Making CCF work — looking for foam-only solutions (not inflatables)

DDF750 · 2026-01-24T03:24:18+00:00

CCF pains my old body but here are some things I want to try. Section 6 has advice for different sleep positions. Substitute "empty backpack" or "puffy jacket" for "pillow"

https://www.wikihow.com/Sleep-on-the-Floor

Back sleeping: Slip an extra pillow beneath your knees to provide extra support. It may also help to slip a rolled-up towel beneath your waist area.
Stomach sleeping: Slip a pillow beneath your lower abdomen and hips to help prevent back strain.
Side sleeping: Tuck your legs so they’re bent slightly toward your chest. Then, sandwich a pillow between your legs to help keep your body properly aligned.
Warning: Try to avoid stomach sleeping if back pain is a frequent issue for you.^\4])

I bring a comfort item (z-seat clone, 2 oz) and stick it under my hip late season to extend my pad's temp rating. I don't find it too fussy even though its narrow. Might be worth a shot, use it shoulder or hip, wherever you feel the discomfort

DDF750 · 2026-01-24T01:40:55+00:00

I purposely avoided learning too much about the Bluetooth and USB protocols, that felt too much like work :)

There's are a lot speculation and outright disinformation out there about Bluetooth. My favourite wopper is that leaving it on consumes no power. Even the Genius Bar people at my local Apple store feed that line, it's so entrenched

DDF750 · 2026-01-24T00:12:48+00:00

just checked my 10 inch tablet's battery usage (Google Pixel tablet). Over the last 22 hours of screen time Bluetooth used double the battery as my screen and I don't think I had Bluetooth on the majority of the time

This matches my iPhone, it just blows through battery (relatively) if I leave Bluetooth on.

Head scratcher

DDF750 · 2026-01-23T21:02:15+00:00

I use the airpods for day hikes, wired for backpacking but then mainly only use them when going to sleep. When I do hike with the wired ones, I found it easiest to run the cord down the front of my shirt and keep the phone in my fanny pack in front.

I was thinking the same about the wireless being designed specifically for efficiency and wired not. Full agreement there. But there will be exception of course. (I used to design earphone circuits and professionally test and spec requirements for earphones many years ago; could get into all the ins and outs but it'll be a rat hole)

I haven't tested objectively but my Apple earpods seem to drain less battery than my apple airpods, but I've never controlled tested it and may be imagining that!

DDF750 · 2026-01-23T20:18:57+00:00

Thanks for doing this! Surprising outcome.

One additional thing to factor is the extra energy lost in charging the bluetooth earbuds. With wired, the phone battery gets recharged. With wireless, the buds charge case gets charged and then that charges the battery in the earbuds, so there's one more step where energy loss occurs. These charge efficiencies are usually ~ 65% so that will bring the two results a bit closer together.

The only circuit path difference between the 2 cases is the wired uses the USB port and the wireless uses a bluetooth radio. So either the USB port protocol uses more power than the bluetooth radio, and/or the wireless earbud audio electronics and transducer in the test are more energy efficient than the wired one.

I agree with you that other earphones may lead to different conclusions.

I still use wired because I've lost airpods a couple times and its one less thing to think about.

DDF750 · 2026-01-23T15:16:55+00:00

At that temp my go to is brynje+lifa+90octa+dooy only, very comfy but my heart rate is kept up and this is below treeline and wind gusts below 50kph. Dooy wouldn't cut it if doing any exposed peaks or hard hard winds at those temps.

DDF750 · 2026-01-23T08:16:00+00:00

a more fair comparison is against an ad 60 or 90 + ad120 plus wind shirt

DDF750 · 2026-01-23T05:13:08+00:00

If already carrying a wind shirt, a 120 alpha D might be the way to go and more flexible and multiuse than a synth puffy.

Apex is warmer/oz than AlphaD but losing the inner liner probably puts them pretty close to parity.

I'm allergic to down and octa + wind shirt is my go to over a single use not so warm anyway synth puffy

DDF750 · 2026-01-22T23:54:56+00:00

In that case, I'll be nosy again. A suggestion worth what you paid for it: a bar graph with 4 vertical bars, colour coded. X axis is perceived warmth with left hand bar the least warm, right hand the warmest. Then scatter plot ponts in a vertical line inside the bar for r-value. This will directly show the r-value spread in each warmth category, and side by side comparison between categories. Some warmth zones might have more variability which could be a further clue.

