[00:00:00] Tayson: Hey everybody, welcome back to the live ultralight podcast powered by outdoor vitals. Today. In this episode we are back to share with you. What you guys have told us is your favorite kind of episode which is a product Deep dive on a new release product. So I brought on Brigham our lead product designer here at outdoor vitals to really go into the backstory of what we aimed to create what came into fruition and what that looks like for you that maybe interested in purchasing this. But these are really educational. Even if you have no interest in this particular product, I promise you, you'll learn a lot about Products, Goods other pads, things that will be valuable to you, to understand when it is time to, maybe go shopping for a future Pat or future product in the future. So the discussion was really good, we went through a handful of Stories, We really explained. Just all those nitty-gritty details that you can't find any five or 10 minute YouTube video for us or anyone else for that matter. This is the source for the most detailed explanation of what's coming into fruition and what it looks like to design a pad behind the scenes. I think we're very honest for very transparent here. That's very much on purpose because we want you guys to have complete confidence in the product that you buy from outdoor vitals that confidence can go. Can come in two ways, it can come from your confidence and Like from the education side of seeing the product, but it can also come from our experience in using the product and the stories that we share and we don't hold, we don't all needing back. Alright, so we hope that this does drive more confidence forward. We hope that it enables you guys to get outside to connect to the vital outdoors. And I think you guys are gonna really enjoy this episode. So, with that, I'll go ahead and roll this discussion with Brigham our lead designer. All right, Brigham. Glad to have you back on the podcast. These are some of our most desirable podcasts actually. That's the feedback. I'm getting, at least if I'm wrong on that, let us know. But people love to dig into the details of things that we're developing things that were releasing such as this Oblivion sleeping pad. And so today, we just get to dig deep on, you know why we developed it? What we're hoping to improve upon based off of our older sleeping pad. and just Just wear it all landed too so I guess just to start off. you know, what was, what was the goals that we set out to accomplish when we, when we started this particular project in your mind,
[00:02:39] Brigham: I think probably the, the highest priority was A more comfortable pad or just improving the comfort. Versus. our previous pad or just just really, I don't know, maybe just Sleeping comfort in general? I would say, I know there's There's some, you know, there's so many. different pad types out there and there's there's some things that you just can't get around if you're like a side sleeper, for example, so I've had, that might work for somebody that's like a belly or back sleeper. Is less likely to be as comfortable for a side sleeper. You know, that often gets like hip pressure and shoulder sore shoulders. But it's not the other way around. Like if you make a pad that Is going to be comfortable for a side sleeper. It's all going to be comfortable for like a belly and back sleeper. And I think that's kind of like one of the, that's one of the areas we really want to. Focus on was Comfort.
[00:03:42] Tayson: Yeah, I mean, what do you what do you tell someone who's just getting into? Backpacking? Let's say or somebody has a little bit less experience, what do you tell people to look for in a pad to begin with? I mean, what do you look for in your own path?
[00:03:58] Brigham: um, well, so in my mind really the pad serves two purposes, One is. Comfort, you know, so that you can sleep. I would say especially on multi-day trips, you know, good sleep is I think it's just as important as. Taking in enough. Calories and fuel. I think it's just as important as proper hydration. And, you know, I think it's just as important as like, your Fitness level in multi-day, especially long distance stuff, but So that's that's like purpose. Number one is, To help you get a good sleep, and good recovery and be comfortable. Purpose. Number two is really, you know, to insulate your body from. The ground which can withdraw heat from your body. The ground is a major contributor to to heat loss of your just going to lay down on the ground to and anything. Cooler than like hot weather cooler than hot weather. So like, you know what I mean? Like if the grass, if its 50 degrees and you lay on the ground, The ground will take heat away from your body for sure.
[00:05:14] Tayson: Yeah. I'm gonna go back to just come for first because there's there's a lot to unpack there. While you're talking though. It definitely made me think about. Just our experience and our experiences over the last couple of years with high altitude and almost every time that I have not felt good at high altitude, or have gotten elevation sickness per se, or anything like that. If I look back at the previous, two days, I'm getting poor sleep. So I'm coming into that with what we call stress, on the body, less quality sleep. And then the other big contributor that I've been able to pinpoint, is just hydration and electrolytes. So those are kind of the two big things that I feel like I focus on now, going into high elevation and you bring up a good point though. If you go into a trip unrested, you can have a bad experience on the mountain where you get elevation sickness or you have, you know, complications arise or you just feel like garbage, right? And the same would apply if you're getting terrible sleep on the trail, right? Like you can, you can easily put additional stress on your body or reduce the amount of recovery by not being comfortable. All night long, and comfort is, is full, staying warm in my mind and, and just the pure Comfort aspect of a pad, Yeah. I mean it also kind of reminds me of a friend that I was talking to that. You know he'd bought two pads. That were what I'd say are not plush comfortable pads like much thinner. A lot less cushion to the pads and he sleeps, great on them. Yeah and his wife hates him like Hey like a sleeping terribly all the time. And I was like, how can you possibly like those paths? Because I'm I'm with the wife on this and I'm like, dude, I I tried those paths years ago, I could not could not handle them. And I'm like, how that can you handle? He's like, well I I lived in Japan for a couple years and I just, I sleep on my back, I don't roll over. I don't side sleep, I don't do any of that. And so I just, I just lay on the thing and I sleep, like you're probably the one person that can sleep good on this really thin uncomfortable Pad but everyone all of the rest of us didn't have to sleep on her back. So when he was in Japan, they just roll out like the bamboo. I don't know what you like that. They just sleep on these floor mats so you have to sleep on your back and he got used to that, he's done it ever since. But for the rest of us, you know, having a little bit of cushion and stuff, that's what we're used to. I mean, you sleep on a lot of us are sleeping on, like 16 inch beds, you know what I mean? I've just cushioning and springs and and all these types of things. So that. So to go out there on like a one inch thick pad is crazy, and I've interviewed a few guys too recently on the podcast, but just take like the Like the the foam, you know. One closed cell foam pad. Yes. Yes. And I that's the next slide. Those guys, I will say I think typically getting next to no sleep anyways, because they're doing FK teas. But even then it's just it's mind-boggling. Yeah.
