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My sleeping pad valve broke on night 2 of a 5 day trip near Asheville
I was setting up at a spot off the Blue Ridge Parkway and the plastic valve on my inflatable pad just snapped clean when I went to add a few puffs of air. Turns out I'd been folding it into the stuff sack wrong for 2 years, which put constant stress on the base of the valve, and the cold weather made it brittle. Anyone else found a reliable way to store these things without wrecking the valve, or is a foam pad just the safer bet long term?
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the_felix2d ago
This is the same thing that happens with tent pole shock cord and cheap backpack straps, we all just kind of jam gear back into bags without thinking about how the fold points wear over time. The cold definitely speeds it up too, plastic gets way less forgiving below freezing. Taking thirty extra seconds to roll it loose instead of folding it tight has probably saved my pads since I started doing that.
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