My Sore Back Finally Got a Better Night on the Z Lite Sol

I bought the Therm-a-Rest Z Lite Sol in the first week of March, in the same order as a new tent and a stove, because I had finally run out of patience with the air mattress I had been hauling to Alabama state parks for years. It went a little flatter every night. I would wake around four in the morning with my hip on the tent floor and my lower back already announcing how the day was going to go. Ray, my husband, would be sleeping fine on his own pad two feet away, which did not improve my mood. In February the air mattress went out with the trash, and I ordered a closed-cell foam pad instead. I am 57, I have been camping these foothills for about twenty-five years, and I had somehow never tried one.

Here is what the Z Lite Sol actually is, because I think the name makes people expect something softer than what arrives. It is a molded closed-cell foam mattress, 72 inches long, 20 inches wide and 0.75 inches thick. It folds accordion style into a package about 20 by 5 by 5.5 inches and weighs 14 ounces. The Therm-a-Rest version has a reflective ThermaCapture coating and heat-trapping dimples molded into the surface, and the listing says that combination increases overall warmth by 20 percent. There is nothing to inflate, nothing to patch, and nothing that can quietly leak at two in the morning.

The first two weekends taught me the trade. It is firm. It is thin, 0.75 inches thin, and if you are picturing a cushioned topper you are picturing the wrong object. What it does is hold its shape from lights out to first light, which was the part I actually needed. I laid it on the tent floor, unfolded it, and it stayed exactly where I put it. By the second weekend I noticed I was getting out of the sleeping bag without that first slow shuffle, the one where I have to stand still a minute before my back loosens up. Not cured. Just less of it. I will take less of it.

I also stopped dreading the setup. With the air mattress there was always a few minutes of huffing into a valve and then a whole night of half listening for the hiss. Now the pad comes out of the back of the CR-V folded, gets shaken out across the tent floor, and that is the entire job. In the morning it folds back down and goes in the same spot behind the cooler. Ray still uses his own pad, and I have never once had to lend him mine.

It holds its shape from lights out to first light. That was the part I actually needed, and it is the one thing the air mattress never gave me.

One thing I want to be straight about, because I have read enough cheerful reviews to last me: this pad is not for everybody, and it is not a fix for anything medical. My back is stiff in the mornings and I do not have a diagnosis for it. All I can tell you is that sleeping on a surface that stays put for eight hours suited me better than sleeping on one that slowly sank. If you are a side sleeper who needs give under your hip, or you are used to a thick self-inflating pad, this will feel like a board on the first night. I noticed it. I had stopped noticing it by the third weekend, and my mornings were better.

The rain weekend in May is the other part worth mentioning. It came down hard all night with the rainfly on, and by morning everything inside the tent had that clammy feel to it. The pad wiped dry with a camp towel before I folded it, which is what the water resistant rating in the listing would lead you to expect. That mattered more than I thought it would. A foam pad you can wipe down and fold up is a lot less fuss than a wet air mattress you have to hang over the porch rail at home for two days.

By October I had used this Therm-a-Rest pad on all ten of our camping weekends, which is every one we took this season. It has not flattened, gone soft in the middle, or started shedding material. The dimples still look like dimples. For a piece of gear I stopped thinking about after March, that is high praise.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to buy it for the reason I did, not for the reason the marketing suggests. Do not buy a foam pad hoping it will feel like the mattress at home. Buy it because you are tired of a sleeping surface that changes on you overnight. Give it three weekends before you make up your mind, and be honest with yourself about whether you need cushion or whether you need consistency. For me it was consistency, and one season in, this Therm-a-Rest pad has delivered it. If your back is the thing that decides how your morning goes, that is worth more than softness. It is also, and I say this as someone who camps with a bathhouse two hundred yards away, about the least fussy piece of gear in my car.