Reviews by User: DWK (2)

I do a fair amount of river rafting in Alaska. One must frequently camp on a rocky beach and there's not much you can do to improve some of them. I used to sleep on a regular full-length Thermarest. It was good, but this model is outstanding. The extra size and thickness make a huge difference on rocks. The Staytek non-slip top surface is great. It weighs only a little more due to the hollow core foam. The only drawback is that you have to work harder to compress it to a compact size.

The Precip has worked superbly in moderate rainstorms of a couple hours duration. I especially like the hood fit and pit zips. However, I just got back from 2-3 weeks on a river in Western Alaska where storms hammered us with a combination of high wind and rain (and cold) for all but one day. Although the Precip did pretty well, there were times when the relentless storms were starting to take their toll. I sensed that I was losing waterproofness below the elbows on the sleeves (despite the very good wrist closures) and in a couple other areas. My group did not expect to encounter such harsh conditions (4 previous river runs in the area in late August/early Sept had been OK). If I were anticipating such continuous wind and rain, I'd buy one of Marmot's heavy-duty, multi-layer expedition grade rain jackets.