[Editor’s note: Tayson is describing a personal historical observation, not established prevention or treatment guidance. Altitude illness can be serious; use current qualified medical and route-specific guidance rather than relying on sleep or hydration alone.]
[00:08:19] Brigham: I mean to each his own and every like people's priorities and objectives are different. You know, like if you're out doing an fkt you know, it's just like you go into that knowing like, hey, I only really expect to get four hours of sleep, you know, on the two nights that I'm out because I need to be moving for 19 hours. Yeah. In order to cover the distance in the, in the amount of time that they're they're setting out to do, and but I would say those are like outside the bell, curve of most people that are like even avid Backpackers in my opinion, they're probably like those, the 10% one side of the curve or the other. Where. The bulk of people. probably aren't at that, you know, extreme and And yeah, they just would prefer to just be a bit more comfortable.
[00:09:10] Tayson: Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's been interesting lately to. There's been a lot of talk of where I see it more often, that they call their people are calling it, The Big Four. Now instead of the big three, right? Like your backpack, just for your backpack, your sleep system and your shelter. The Sleep System included the sleeping pad and the sleeping bag and find an interesting now because they're breaking those out which I mean I think they probably should have all the time. I've always felt like but like the big three didn't even make sense.
[00:09:37] Brigham: Yeah, and yeah, I don't know.
[00:09:39] Tayson: Yeah but it is like it is a package deal in some sense as the word too. Because you can have The most expensive premium sleeping bag and sleep terrible because your pad or vice versa. You know, they really work more in conjunction than almost anything else. You know, I always tell people this, you can have a negative 50 degrees sleeping bag, like rated tested proven and you can be cold at night if you're on an air mattress, right? With no insulation in cold conditions because it just will suck the heat out. It's like, it's like if you're outside and you grab a metal pole, no. Amount of gloves or anything is going to keep the heat from just getting ripped away from your body, by holding onto that metal pole. And that's the same thing we do. And we when we lay on these sleeping pads that are not rated warm enough, you know Etc. So it all really matters, and Yeah, I just think it's, it's good to fully understand what the goals are, which again, are they'll sleep as much through the night without waking up as possible to get quality sleep to get into deeper cycles of sleep and warmth and comfort are really a big factor in that especially when it pertains to these sleeping paths. So, Maybe one more step in that direction too. And we got when we're ready. You know. Looking at designing pads. We've tested a lot of pads, Brigham sleeps on a lot of different paths. These own a lot of pads. We've we've bought a lot of pads, we've cut up a lot of pads. We've done a lot of a handful of things with these and I will say this this is this is what I've personally come to. So this is kind of the philosophy of where I'm at. Is I am all about shaving as much weight as possible Whenever However possible. However I'm also all about adding in at or potentially adding back in the weight that I feel like really matters. And so take shelters, for instance, you know, jumping to a trekking pole shelter like the 40th. You used to it, you pitch it a couple times and it was like I will never look back scenario for 99% of what I do. The 40 is just is the end, all be all and I'll never want to add back in a bunch of polls. I'll never want to add back in, you know, two layers to add in the bowl and the weight. And I just feel very confident in that and that it works really well. And so, To me adding back in you know the weight of going back to like a freestanding tent is just it doesn't make any sense. whereas, you know, with with something like a sleeping pad, I have dropped down to some of these lighter and lighter, and lighter pads. and I've discovered that for me personally, it's an area that I'm I'm actually willing to add back a little bit of weight on the
[00:12:28] Brigham: Yeah, I to add on to what you're saying, I think. because it's the point you're making is really really valuable and in, you know and in this In this genre of backpacking, where people are really weight, conscious and, and people are way conscience for a reason. There's a lot of benefits. You know. To being ultralight and and shaving off the ounces and grams as much as you can because that improves your comfort while you're physically doing the hike and then it improves your, your comfort over time. You're recovery over time say over a five-day 100 mile trip, right? Like, but I it's easy for people in like, you know, a world of like checklists and base weights and and Counting ounces is to kind of look at one product. With blinders on like exclusively. Look at one product and only assess it based on a few criteria where If you kind of broaden that out to like, what's the entire purpose of? You know, kind of reducing our our Trail weight, I'll just call it, you know, it is for comfort and to improve our experience and to improve our enjoyment of the entire duration of the trip. And so the point you make about, you know, Being as weight conscious as possible saving as much weight as possible. But then recognizing that areas that for you make a difference in that, you know, Comfort on day, three, four and five. And putting that weight, where it's going to matter the most? Is is really good. I think I would just recommend that that people really kind of look at it that way as like take it as a whole, don't take one piece of gear as an isolated. You know, as one isolated thing to assess, you know, should I get this? Well, it's, you know, based on how much it weighs or how big it is, or or some other factors. Yeah, look at. Look at what you want to experience, and why kind of the, why behind everything you're going to be using. And then that, I think it draws out those things that we recognize we need to do, or we need to add some weight to increase that long-term comfort.