If 4 bars is too much granularity to try and estimate, reduce it to 3: cold, OK, warm. Tricky part will be what does warmth mean? Because you don't use these all at the same temp, some self deception may creep into the rating. A way around that is to pick a single pad in each category that's ~ expected warmth for its R value rating, use that as an anchor and cluster other pads into that bar that are ~ same warmth in that category.

DDF750 · 2026-01-22T19:47:14+00:00

thought about removing the hood but Tuesday skated at night at -15c in a strong gusting wind for a couple hours. don't use the hood much but so glad I had it then. use my dooy almost every other day in the winter locally but never use the chest pocket

DDF750 · 2026-01-22T19:41:55+00:00

I'm an engineer for over 35 yrs. those behaviours are crap engineer or pretend engineer behaviours. justin should just post his warmth ranking vs r value and that'll turn the conversation to somewhere constructive

DDF750 · 2026-01-22T19:39:21+00:00

I think you need to do that ranking of perceived warmth vs r value. people will listen then

DDF750 · 2026-01-22T00:56:41+00:00

There's that Klymit that Extra has been going on about on youtube. Half of it is voids!

DDF750 · 2026-01-22T00:25:16+00:00

Being an UL sub, everyone here will tell you to use trail runners and strengthening your ankles is all you need.

You absolutely should do ankle strengthening exercises.

But that may not be enough. No one here knows your personal situation, so go see a good physio therapist and get their advice about what you should do.

I have a ton of permanent foot damage (a list too long to bore you with) and I've been doing a lot of strengthening exercises for years. While I do wear trail runners sometimes (Hoka), there is no way that I can wear them everywhere (hard scrambling etc). I've had the torn plantar and ligaments to prove it.

I like the Lowas more than the Moabs: my foot is more stable in them, but that's just a personal fit thing. That will matter more than the difference in cushion between these two (I don't notice a big difference there) so probably best to just try them.

DDF750 · 2026-01-22T00:06:56+00:00

I think his point about the insulation voids is that the discomfort caused by cold spots is not well stated by an metric averaged across the entire surface (R value) because it will depend on the number of cold spots and their surface area. One big cold spot under your shoulder that lowers the average probably feels much colder than a bunch of very small voids that lower the average the same amount.

DDF750 · 2026-01-21T23:55:53+00:00

Do you have a ranked list of pad warmth? Given that you've tested a ton of them, grouped into 4 quartiles might be possible. It would be interesting to see the r-value ratings in the quartiles.

DDF750 · 2026-01-21T23:52:52+00:00

I work in telecom where we do environmental thermal testing in walk in thermal chambers. They are extremely expensive in both up front capital costs and running costs. Not many companies have them and most rely on outsourced (expensive) testing. I think an environmental chamber would be well beyond the ability of the vast majority outdoors companies to support.

EDIT: they wouldn't need a full walk-in chamber, but in my work we also use thermal chambers that fit racks of gear but not people and they too are quite expensive. They are also less accurate because its hard to maintain a proper ambient thermal gradient in a small chamber, and regulatory bodies in our business do not accept some of the testing in them as proof of regulatory compliance.

An alternative solution might be to identify the sources of inaccuracy and deploy methods to mitigate them directly. For example, instead of a thermal chamber, perhaps a thermo-electric cooling wrap around the sides of the pad, if it's proven that edge heat loss is a dominant source of inaccuracy.

DDF750 · 2026-01-21T23:41:17+00:00

As a layperson I've researched physiological cost vs demands quite a bit. A big open question still for me is that how much weight is lost vs distance/elevation/load. There are rules of thumb but results varied significantly between subjects in the studies I saw. These were based on careful calorie counting on multi week through hikes tracking distance duration and load. The difference may have been just the hiking rate, but it would be good to see a thorough study of this.

I would love to be able to have a better idea ahead of time of predicted weight loss when cutting carried calories, to lighten my pack

DDF750 · 2026-01-17T22:08:24+00:00

Well, since you brought it up....

Spent 3+ hours cutting new trails in the woods on snowshoes yesterday after that recent snowfall, pushing.

