I've spent many a night sleeping in my Can-Am Maverick X3's Roofnest Condor 2 since I picked it up a few years ago. Most of the time, I use it for when I go hunting, as it's the perfect perch for long weekends or short weeks in the field. It gets me off the cold, hard ground and fits my rather large frame perfectly.
It does, however, have a weakness I've discovered over the years: its mattress.
I'm a hunter who doesn't like sitting still. I know, shocker. But that ADHD mentality of hiking, glassing, hiking some more, and then carrying out loads of meat and antlers means that when I get back to camp after dark, I'm usually exhausted, sore, and my muscles and joints are screaming at me to relent. And no amount of pre, during, or post-hike electrolytes will solve a 50-mile, 2,000-foot elevation change type of weekend. Neither does Roofnest's stock mattress, which is basically the width of my Marmot sleeping bag, though it's marginally better.
But during my elk hunt this year, the mattress got extremely uncomfortable, so much so that it precluded me from a continuous sleep a handful of nights. I tossed and turned and tossed some more, and not just because I had big bulls screaming their heads off until 2am. Sleep, however, is something you sort of need when you're after monsters from the Pleistocene. Rest is good for weary muscles, and recovering so you can chase those bugling beasts the following AM.
Enter Hest's Foamy roll-up mattresses, which not only improved my heat retention on cold nights, but also soothed my aching bones after packing out my bull's skull. I should've switched sooner.
Hest's Foamy is designed to be a roll-up, camp-focused memory foam mattress ala a Tempurpedic, but similar in comfort to the mattress I have in my home bedroom. While the dimensions are such that one accommodates a single person, given I was going to roll it out in my Roofnest, I snagged two so that I'd have a far more spacious and forgiving mattress platform to work with inside the rooftop tent. And they're designed to do that, as they can connect together and keep you and your partner nice and snug.
There are, however, a few sizes, including a Short, Standard, and Wide Foamy, which range in dimensions. Two standards fit the Roofnest Condor 2's insides perfectly, though the only downside was that even with the stock mattress removed, I couldn't quite close the Roofnest all the way, which meant I had to roll both mattresses up whenever I wanted to move camp. That's not a dealbreaker in my eyes, though, as rolling them up and storing them in my Can-Am was just as simple as rolling up my sleeping bag. It takes up a little more room, but I still managed to get all my gear and a full-grown elk out without leaving things in the woods for a second trip.
But what really sold me was the Foamy's plushness, as well as how well it did at insulating me from the cold.
The night I killed my bull, it froze outside. I don't recall the exact temperatures at 10,000 feet, but it was enough for the ground to have frozen when I walked outside the following morning—perfect conditions to keep all that elk meat good overnight. But inside the tent, I was nice and toasty warm in my sleeping bag, as the added R-value (8.8 if you're playing at home) kept the cold of the Roofnest's floor away from coming up and hitting my core. And my Marmot ain't exactly a spring chicken of a sleeping bag, and I'm guessing the R-value of it is optimistic at best.
Yet, what really sold me on these mattresses was their comfort.
I spent many a night in the Roofnest this year, and though I'm in the best shape of my life, the life I've led has led me to have aches and pains and soreness everywhere. Crashing motorcycles, cars, and other stuff will tend to have that effect. In short, I've treated my body like a temple. A ruined temple that's crumbling into ash. And Roofnest's stock mattresses only further enhanced that feeling after a night or two. The Foamys came to knock my ass out and keep it out all night long.
At first, I was skeptical. While they felt plush on first inspection, I've dealt with initially plush beds before, only to wake up in the middle of the night rubbing my knees, flip-flopping to each side, trying to find some comfortable position, or just waking up and staying up because I couldn't take the pain any longer. But not with the Foamy, as once I was out, I was out. And I fell asleep to elk bugles each night, which prior to this modification would've kept me awake until the wee hours of the morning, only to take a fast 3-hour power nap ahead of sunrise.
Honestly, they're so good, I'm going to bring one on another hunting trip I have later this year and use them in my new Stone Glacier one-person tent. And that's the cool thing about this, is that I can take them from my Roofnest and then switch them to my tent whenever I want to. I have that adaptability, though Hest does make a few mattresses that are designed to fit other rooftop tents. The company just didn't have one for mine.
As for price, they aren't cheap, but neither is not sleeping through the night. The standard Foamy mattress clocks in at $329 for one, meaning the upgrade to my Roofnest was nearly $700. But the sleep it delivered, and the comfort it gave me after the hell hike that was from where I killed my bull elk to where camp was, well, it was well worth the price. And now, whereas I was loath to spend more than a night or two in the Roofnest in the woods, I'm once again looking forward to it.
Hell, thanks to the Foamy, I'm even looking forward to sleeping in a tent again. But more on that one soon.