[00:14:56] Tayson: But it's kind of funny, right? Because we we categorize so much and we categorize ourselves and other people, right? Because it like for instance, you kind of have these guys that raise their hands and are just like I'm an ultralight Backpacker and they identify with this at a at a level that Can be damaging to a whole system because then they feel like if I'm an ultra like Backpacker, then every single thing that I touch has to be considered. Ultralight has to be considered the lightest in its category. And and I think when you look at it in that Spectrum, so, a lot of people maybe Get into ultralight backpacking and then get back out of it. Right. Like, like, they go so hard to like, okay, I've got to have and this isn't a slide against like an Uber Lite sleeping pad, but I have to have an Uber Lite sleeping pad, right? And, and everything has to be on that level, like the most extreme Ultra, I have to have a frameless pack. I have to have, you know, all these touch points to get to these really, really my new levels of bass weight. When in reality, you know, our philosophy I think is to pack as light as possible so that we can also add in the things that we deem necessary for that specific trip or for us specifically as well, or at least, so you have
[00:16:17] Brigham: the ability to do so without like overburdening yourself because if you're so if you're really awake conscious, then you you almost afford yourself the luxury of adding a total of eight ounces of your entire gear of your entire kit to have like some increased Comfort or capability or something, you know? Yeah. Because if they're different, I think what you're describing. Is, you know, just thinking that because you're trying to go ultra light or is light as possible. That means, X, Y, and Z. That's different than saying You know, looking at oneself and realizing, hey, I threw experience. I've actually learned that. I don't need a full length that like, is there are those people out there that can sleep totally comfortably on those three quarter length pads? But they don't arrive there, you know, that's it's different to arrive there from experience than it is to just arrived there by assumption that because I'm trying to have a nine pound base weight. That means that I have to you know, XYZ like Nothing means that you have to do anything. You know. I think your own desires your own goals and objectives that should be like the most determining Factor.
[00:17:32] Tayson: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's that's a bunch of really good philosophy. And so turning that into practice for me has been I'm a side sleeper, a lot of the times I will sleep on my back more. When I am backpacking, and I might at home, but I'm still going to sleep on my side for a good portion of the night. And so, I personally need a thicker pad and what I've discovered is the absolute thinnest pad that I will even try to use anymore. Would be about a two and a half inch thick pad and I'm not talking about a two and a half inch thick pad that Scott like the all the, the welded waffle structures in them. And there's a handful of companies out there doing them but I'll name the one that's most popular. Like a klymit sleeping pad, that's got all of the lines, all through that. Like, that may one of some of their pads might be like, a two and a half inch thick Pad, but there's not enough air in there. I'm talking like a like, a Neo air pad, right? Two and a half it's just like, that's about as thin as I can go. Where I can get decent sleep. I think, less than that. Just doesn't work for me personally. So as we're looking at this pad and we're looking at, okay? How do we improve comfort? And and and warmth actually, it was like, okay, three inches I think was was like the thinnest I personally wanted to go. So in our last pad I think was even three and a half or three and a half on the side three in the middle kind of in that realm. I think that was a really good sweet spot that we that we wanted to stick with to Optimize the amount of comfort for people. And then the other aspect, you know, going back to what you were saying. The other part of pad was to also optimize the warmth of the pad. So our last pad, it lived through the whole R-value testing system. Changes. And so, when we started with that pad, we had it estimated at a 4 r value pad. And as time went on, and these tests started to evolve and change and quite frankly, it makes sense in retrospect because it was, oftentimes, you know, you're sleeping on the pad and you're wondering, maybe while you're getting a little bit colder than you, think you should be for a, for all our value pad, you know. And we always stated we had an estimated for our value, not not it. We did not test that and certify that, by any means. But yeah we definitely as that all transpire over the last three years or so, you know it was pretty it was pretty clear, pretty quickly. Hey, we really need to increase the warmth of our pads that were in our category. Making pads in a similar way were like there are values fell. Pretty drastically. And so, yeah, I mean for us, we wanted a three season pass something that we could use, you know, with the broad spectrum and three season really gets us that, you know, something that could potentially get you down into the teens or or something like that. So those are the two big Milestones. I think that we were focused on is, how do we increase comfort, and how do we increase the R value of our path? so, where do you want to go from here? Brigham. You just want to dive in and explain the details. You want to explain anything more on on backstory with the development?
[00:20:49] Brigham: Yeah, I think we're good. We could really go anywhere from here.
[00:20:52] Tayson: Yeah, I think one of the other things that we spent a lot of time on with this pad that will just get out in the year. Two is pads is probably the hardest category. Design for in our opinions. A lot of resources that need to be involved, there's a lot. This is kind of the one category in the field of everything that we touch. Right now that has a high level of patents, IP information, you know, things that you have to design around. And so there are some some companies out there that have patents that have done phenomenally well and it's and it's I don't know more or less gated a lot of other companies following their example. And so, There's just there's a whole lot to consider when getting into these. I mean remember, And it was a few years back. I remember printing out like a 30 page trade or patent and trying to read through it on a vacation once anyways, there is a lot that goes into paths and I would say where we're excited about this path. It's a massive uplift. And what we've had previously, it's going to be an extremely valuable Pad but the direction that we were able to take this pad is is the direction we were able to take this path? So yeah. Okay, so getting into it. Yeah, let's let's just dive in. Let's start, I guess with the insulation. So, Big key component of this obviously is what installation we're using, how we're using it. There's different. There's different installations out there like film, right, like, foil, foil layers in there to trap and reflect heat back to you. There's pads that will create more baffles structures inside of them, to reduce the amount of air that can circulate within the pad. I don't think people a lot of people will understand this, but We have a cold object on the ground and you have a hotter object on top. It actually can create a lot of air movement inside of the sleeping pad with just the are shifting constantly. Shifting almost think of it just like you're creating your own weather system. A little bit inside of this pad, by just the the different temperatures on each side of it constantly. So they'll there's pads out there that will do things to trap the air a little bit more so that it can't circulate as quickly. And then there's, like, there's been traditional Insulation like you would find in an insulated jacket, synthetic jackets, something like that, they'll use all to insulate. And again the insulation in a pad like that is to Trap the heat closer to your body or to hold it closer to your body, but it also does help to just reduce the amount of air current and motion happening inside that path. So So, what do we end up landing on for this particular pad?
