Therm-a-Rest ToughSkin: Puncture-Proof Sleeping Pad

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Heading to the desert or other prickly, puncture-prone locales? Then you’ll want to check out the new Therm-a-Rest ToughSkin sleeping pad, which recently won a Silver OutDoor Industry Award for innovative technology at the 2006 European OutDoor Trade Fair. The ToughSkin is composed of a top lay...

If 95% of all punctures are one-eighth inch depth, then designing a skin that is one-tenth of an inch thick, will ASSURE that 95% of the new pad penetrations will result in a leak!

one-eighth is 0.125" depth.
one-tenth is 0.100" depth.

Did I miss something? Is there a typo in the article?

The Cascade folks say that 95% are LESS than 1/8 inch, or whatever number they gave (I forget the exact numbers they gave out and have on their web page). Idea was to reduce the number of leaks by a substantial amount. Personally, I haven't had any leaks in something over 30 years of using Thermarests. But in leading scout outings I have seen at least one among the youth every outing (always the tentmate, never the youth himself that causes it) and one among the adult leaders every 4th or 5th outing. I have also seen a couple on high altitude mountaineering expeditions (thorns in snow????). Anyway, the ToughSkin is supposed to avoid the vast majority of punctures. The demo they gave at the Outdoor Retailer Show was pretty impressive. I think that someone's cat was supposed to have clawed the one on display.

Hi Jerry,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to your question about the ToughSkin's thickness (I've been out hiking and backpacking for the past week and am only now back online).

You're correct that there was a typo in the article and the numbers were inadvertently switched. Sorry for any confusion. Also, thanks to Bill S for his helpful comments as usual.

The corrected sentence now reads: "Therm-a-Rest found that 95 percent of sleeping pad punctures penetrated less than one-tenth of an inch, so they made the ToughSkin’s puncture-resistant material a minimum of one-eighth of an inch thick."

-Alicia