the last bits of air out, but it slid into the bag with space to spare... no wrestling it in... no swearing or painful finger tips... perfect...

Of course the true test of this mat will be at 10,000ft in drizzle at night on cold hard ground, but from first look, I think it will be up to the task!

Follow the journey from September 7th to find out😁 www.facebook.com/OneChallengeAtATime