[00:23:53] Brigham: well, so to classify our pad, we went to accomplish everything was just talking about to, you know, slow down or reduce the amount air movement to trap heat. So we use a Basically insulation. It's a multi-layer insulation. So it's got, you know, a layer of it's essentially like a non-woven. Fabric layer with a lofted filament insulation, you know, a synthetic insulation like a sheet of insulation. And then foil on the other side of it. So it's like a three layer. a three layer insulation that just is placed inside the pad runs throughout. and one thing about, you know, designing paths and working with pads is Like at the beginning of the podcast, we start talking back kind of like the two objectives like make it comfortable and insulate our body's from you know losing heat to the ground. When you're designing a pad actually those two objectives kind of place limitations on the other so and I just say Place limitations. So Is just not an open book of opportunities that you can do, you know, to make the PAD as warm as possible because that will then affect the comfort of the pad. Because there are different things that affect the comfort of a pad. They're saying is a structure inside the pad will then affect what you can do to insulate the pad. So you're saying, like, hypothetically if we made a one inch thick pad or one and a half inch thick pad, we might be able to make a warmer pad than a 8 inch thick pad. Yeah, yeah. That's a good example is like, you know, if all, if you're just looking at one one objective, you know, then it opens up a lot more. Potential. I think so Solutions versus You know, we we want to have a three-season pad but that's also really comfortable. So now the structure that you're working with inside the pad changes and so that changes what you, you know, your options to to keep the pad warm
[00:26:08] Tayson: enough in three seasons. Well, let's let's quickly dispel this myth as well, which is that like the bigger the pad, the more insulated you are from the ground. That's that's a myth, that's not true. In fact, the more the more tall the pad is the more space you have to fill up essentially to create the barrier and insulation. You know, if you have a really tall pad it's just that much more space that it can get cold from the outside on the on the edges and cold from the bottom. And it's not that much more room for air to circulate, within that pad. And so the bigger the pad, you know, and in some ways, the more insulation you have to put in there, you know, but then there's the Other Extreme of, like, if you have an eighth inch thick pad, you know, you don't have enough space to maybe get enough. Insulation in there too. So there is kind of a sweet spot where I don't know hypothetically like a two inch thick pad, maybe like the sweet spot where you could get it incredibly warm but it might not be comfortable at all again, at the lightest weight. And so there's just so many factors that all you do this, that affects this throughout the whole path.
[00:27:12] Brigham: So yeah, we use a three layer insulation. And, and I guess one of the important parts about having an insulated pad is one thing we definitely didn't want to do was have any point on the pad, where the top Surface of the pad and the bottom surface of the pad come together. Because now that's just That's just zero insulation. And there's zero dead air space being trapped so like you know, maybe some Some more, some lower price pads out there will do that to create a comfortable pad, where they'll weld the top and the bottom together at certain intervals because that kind of creates like some contour and the ability for the pad to follow the shape of your body, as you're on your side or whatever. But that At the same time that now creates cold spots throughout the pad.
[00:28:10] Tayson: It creates cold spots, it all. So reduces the amount of air that can be held and so what I found on on paths that are what you call welded And think of a weld as like a, like if you're familiar with this, say sleeping bag, that's so through design. Versus a baffle design. That's kind of what we're talking about is, we're doing baffles versus so through or welded design. But those welded designs too because they have to come and touch again in the middle, the bottom. And the top fabric to me, they reduce the amount of air in the piece altogether which then makes it so that I can't side sleep on a piece like that. And then the last part of that too is just look. That's a Highly highly efficient way to make a pad. Meaning they can just literally Stamp Those with a big heat press on a mold and and they're made right. Like, I mean, it's just stamp you pull the fabric on and the whatever's inside of it and you stamp it. So, you can make those at a very cheap cost compared to doing a baffled style structure, but yes, a welded seam like that too. Can create so much more room for cold air to get underneath you for cold air to get through through the pad where there's zero Insulation at all. Etc, etc. So with our installation, we going back to what we ended up doing I guess. There was a few factors, right? So we wanted to see what we might be able to do with foil or reflective barriers. Um we also wanted to you know just make this as warm as possible. And so what we started to test, I mean we again we've looked at a lot of things here and and what Brigham is only one, man, he can't design. You know, everything out there known to man and so we do have some limitations on just time there and so we you know as we're testing a lot of these what we what we were able to do especially again related to patents and all sorts of things like that was we were kind of gravitating towards this insulation that has a reflective piece on top the non-woven and then they adhere a high Loft insulation to the underside of that. Just like you would find any synthetic jacket or something. So, That that combination really quick seemed to give us the highest value warmth for weight. What it also allowed us to do is greatly mitigate the amount of what called Dead zones in the pad. Right. So if you were to think about a pad being made anywhere that there is a baffle or a connection point or seam or like in our older pad with the long vertical baffles, we can't put insulation. You know, in like right against that that baffle that's created. You have to have space to be able to weld those baffles into place and so it was okay. And, you know, so not only is it, can we use this insulation? But how can we get essentially more insulation into the pad? Create as few as possible areas where there's not insulation in the pad and and what will that turn out to in terms of our value? So, When with that we, you know, with also moving this to a quilted design instead of a vertical baffle design, we were able to get what I would say, is just a whole lot more insulation into this pad with way less dead zones. That, that really boosted the warmth of the pad, Yeah. so we've got this insulation, we played around a few different weights and settled on settled on one that we felt like provided the most You know, bang for your buck in terms of weight and warmth and then we wanted to you know test out anything else that we might be able to do for warmth. And so we also tested a reflective coating To go directly onto the fabric. So when you look at this pad, you'll see also that the the top layer is much more shiny and essentially reflective because we have treated that fabric with another layer of like a silver. Coating that will also reflect heat back to the body. So really between those two systems, that's where we're going to get the warmth of this pad. So once we got all this done, we did our value test this pad. And it came back at a 3.5 r value. Compared to our old pad right that we kind of estimated at a four. Well the truth is you know when that when all of that updated testing and things like that came out that other pad did drop considerably. So what this really did for us was in terms of temperatures I guess that you're sleeping in. I test I I trust this pad 10 to 15 degrees colder than our last pad. How I would put that in the simplest terms since our old pad wasn't certified.
