Oct
6
2009

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Camp Chair: Walkstool Comfort

by Tyler

My dad took our family camping every summer when I was growing up. While researching what gear to bring on our trip I thought about those outings a lot. Planning a nomadic life turned out to be a surprisingly daunting task, and camping with my family was the closest thing I'd experienced to living like we are now. For example, leading a 'normal' life doesn't regularly require serious consideration of simple matters such as, what to do if it rains, if you need to go to the bathroom, or more to the point of this review: where am I going to sit?

Were it not for camping with my family, it is likely I never would have posed this question until there was nowhere to sit. As it was, I didn't give the matter any thought until about a month before we left. After talking it over with Tara, we decided our requirements for a camp chair were (in order of importance): compact size, comfortable to sit in, and (hopefully) very light.

There are times when capitalism can be a beautiful thing—as I began researching what I thought would be the simple answer to where we would place our butts, I realized this was one of them. I started at the tip of the camp seating iceberg by looking what I'd used all my life: those foldable chairs movie directors are supposed to sit in. I found big ones, comically small ones, wooden ones, steel ones, aluminum ones and countless other variations before realizing the solution had to lay elsewhere.

Delving deeper I discovered a dizzying array of options including hundreds of folding chairs, a weird collapsible sling (which was awful), chairs with more moving parts than a car, and, finally getting closer: lots of three legged ones that seemed to fit the bill except they were all rather large.

Once I'd decided that a three legged chair had the most potential, I started looking for one with telescoping legs; I knew they had to exist! It took a lot of hunting, but I managed to find one: the Swedish made Walkstool; it had everything we wanted: small collapsed size, very comfortable seating and thanks to its aluminum construction: light weight!

One of the things I like most about the Walkstool is that you can sit on it when the legs aren't extended—the perfect height for working on the drivetrain of your bicycle, or preparing dinner on the ground. After six months of use and abuse they still look brand new, and work just as well as they day they arrived at our doorstep. I only have one negative thing to report: they need better advertising!

Tyler Programming Tara By The Fire Birdies on Walkstool Therm-a-Rest ToughSkins + Walkstools
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6 comments

I am getting caught up on your journals (can you tell?) and I SO WISH we'd have thought to bring something like this with us on our trip. It would have made free camping, dinner prep, and bike fixing much more comfortable!
Posted by Sarah on October 31st, 2009 at 8:00 PM
:-) At the very last minute before leaving, Tyler brought up the subject of chairs and wanted to buy some for our trip. I believe my first reaction was "chairs? what do we need chairs for?! we can sit on the ground!"

We use them multiple times every single day and I cannot imagine life without them. He teases me about this sometimes and I just remind him of the time he didn't think we needed to bring jackets ;-)
Posted by Tara on November 1st, 2009 at 1:32 AM
What a wonderful idea! Mikell and I hadn't even thought of that for our upcoming trip- thank you. :)
Posted by maria ojala on January 6th, 2012 at 1:18 AM
Hey! Just a quick "Back from the Past" question. Really simple! What is the size of your's? Because them seems to come in multiple size and we're not sure about which one to go with...
There's like 4 size (45, 55, 65 & 75 cm). We're guessing for the 45 but light our lantern if possible!
Posted by Carl et Anaïs on May 6th, 2014 at 8:40 PM
Hey Carl--

I'm pretty sure we have the 45cm model, but it has been so long I can't remember. I'd go and check, but we loaned ours to a pair of cyclists a few months back. I'm sure you'll love whatever size you get!
Posted by Tyler on May 6th, 2014 at 11:11 PM
We did receive them! 45cm is the one! Thank for the hint!
Posted by Anaïs and Carl on June 21st, 2014 at 8:08 AM