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Lightload Towels Review

By Dave Roberts   

on September 18, 2013    No ratings yet.

Posted in Outdoor Gear Reviews, Safety, Wild Camping Articles and Tutorials, Wild Camping ReviewsLightload, wild camping

Lightload Towels Review

The Lightload Towels come in various sizes, with the size reviewed being the 30x60cm towels that are supplied in packs of three for £5.99. These are quite expensive at first glance, but they are a particularly tough towel that can be reused on numerous trips rather than being disposable. While this means that while they’re nice and compact at first, they’ll never compress back to anything near that, which makes us wonder how useful these really are compared to a normal microfibre camping towel.

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You can unpick these while dry, which to use as a towel is a bit of a must, or allow them to swell in water to their full size if you’re after a cloth. Doing so with really hot water produces a useful hot towel.

According to the manufacturer, these towels can be used as:

  • Towel
  • Washcloth
  • Pot Holder
  • Seat or Pack Padding
  • Water or Coffee Filter
  • Neck or Headband
  • Fire Starter
  • First Aid Supplement
  • Bandanna
  • Nappy

We can confirm the first three, can understand the next few but thankfully didn’t need to try out the final option.

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Despite the price they’re really handy to keep in reserve, especially on a multi-day trip, where you may have one in use and another ready for use if the need arises. As they’re well wrapped, they should survive dry in the depth of your pack, but then again they’re not fully sealed either.

While they’re convenient and compact before use, what we do like about the opened cloth is the size. They really are generously sized, somewhat like a tea towel. There’s a smaller version (half the size) as well as a much larger beach towel version, which is a tad expensive at £7.95 but may be useful to carry if you think that a swim or a dip into a pool on a mountain stream is beyond temptation, or perhaps during a long coastal walk. I might just try it out on one of my trips next year.

lightload_15_960We really do like these Lightload towels, but they’re a bit on the expensive side for us to justify using on weekend trips. We’d prefer a couple of microfibre cloths on a trip to these as they’d be cheaper and much more durable. However, having one of these in your emergency repair / first aid kit would be a handy little extra – you may need a clean cloth for various reasons. It’s marketed as a survival item, which is probably where this item fits in, rather than a must have for the wild camping kitchen.

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Dave Roberts

Dave Roberts founded Walk Eryri in 2004, with the aim of providing routes that are off the beaten track. Walk Eryri is now part of Mud and Routes which continues to provide more off beat routes and walks in Snowdonia and beyond. Dave has been exploring the hills of Eryri for over thirty years, and is a qualified Mountain Leader. Dave also established Walk up Snowdon, Walk up Scafell Pike and Walk up Ben Nevis just to mention a few.

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