[00:33:20] Brigham: It is tough because like we had no test to come up with that number. So it's it's hard to make any hard comparison this pad versus the other one because frankly there wasn't an actual factual number on the other one. So the only thing we could do compared to our old pad is just experience, you know, just field tested and kind of Test, its limits find with repeatable Comfort level. You know what I mean? Like,
[00:33:52] Tayson: Yeah. So and I've been able to sleep on this pad for over a year, now you know through I slipped on prototypes longer than that but but like the actual finished pad essentially, I've been sleeping on for go back into our YouTube archives. There's a video where I ended up skiing out of a campsite at night. So I, we were out snow camping and I skied out at night because that, that was the path that we sent in for our value testing. And so, that was that was that particular tested pad was, was over a year ago when I had slept on
[00:34:32] Brigham: one of the ads that was sent in for, for testing.
[00:34:35] Tayson: Yeah. And so. So we've, I've spent a lot of time on it and To me. Yeah, it's been a significant warmth increase really significant warmth increase and so to me personally I now have slept on this pad down and I don't know, there may be some guidelines on this. Like if you were to look up, you know what a 3.5 r value pad is supposed to be able to go down to. I would I, in terms of,
[00:35:03] Brigham: you know, just Not wanting to. Get people like give them overconfidence to where they're going to have a bad experience or have unreasonable expectation. You know, I would just classify it as a three season pass, a three season pad, you should not expect. Frequent freezing temperatures in three seasons now. Sure in Spring and fall, you might have freezing temperatures but I I wouldn't like recommend, you know below 20 degrees with this path. That that falls into the Four Season realm of pads.
[00:35:38] Tayson: Yeah. I think that's that's probably the best way to put it for getting expectations, right. You know, sleeping in the 20s I think you're still going to be very comfortable. I have personally, take it into the teens and I would say that's where you're starting to hit those limitations, for sure. It's not until I get into the teens that, you know, you're really like trying to pay attention to if that path is, is keeping me warm enough from the bottom, But we really like, I really like three season pads, especially because it gives you a massive range of use. So I use this in the summer months, on the Appalachian Trail. We used it in the Grand Canyon. Used it all fall and then, you know, two weeks back or three weeks back, we went up up on the mountain here, above us camping. It, you know, 9500 feet, almost 10,000 feet, and it got down to like -2 degrees Fahrenheit. and I layered a closed cell foam pad, underneath it is a two r value, close the foam pad and Slip, totally fine. Did not get cold from underneath. And so that's like these three seasons in my mind are really a great option. And for us, like we use an 8th inch foam pad. Everywhere we go and those 8 inch foam pads. You know, they Supply you roughly a half of an R value in additional warmth to the ground. And so you know with the fact that I don't leave my house without that 8 inch foam pad because it's my sit pad it's it keeps my pad from slipping around inside my tent it's an extra puncture, you know Make sure puncture repellent, I can't think of that protection, you know, I use that thing everywhere and so to me it this pad has just been and that maybe that's why I've taken it into the teens occasionally and then okay with it. But it is a big jump and for me especially the long wide pad we found over time on the on the older model. The long wide pad was colder than the regular pad and so where like for me sleeping on a long wide pad and the new model and the old model, I feel like it added another 10 to 15 degrees of range, over the previous model, just a significant jump in warmth in the field. So, Okay. Covered covered the warmth side, cover the R value side. Anything we left out there as far as design aspect. I mean I guess the one last thing that I think I hit on pretty well though is just with the I-beam structure. We were able to use a continuous sheet of insulation and just punch out little holes in the insulation to run those I-beam baffles through. So that is actually one solid sheet of insulation in the pad. It's not like strips of insulation that are wound through there, anything like that? It's just hey, they cut out little holes where they put the baffles in. And it's one continuous solid sheet of insulation. And that that's also a big reason for the increased jump in warmth over our previous pad. So, Okay, let's talk a little bit about Comfort now. Let's talk about I guess since we're talking about the I-beam construction these offset baffles instead of these long vertical baffles, what do you think about those as far as? Your experience with those in Comfort.
