Summer means swimming. When you're backpacking far from a shower, hillwalking in the heat, or sweating your way to a remote mountain crag, the lure of a cold dip on a sunny day can be irresistible. A towel may be about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can carry (© Douglas Adams), but with a full pack or a limited airline weight allowance, the last thing you want is a bulky cotton number. Enter the synthetic alternative.
© Dan Bailey
Pros: effective and unfeasibly light
Cons: doesn't leave much to the imagination
Dozens of options are available, some cheaper, some more packable - and if you're looking to save weight and space then it may be worth spending a bit. The lightest I've used - and the lightest made by Sea to Summit - is the Airlite Towel.
Made of an absorbent synthetic micro-fibre, it's incredibly thin - more like bed sheet than beach towel - yet absorbent enough to dry off properly after a plunge in a mountain stream (size L does me head to toe). The fabric is very quick-drying, and there's a clever way to air it in the breeze, via a snap closure that connects it to the hanging loop on the stuff sack that comes provided.
© Dan Bailey
Three sizes are available: I went for Large, which at 120 x 60cm I've found just about enough to wrap around the waist for modesty. That may be a consideration for female users, since it's not going to cover everything at once and no XL is available. Sizes Small (30g) and Medium (47g) are more of a compromise on that front, though for the most weight-conscious folk their unfeasible lightness may tip the balance.
At only 67g (plus 9g for the stuff sack), and packing away to about the size of a lemon, I find the largest size hits the right balance between lightness and usability. The lightest towel I can find online, it's the only one I'll be packing this spring and summer.
Comments
I see UKC avoided a "doesn't leave much to the imagination" photo! :-) Now I'm interested - is that because it's not very big or that it's so fine it's clingy, like fine cotton or silk so reveals the shape of whatever it is covering!? 😱
I've got a S2S travel towel from years and years ago - pretty good and comfy, works well and easy to wash/quick to dry. But over the maybe last 6 years for bikepacking and backpacking I've gone over to using one of the cheap Decathlon ones that it seems 90 percent of Europe's population own from experience on holidays. My big Decathlon one - "bath sheet" size maybe? Really big anyway - packs down to the same size as the S2S one, and the medium sized Decathlon one - probably the same dimensions as the one reviewed here is lighter and smaller than the more fluffy S2S one.
But as these S2S ones aren't very expensive I can see myself being tempted to get one and go even lighter!
I often use an absorbent sponge. The cheapest ones with only small cells aren't much good, some of the absorbent ones for cleaning floors are OK. Can be instantly "dried" by wringing. However makes the reviewed item seem positively modest.
Well yes it's very thin, but I was thinking more about the size. Modesty not usually an issue round our way, because there's nobody to see. But in busier places it'd probably be a consideration
I have a couple of these - small for small persons hands when there is only a noisy hand dryer available and lives in my daypack. "Large" when there is a chance of said small person overdoing it in the local burn. They are pretty effective as towels and dry ridiculously quickly, especially if you hang them in the wind.