- These are Exped's super-comfortable,
self-inflating camping mats.
I'm gonna show you the best way
to roll them up and pack them away.
Let's get started.
- [Man] Hit it. (upbeat music)
- Hey, folks. Ben from Snowys here today.
And I got some self-inflating mats next to me here.
These are the Exped range of camping mats,
that have got these sort of vertical sides on them.
There's three in the range with Exped,
and I'm going to show you how to pack them up,
to the how to roll them up.
Setting them up's easy
because you just undo the valves.
They inflate most of the way.
And then you just use a little pump
such as this guy here to finish off,
making it nice and tight.
But packing it up can be a bit more wrestling with the mat
and getting it back in the bag.
But there's just a simple process you can follow
to make sure it fits back in.
Now, this process can be applied
to most self-inflating mats.
I'm showing you on the Exped range here
'cause they are a really popular and well-made mat.
The main difference between these mats
and other self-inflating mats
is the type of valve that you've got on the end.
But the basic process is still the same.
Now I've got three mats here.
I've got the DeepSleep mat,
the MegaMat and the MegaMat Max here.
So they're all very similar
apart from the fact that these are thinner,
this is only seven and a half centimetres,
10 centimetres and 15 centimetres in thickness.
And I've also got a double size on the bottom here.
This is the one I'm going to demo on today
because the process for all of these is the same,
but this is the one
that you'd have to wrestle with the most.
Now all of these mats with Exped
have both an inflate and a deflate valve.
Other mats may just have one valve
with a little reversible valve in there
to make it inflate or deflate.
Some of them have valves on the corners.
So you might need to modify it slightly,
but I'll show you the Exped way here today.
The other consideration is the type of stuff sacks.
So these simple mats here have got just a basic stuff sack,
which is a top-entry bag here.
So obviously you need to get the bag down
to at least this diameter,
to be able to fit it inside the bag there.
When you get up to the MegaMat range here from Exped,
they've got what they call their Sidewinder bag here,
which just makes it a little bit easier.
You can be a bit sloppy with how you roll your mat up.
If it's a little bit big,
you've got much more room in here
for a large amount to fit in
and you can just roll this down over the top.
And it can basically be as small as you want.
Or if you can't be bothered,
you know, putting too much effort in,
you can still fit it inside the bag.
First thing I'm going to do is put these single mats aside
and we'll get started on the double here.
Now, before you start rolling your mat up,
the first thing you want to do
is make sure you've got your bag,
your storage bag within reach.
Gets pretty frustrating when you've rolled the mat up,
you're sitting on top of it,
holding it all together,
ready to put it in the bag
and you realise you've left the bag in the car
or it's at the other side of the tent.
So put it at the end of the tent where the valves are
so that it's where you finish rolling the tents up.
Now this being a double mat,
what I need to do first is fold it in half.
With a single mat,
like what I've got behind me here.
We don't need to do that initial fold,
we can just start rolling,
but unless you get another bag that's really long,
you're going to have to fold a double mat first.
And to get started,
we come down to the valves at the end here.
Now Exped have got an inflate and a deflate valve.
We undo the deflate valve.
Now that's got a little one-way valve in here.
That's going to let air out, but not back in.
So we need to fold it in half first,
but folding it in half with the mat
mostly inflated like this is quite difficult.
So what we want to do first
is just loosely roll it up
to squeeze a heap of air out.
Once we've got most of that air out,
we can then fold it.
Now as I'm going here,
every time I back off from this mat here,
that valve seals in here
and doesn't allow any air to get sucked back in.
And as you're going,
especially with the double mat,
it can be easier with a second person on one side.
But in this instance,
use your hands on each side,
your knees in the middle,
so you're squeezing as much air out as you can.
Once I folded this the next time
and squeezed a bit more air out,
I'll unroll it completely and fold it in half.
So now we've got the mat folded in half there now.
Now I've just gotta start rolling them in here again.
The longest or the most time-consuming bit
is just putting your weight on it
and waiting for all the air to squeeze out.
One little trick I find with my mat,
my Exped mat is to use the,
'cause we're waiting for air
to escape out of one valve here.
So what you can do is open up the inflate valve
and just use this little tab,
stick it inside there to hold the valve open.
And now we've got two ports
where there's air escaping out of the mat.
You can see that as I'm going here,
this mat is kind of skewing this way.
Another thing I should mention too,
that this valve obviously doesn't seal anymore.
So it's sucking air back in.
So you really only want to do that at the end.
Because this is skewing like this,
just pull it back like that
so that we don't end up with a bit of fabric
stuck out the end
and just roll over that fold there
so that it tucks in underneath.
It becomes nice and neat, and easy to fit back in the bag.
So that's the first roll there.
I won't close this up yet,
but I just want to show you
that you can actually fit this back in the bag as it is.
What I'm actually going to do is another roll though,
to show you that you can get it much smaller.
So you if I open this now,
you see it will fit in the bag,
just need to get the pump up over the end there.
But it ends up being quite a large package.
So what I'm going to do is unroll it again.
This valve's not going to let the air come back in.
Roll it again, to squeeze even more air out
and it'll be a smaller package to pack away in the car.
Okay. I'm pretty happy with how small that is now.
So I'm going to seal up the valve here.
That way, there's definitely no air creeping back
into the mat.
I'll grab the straps that came with our mat here,
wrap it around,
and then we can put it back in the bag,
See, I've rolled it up, got it back in the bag.
There's still a bit of room in here.
Do the clip up on top there,
and we're good to pack it away.
Now, like I said,
even with that rolled after the first time,
it went back in the bag pretty easily.
The second roll though,
went back in the bag, super easy.
And the whole process probably took me, say 10 minutes,
if I was going slowly.
A little bit of muscle required to roll it up,
certainly be easier with a second person.
But if you are rolling a single mat in the same manner,
you've got less foam that you're trying to crush down
and it's certainly going to be an even quicker process.
But that is how you pack up the Exped range of MegaMats
or their DeepSleep mats.
Like I said, same thing can be applied
to many sleeping nuts.
It's just that the valves vary from mat to mat.
You can grab any of these Exped MegaMats
and a whole range of sleeping mats online
at snowys.com.au at our lowest prices every day.
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let us know down in the comments below,
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