[00:38:59] Brigham: I think they offer the widest range of comfort for the most type of, for the, you know, a broad range of sleeper types or even body types. because it like just creates a bunch of little pillows, essentially, you know, on a pad and those adapt to pressure points, you know where your body is putting the most weight as you're sleeping, a different positions on the pad. So I think it's a very adaptable configuration and like, We did test. Like we made several prototypes with different configurations of those i-beams different orientation of how they're placed. Um, and yeah, it I think that's probably where the biggest comfort. boost comes from that is that will apply to the most people because they're, you know, like with our old pad, it was just long long, you know, high beams And, you know, that was comfortable probably very comfortable for some people. but not as comfortable for another chunk of people, and I think Because of this. The way these. These beams are placed and it just allows the pad to conform and kind of Provide support and cushioning in different areas just more adaptable. Yeah, I
[00:40:32] Tayson: would 100% agree. I think there's a lot of conflicting stories out there with full vertical baffle and comfort. Meaning you get people who hate them like really hate them. And you get some people say I slipped totally fine and I think that has to do with the fit of the pad how you sleep on the pad. And so what I kind of think about is Like in a long vertical baffled pad like that, if you were to sit only in the middle on the pad, what you'll find is that both of the edges will just rise up in the air, right? And that's like a good sign of what maybe is wrong with that pad. So let's say you were someone who, you know, pulls your knees up during the night or something like that, it just has so much more room to shift the air away from the body and not, you know, limit some of that. It's not air flow. Like, there's not like there's limits in airflow but just the structure of it, equalizes out that pressure and set of just having these long vertical baffles. And so if you sat in the middle of this newer pad the edges may like come up a little bit but that's from air pressure. But not they're not talking like fold in half on you because you don't have these really rigid long beams going, the full length of the pad. It's Off. You know,
[00:41:49] Brigham: I would, I would even add in terms of comfort. The pad is going to adapt to your body, shape size, weight and pressure. But it's also going to adapt to the ground better. Just like you're kind of describing. A pad that has really long. Essentially tubes, you know, like you described when you sit on it, it's going to be very rigid and just going to kind of like Flex up on the ends. Well well the ground is not always perfectly flat too and so I have found that this pad, you know, with the the I-beam Placement, it adapts. Well, To the Contour of the ground below it, which actually does help with. Sleep Quality because, you know, if it's just like, you know, a 12 square inch area that may be is a dip or a rise in the ground like it's actually going to kind of conform to that versus the whole pad almost tip to one side and then all night, you're kind of fighting that leaning over feeling or sliding downhill feeling, whereas this pad And you can actually kind of demonstrate it pretty well with when you inflate the pad. Like it's not, you couldn't really just like grab it by the end and hold it out and it would stay, right? It would, it just starts to bend over or fold and kind of just wilt Whereas like that's a good demonstration of how that pad is going to. Adapt to your body pressure and weight. And then to the ground, you know, the unevenness of the ground and, and those two combined actually, you know, they do help with, you know, quality of sleep quite a bit.
[00:43:33] Tayson: Yeah, you made me think of kind of two stories. Well one to demonstrate kind of what Brigham was talking about. I don't know if you guys ever remember watching those like Tempur-Pedic mattress commercials where they put like a glass of wine on one side of the mattress and then they'd like walk around on the other side and the glass of wine wouldn't tip over and spill. We're Not Gonna clean that. This can do that level of it, but it's it's kind of that direction of how much, you know, one end of it doesn't affect the other end as much because it's not channeling through these long rigid baffles, and it's breaking up those baffles and just breaking up the whole pad differently which which yeah just increases Comfort. The other thing you made me think about, though Is on that. That trip, you know, I would classify this table as it got Joe approved. which, which means that Joe can sometimes put gear in some crazy situations such as maybe not leveling off your camping spot very well. And so he slept with I kid you not, it was like a six inch deep I like 16 inches of Cirque, you know, circular hole and he just slept right on top of it with that air mattress. And in his words got pretty good sleep. So, It, we do not recommend that by any means. I was over there. Smoothing out my spot and making it very comfortable, but no, it definitely can handle. You know, a little bit less even ground and those kinds of things better than the previous pad did. So yeah, I've been very happy with that. I beam structure, it's very comfortable, it's very balanced. And I've just got great sleep on it for sure. So that's a huge, huge thumbs up from for my side of it, but let's see here. What else mean point You know, the the valve, let's talk about the valve for just a second. We did go with a new valve on this. Which is a big Improvement in the valve. I think if you had a previous pad and you ever had a leak, well, we found is that half of all of the pads that even came back to us that we were people They weren't even punctured. It was just more of an issue of the valve. Not sealing up as tight as we wanted and stuff. So The new valve is is definitely an improvement, it seals really, really well, it's very secure. It gives you the ability to blow air into it, without it coming back out. And then you can pop the second stage. I guess of the valve open as well, and completely dumped the air out unhindered, so very fast deflate, and then a good method for inflation. Just like with our older pad. One of the most popular parts of it or most convenient parts of it. In my opinion, is the pump, sack the inflation sack. So it does come with an included inflation bag. Does a stops right onto the valve. And then you've got a big think of a very large dry. Sack type of thing. It's not necessarily dry sack. We didn't tape the seams on it, but then you can push the air through. Did we take the same time?
[00:46:50] Brigham: No, no. It's it's a it's a really lightweight fabric. It's it's I think it's probably a 20D fabric. It's just a really lightweight Fabric. And the nice thing is, it's I wouldn't leave that home know it's one point seven ounces for that, that pumps out and it's pretty sizable. Meaning you get a lot of air her pump with. It is a big deal for me because in the long white
[00:47:14] Tayson: pad on the previous model the bag was not big enough. To, you know, so I had, I had to fill it up with so many bags. So this newer inflation bag is larger, so traps way more air, so it's less cycles of repeating that. But also, we reduce the weight. I want to say that the old pumps Act was like 3.3 Oz. It's and this one is 1.7. So we got a, we got a much lighter weight and more are capacity. And, you know, to be honest, like, that's probably my least favorite thing to do. Pump up, my airbag are my air mattress and so this is made it way way better experience for me. So improve valves and updated inflation sack. That's that's lighter. And has more capacity. It's definitely some big improvements. On this bad. Other aspects of this to mention over the cut of the shape.
[00:48:12] Brigham: Yeah.