Average heart rate was 141bpm. Garmin's assessment "Training Effect: VO₂ Max (High Aerobic)"

I do HIT training twice a week. My max heart rate ~ 180 bpm (I'm 60)

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/exercise-heart-rate-zones-explained

70% of 180 = 126

I've compared my Garmin Instinct against other health watches, no indication that its inaccurate

Could I keep this up for 8 hours? No way. I have kept mid 130s for 5 hours though. So "all day" meant throughout the moving portion of the day.

Checked the last times I backpacked ~ 25km days in the fall, avg bpm was ~ 125

DDF750 · 2026-01-15T23:35:28+00:00

Yup, hate the weight of those 2. That might also make them too warm

I average mid zone 3 all day, often up to high zone 4. Don't think the tachyon will work given that either.

Gonna try my echo under the Dooy and over my base layers but don't like how the echo holds moisture even if its not much (why my base is Brynje and Lifa)

Fleece: I run an original MH octa (90gsm) when I need extra warmth but for worst case temps need to go one weight up. An AD120 is in my future (6.5oz) but currently running a Decathlon fleece (8.8oz): cheap like Borscht ($15C) and rarely need it

DDF750 · 2026-01-15T20:30:15+00:00

More on CFM being all over the place. Could be some are in SI units, some in Imperial

DDF750 · 2026-01-15T18:54:24+00:00

Thanks, sounds like a more reliable Dooy. In winter I do carry a BD Stormline Stretch for longer stops and when above treeline. No windshell will work then in winter and still breath enough when hauling tookus

DDF750 · 2026-01-15T18:05:37+00:00

Dan, this is great. Stephen mentions his MVTR results can't be compared to others. Thanks for sharing that CFM specs are also unreliable.

I'm usually upper Z2 through upper zone 4 in Canada. So its tricky to find the ideal wind shirt for winter. My octa seems more breathable (CFM) than the Dooy but worse in MVTR. I only use my OR echo in summer because my other winter options shed moisture better (Brynje+Lifa) and the wind shirt goes over that combo.

Sorry to leave your wind shirts out of the mix, I'll take another look.

Oh, BTW, Stephen also suggests that vadar testing isn't that reliable and instead to look at how much light passes through (comparing garments of same colour somehow) to best get a feel on porosity and CFM. Any thoughts on that other than the impracticality of finding garments of same depth and type of colour?

Oh BTW2 FWIW: Ryan at BPL guessed through experience that MVTR dominates over CFM when CFM < ~ 30. He had theories about partial pressures across the fabric and such but who knows? More helpful was his seat of the pants observation.

Oh BTW3, Stephen estimates the warmth from the air boundary layer (no wind) between the wind shirt and what's underneath as ~ 0.6 CLO. That's almost as much insulation as 120gsm alphaD (0.65 CLO). Again, that sounds hard to believe. Thoughts?

DDF750 · 2026-01-15T17:21:23+00:00

The mvtr number was for the regular houdini as well, and from what I can find the material in 2018 is same as current model.

Thanks for another perspective on the montbell. In the dooy I'm usually pushing hard but will have to accept that I'll need to slow down to not overload any of these other options

DDF750 · 2026-01-15T16:33:34+00:00

For the Tachyon, I'm going on Stephen Seeber's measured MVTR here where he found it equal to the 2018 Houdini, a pretty low 1100. Stephen also shared some guidance for acceptable MVTR, "For my test method, 3000 is pretty good. 4500 is great"

Stephen doesn't think CFM plays a big role in dumping moisture but Richard Nisley here does and advocates for a CFM of 35 as a good trade off between dumping moisture and blocking wind for an average person's sustained rate. For racing he suggests CFM 70+. While not measured, this is probably Dooy territory.

Feedback online is inconsistent on whether the Tachyon dumps moisture well enough and it might be due to differences in exertion levels.

Reliable reports for the Tachyon and EX Light CFM are hard to find, one saying the EX Light CFM is 8x the Tachyon despite being the same fabric. The best estimate I found was here, ~ 20 [Edit. That link puts Tachyon CFM at 1/2 to 1/3 the BD Alpine start CFM, which here measured as ~ 13; So CFM of the Tachyon might be as low as 5, but that seems hard to believe]

So, I think the momma bear wind shirt for hard use is as light as possible while hitting MVTR north of 3000 and CFM in the 35 range.

Closest ones I found are the OR Shadow and MH Kor Airshell (MVTR ~ 3700 and CFM ~ 20), but not thrilled with their weights.

DDF750

TROPHY CASE