Getting a good night’s sleep in the backcountry can make the difference between completing your trip and going home early. To ensure that you get good night’s sleep, it is imperative that you select the right Therm-a-Rest for your needs. When selecting a Therm-a-Rest you have choice from the smallest and lightest pads on the market to the thickest and most comfortable. Where do you fall? Well, the first question that I would ask yourself is; What’s most important to you, weight or comfort? So if you can’t decide whether weight or comfort is more important to you, if you find yourself stuck in the middle, then I would go to the middle. The Trek & Travel pads from Therm-a-Rest offer the best compromise between weight and comfort. For the budget minded camper, Therm-a-Rest offers the Trail pad. The Trail is a 1 inch thick, solid foam pad that unlike other thermarest pads has just a polyurethane skin to it. The polyurethane skin allows this pad to be much lighter in weight and more compressible at a far lower price than every other pad in the line. This is the pad for the boy scout, the entry level user, or for the person that is just upgrading from closed cell foam to a self inflating pad for the first time.