[00:48:13] Tayson: In terms of the shape. So oh the dimension. Yeah why we do that agree.
[00:48:17] Brigham: So the shape it the standard size and the long wide size are essentially the same general shape. So we don't have like a pure rectangle shape or a pure mummy shape. Its kind of I would probably still classify it as more mummy shaped but it's It's not aggressive pretty, it's not very aggressive, it's probably it's more. It's it's designed to be more efficient for space like sleeping Space versus weight savings. So like, It's pretty much the same width down to below the knee. Basically. Yeah, so maybe right around the knee and it's not an aggressive taper. Same thing around the head area. It's just kind of if you were to just take a rectangle and round the corners a bit that's about what it's like and that's for the regular and the long wide and then the other thing we do and this is I don't really. It's not necessarily the most cost effective in terms of like mass production but our standard pad is 21 inches wide, you know, plus maybe like a couple millimeters but like that's that's our industry standard regular with is like 21 plus inches, not not 20 in and it it adds weight to the pad but it also it adds comfort and just a little bit. More. I'm better sleeping experience. I think I'm a huge believer in what
[00:49:50] Tayson: that extra inch and a half does. For me, you know, because I will sleep on the regular pad. So I talked about like I used the Long Way pad a lot, there are times when I'm going as light as I can and I've this is a different can of worms here. I find that I sleep better going down because again I'm over six foot bigger guy, right? Bigger frame, so I find that. I actually sleep better going down to our regular pad. Then going to say like a two and a half inch thick, long wide pad from another manufacturer. That was something that I discovered this year that I did not expect but my other pad, got a hole in it. And so I tried this one when on a trip where I was really trying to just get as light as I possibly could. And that was really surprising to me, but so I do sleep on these regular pads. I have tried a 20 inch pad before and the thing that bugs me, the most is, if I lay on my back, I cannot get my elbows to rest on the pad they slide straight to the ground. So then that's like you almost have to, like, cross your arms or lay on your side because it just not even wide enough for me to like keep my elbows on the pad. And I find that the that, you know, by having even just that extra like inch and a half on these pads. It makes a difference. They really keep elbows and stuff on the pad. And and yeah, I mean for that reason, we've really stuck to this, you know, 21 22 inch width pad over Dropping down to the full 20 inch. So, so that's part of the dimension. The other part is in the long wide. We do jump to a 25 inch wide pad, which I use that one much more and really, really like it going back to the shape though. I'm I've slept on full, mummy cut pads and have not been big fans of those as well. When they're too aggressive with this one, you know, we really it's not an overly aggressive cut at all. And if I've had zero issues, keeping my feet on the pad because it's still quite wide at the bottom. But we did, you know, we trimmed off a little bit of weight trimmed off a little bit of savings and space in the tent, you know? And so those, I I'm very happy with, with the cover of the pad. I do not miss my rectangular like a full rectangular pad at all compared to this one. But if you go back to. So for instance, our mummy cup pad that we've that we've got, historically the old, the older one, the older one. Yeah, I did. I would have issues. Sometimes for my feet would kind of want to wander off of the pad. I don't get that on this pad so I really like the cut of the pad for sure. That's a good call out. So let's talk about materials and then let's maybe get into the thick. Did we did we say anything about the thickness yet? I guess we just said what we did and we might have danced around that a little bit too much. So the pad is Just barely over three inches thick, we'll call it three inches on the website. So very you know Saga standard for us on our old pad. We kind of said it was like three and a half inches on the edges and about three inches in the middle. So realistically Comfort Wise, It's Gonna it's gonna be in the same ballpark of what that one was. So, Three inches thick. And to me it's been optimal. Again, if you're side sleeper and not just a back sleeper, so All right, let's talk about Fabrics. So what are we using? You know, I know with talked about like we've we were adding a coating to the fabric, but what is the fabric? Fabric,
[00:53:32] Brigham: top and bottom, it's the same. It's 20 D roof, stop nylon? Yeah. The top has that. That reflective sovere, reflective coating and I say so silver reflective coating and if you look at it, you're not going to see any silver. It's because the that's right. That's been Died as well. But we it's not silver but it is the coating itself was a silver reflective coating and then it got died. So but yeah, 20 D rooftop nylon throughout, you know, that's Top side, bottom side. Which with we found to be. like, Sufficiently durable. I don't think anybody has had never popped. So to give you an idea, like we've been running prototypes for over two years of this this pad with this fabric. And I, I mean, I basically cringe anytime we do trips watching the way people treat their gear, but I mean, but that's good, but that's good because I know like I try to just let things happen to prototypes when I test them, but when I see the way people use their out, you know, other people use their their gear and their prototype testing samples.
