View Full Version : Air mattress as PFD...
holyphenol
07-30-2009, 14:55
I saw a post on river wading in another forum and it promptly reminded of a picture i saw back in the day...
http://www.abc-of-hiking.com/images/content-images/article-827-2.jpg
Now, I can understand how this could work, but I'm wondering if anybody has actually used this method in a dire situation...?
It also brings up the question of dual-functionality of a air mattress as a PFD...
mister krabs
07-30-2009, 15:38
I haven't used it in an emergency, but the old thermarest has been in the lake as an impromptu floating chaise many times.
Strategic
07-30-2009, 22:29
Go look up Colin Fletcher's The Complete Walker; he used this technique on his thru-hike of the Grand Canyon. I grew up as a teenage backpacker reading this guy in the 70's. It's hard to imagine now someone like Fletcher recommending floating across the Colorado river on your air mattress in print. But it was a different time.
holyphenol
07-31-2009, 00:51
wow, i don't remember reading that...
i'll have to go check that out again, thanks!
Jim Adams
07-31-2009, 09:50
It's hard to imagine now someone like Fletcher recommending floating across the Colorado river on your air mattress in print. But it was a different time.
....a time when people listened to common sense instead of lawyers!:cool:
geek
Rain Man
07-31-2009, 12:31
....a time when people listened to common sense instead of lawyers!
Ahhh... gratuitously kicking a scape goat, are we?!
Rain:sunMan
.
Blissful
07-31-2009, 13:50
Uh oh...Here's another way to bring in the "wading the Kennebec or not" debate....
:eek: :)
Feral Bill
08-02-2009, 19:27
A flotation aid is NOT a PFD. An air matress might get you across a warmish river, but please don't use one in place of a real PFD on a boat.
mister krabs
08-02-2009, 19:39
A flotation aid is NOT a PFD. An air matress might get you across a warmish river, but please don't use one in place of a real PFD on a boat.
:D which one aint it? personal, flotation or device? ;)
TIDE-HSV
08-05-2009, 15:11
I thought of Fletcher's account several times while kayaking the Grand Canyon. We caught it a almost twice normal release, so it was tougher even than usual, but I wouldn't try an air mattress at any level...
Feral Bill
08-05-2009, 23:01
:D which one aint it? personal, flotation or device? ;)
PFD is a technical term from the Coast Guard. A Device specifically designed to Float a Person after an accident on the water. An improvised device that might be useful for relaxing on the water, like an air matress, is not goint to be as useful when you tip your canoe, or whatever.
I have heard of people wrapping an almost filled thermarest around their upper body, wrapping some ducttape around theit torso to secure it, then placing a midlayer over that as a PFD.
LaurieAnn
08-11-2009, 09:36
You can't be serious?
Sorry for the rhetorical sarcasm but if you are on a water trip you need to wear a coast guard certified PFD and not some McGyver'd thing made from a Thermarest. And actually wear it... I see so many people who paddle, whether it be a packraft, kayak or canoe, without their PFD on. Not to be sexist but there was a piece on the morning news today about this being mostly men and the fact that 90% of paddling related deaths are due to people not wearing their PFD.
Sorry - ranting a little. My brother, Bruce, drowned when I was an 8 year old child (he was 24) so I tend to be a bit preachy about water safety... and you could easily get someone reading this thread who is enough of a Darwin award winner to actually try and forego the PFD and use their sleeping pad.
I have heard of people wrapping an almost filled thermarest around their upper body, wrapping some ducttape around theit torso to secure it, then placing a midlayer over that as a PFD.
If that's all youve got and you got to have something I guess that's better than nothing. There's not really going to be a debate about thermarest's as PFD's is there??
I don't advocate using a Thermarest as a PFD. I'm just relating two reliable accounts of people who survived crossing the Colorado River, of all the dangerous places to do this, while wearing Thermarest inflatable pads around their torsos, lining their packs with plastic garbage bags, and filling their packs with scavenged floating debris like empty airtight plastic bottles like Prestone anti-freeze and water bottles.
Interesting enough, most people who drown are male and found with their zippers down. Very often they stand up in a boat or along the shorline to do # 1 and they slip into the water. In quite a few of the drowning cases alcohol plays a factor. I have friends who are paramedics and lifeguards.
brooklynkayak
08-13-2009, 13:54
I think it would be better to strap your pack and gear to the thermarest, attach a quick release rope to you and swim across with the gear floating behind. Be ready to release or cut the line if things get bad.
This is the way I learned it.
Swimming with a pack and thermarest or a PFD would be very difficult and unsafe,