[00:54:43] Tayson: It's it is good to know that they're it's a good reminder to know like what the average user might do to a pad versus okay. But Maybe not quite average. What
[00:54:58] Brigham: I take those
[00:54:58] Tayson: slightly abusive, it's good. How they might treat a product versus how he's going to treat a product. So, To get a good point for sure. Man, you did remind me though. Oh We we are often our own harshest critics. I would say and color of the pad. Wasn't exactly what we were expecting it to turn out at but but it's grown on some of us and we've all come up with some pretty creative names for the color of the pad. You get it out there with that, silver reflective coating on it. It gives it, you know some some interesting looks I guess you could say we've called it the moon pad is A name. That's bounced around a lot, everyone small. I'll call it the mermaid tail. It's just kind of a it's an interesting thing that silver reflective again. You know we're driven by performance, right? So out of the silver reflective because it it adds another element of warmth to the pad. The sheen is, is pretty interesting to see in special. She get it out in the sunlight in different different looks, but if you guys come up with the better named after you you know, get your hands on one of these, you know, let us know. I'm always interested in hearing hearing some of those those creative names. So Okay. Um, Let's just think if they're, oh, Waits. Let's let's jump in on the weight. So if there is if we've just been running through prose the whole time potentially this could be where you'd run into a con. We did not necessarily cut any weight out of our previous pad. So these are going to come in at the regular is going to come in at 22 oz and the long wide is going to come in at 29 oz. So you know the regular it's in the ballpark for sure the long wide a little bit heavier, you know, that's what I'm using again. But compared to what, what, you know, falls into this category, still pretty competitive, but but not necessarily classic leading either in the Wake category, but coming back to, you know, our primary goals with the redesign of this product and the limitations that we have in designing, this product, I think we still hit the nail on the head. Still gonna pack down to incredibly small size. It's, you know, I still use this and and keep a sub 10 pound base weight with a long wide, 29 inch Oz pad. So, for those of you guys that that are real obsessed or maybe getting into obsessing over weights, you can still get a sub 10 pound base weight with the framed pack and a 29, oz hat, still totally possible. Depending maybe depending on where you're going and time of year a little bit. But yeah. So 22 and 29 oz and what you get with that is a very warm, very comfortable Pat. I think we've covered a lot of these. I think, I think, I mean, what are we miss on the design of this path, or or field testing in this path. Is there anything that
[00:58:15] Brigham: No, I think. I mean that yeah I think we covered pretty much everything about the pad. Let's see. You mentioned, you took it on the 100-mile on the Appalachian Trail. We're a
[00:58:34] Tayson: high line. I mean, I've literally every pack every trip, you've seen me take in the last 12 months on YouTube. I've been using it if not longer so yeah, 80 took it out there. You know, took it on The High Line, took it on all of my personal trips. Sportsman's trips, Etc. Handful of big of Endeavors there. And so yeah, I've definitely taken this paddle over and then I have Winter Camp because my other pad. Well, one of them we cut up for testing and another one popped on me. And so I've I don't have a, you know, quote unquote, Four Season pad at the moment. And I've just been using this layering that. So I've been basically exclusively on this pad and I will say that I've been extremely happy with it. This is the best Pad I've ever had else. Like, you know, it's hard not to say that and everyone kind of think of like biasness, right? But just for from Pure Sleep Quality I've just been so happy with this pad. you know, there's times when when You know, you might be going in as light as you possibly can or something like that. And I've just kind of continued to gravitate back to this pad even though I might have other resources at my my fingertips to be able to jump from different paths. Just really become a staple in my pack because I know the quality sleep. I'm gonna get. I know I'm gonna be warm Now, I'm going to be able to use say a top quilt where, you know, every every sleeping system requires a pad to match the temperature. But there's there's a slight argument that in the top quilt that matters just a hair more. And so I'm a big top quilt user right like nine to ten months out of the year, I'm using a top quilt. And so I've got a ton of confidence in the warmth of this pad while using a top quilt. Yeah. It's just been a phenomenal phenomenal piece for us. the last thing that I might add to this though, is And I alluded to this a little bit. I don't think you're going to see outright vitals at least in the next couple of years. Roll out a lot of options of pads. Do a big push on pads. It's it's it's not necessarily our our number one, strong point. I guess this is how I would, I would say that and it's going to require us to grow bringing in more resources and develop some more relationships honestly to, to get crazy competitive with, you know, class leading. I guess, I feel like in so many so many of our products, I personally believe are full on class leading products. And it's gonna take us a little bit wild of wild to do that, what I can say with the pads though. Is value for what you get. I think it is a phenomenal, phenomenal product. We did price. This have super competitive price point because a little bit, because it's not class, leading in, in some things, we took actually a slightly lower margin on this product because of that, you know, because of like, just comes back on our branding, right? Like like, who we are as a brand, we want everyone to have the best possible experience is and and sometimes you know, price point can play into your perspective on what you're getting. And so if you do, I was taking a second before and I looked at the two, what? I would say closest pads are to this. And in the long white bottles, you're looking at 200 and 230. And the regular model 150 and 200. We're coming in. Well below that well below that, you know, think that's, that's a lot of that's thanks for direct to Consumer business model Because the actual materials that are going into this. There's not like They're cheaper by any means. You know that insulation is, is top-notch insulation, the Fabrics, Top Notch, the extra reflective coating. I mean, that adds costs, you don't see anyone else that I don't know if I've ever seen one else adding that to it, but that's an added cost. So with our business model, we're afforded that ability. But yeah, I think it's just incredibly valuable pad. When you look at the full picture of being warm comfortable, price point and still being able to use this pad and a 10 pound base weight scenario. Okay, I think we've wrapped it man. I think I think we got through another product, Deep dive, backstory Design Story, whatever we call these things. It's been it's been awesome. I I enjoy these. I know that the feedback we've received on the podcast has been that. You guys also really enjoy these types of conversations and if you guys want to leave us feedback, please do so. Jump over to whatever podcasting platform. You're on. Leave us a review. Leave us an iTunes review that helps us. Get found that helps us further. Our mission here, not revital of connecting people to the vital Outdoors. It helps us, you know, a lot of the podcasts that we're doing. We're doing a lot of education on here to eliminate unknowns which help people feel confident to get out into nature. So please leave us a review. If you do have a comment as well though, you can leave a comment on YouTube on our little triplet podcast on YouTube where we can respond to that comment or you can email us at live ultralight podcast@gmail.com. That'll get forwarded to one of us and we will likely answer that either directly or on the podcast in the future. So feel free to leave us questions comments. We'll answer those either directly or on a future episode. In the podcast, we really appreciate those. Make sure that you guys Review this and with that will go ahead and sign off and catch you guys on a future episode.
