The Best Sleeping Setup for Couples While River Rafting

The first thing you need to be comfortable as a couple sleeping in a tent together? A tent made for three people. This is especially true if you’re on a river trip and you’ll have a lot of superfluous gear (as opposed to an ultralight backpacking trip where you’re using practically every piece of gear you have once your camp is set up for the night). I brought the Mountain Hardwear Mineral King 3 Tent along on my last Grand Canyon rafting trip, and it held up great. There was a place to hang a lantern, plenty of pockets, and enough headroom to sit up comfortably.

Before getting one to raft the Grand, I was skeptical of the two-person sleeping bag. The verdict? Pretty awesome. It doesn’t pack down small, and it’ll probably take both of you to roll it up nicely and put it in its stuff sack, but the REI Co-op Siesta Hooded 20 Double Sleeping Bag was a solid (and affordable) choice for the trip. I wasn’t too worried about having an ultralight down bag (especially since we’d be on the water), but it would be nice to find one that’s slightly more compressible. That said, I would bring this bag again. It fit nicely into the Watershed Colorado Dry Bag (I recommend wrapping it in a contractor bag – just in case).

In addition to our sleeping bag, I brought along a Rumpl Original Puffy 2-Person Blanket. Why bring an extra blanket and not just a warmer sleeping bag? Two reasons. One, because yes, the blanket does add warmth, but it can also be used separately from the sleeping bag (e.g., when in the tent but before it’s time to get inside the sleeping bag – like if you’ve still got your outside clothes on, you brought pajamas, right?) And two, because having a blanket over your sleeping bag will mean that your sleeping bag doesn’t get covered in condensation – instead, the blanket takes the hit. This means that your sleeping bag doesn’t run the risk of not keeping you warm when you set it up the following night after keeping it stored away all day.

Yes, they’re stupidly expensive, but they’re also stupidly awesome. If you’re going on a long rafting trip (like a 30-day winter Grand trip) and want extra comfort both on and off the boat, get yourself (and your partner) an NRS Jack’s Plastic Paco Grande. Do not be tempted to get the slightly less expensive, thinner Full Paco; it’s significantly less comfortable than the Grande. If you spend the money on a Paco, get the comfortable one for a little more. Pro tip? Put the pads underneath the tent so you don’t have to worry about keeping them dry or sand-free. They’re just as comfortable under the thin floor of your tent as they would be inside it.

Again, the magic of rafting and all that these mighty boats can carry means no more sleeping with a stuff sack filled with extra clothing under your head. Instead, bring a Rumpl Camp Pillow for you and your partner. They’re stuffable enough to get them into a dry bag without much issue (alongside the rest of your sleeping setup). They’re comfortable enough that you’ll wonder why you never brought a full-sized pillow into the backcountry before (except then you remember that sometimes you’re not rafting, and carrying a pillow of this size would be rather silly).

This one’s optional, but something I found nice to have, an Antfuny Throw Blanket for an interior groundsheet. Why is the product image of three women in their underwear behind this blanket? I have no idea, it’s strange. But this blanket doesn’t have to be fancy, and this is an inexpensive Amazon option I found that worked well for us. I’m open to suggestions on alternatives here. That said, the purpose of this is to keep the interior of your tent a little cleaner, and you need not an expensive ultralight, ultrasoft, ultrastupid piece of gear to accomplish this.

It’s nice to have an entryway for your tent to store all your bags, shoes, and anything else that will not be living inside the shelter with you. I’ve used the CGear Multimats Sandlite Sand-Free Mat on two month-long Grand rafting trips now, and despite it not being my favorite piece of gear, I’ve found no better alternative. It gets the job done well enough to earn a spot here and (likely) a place on my next Grand trip. It’s nice because you can get it wet (although be careful not to let sand stick to the top if you do) and rinse it off if it gets covered in sand. Better than a piece of silnylon or a cotton sheet, but not as “sand-free” as you would hope it is.

How are you going to carry your two-person sleeping setup? In a Watershed Colorado Dry Bag, of course. I used one of these as a dedicated dry bag for our shelter setup, and it all fit, just barely. These bags are rugged and reliable. We had two flips on our last trip, and none of the Watershed bags had any leakage (the same could not be said for all the other brands of dry bags, unfortunately). I would and will 100% use these bags in the future. They’re not cheap, but if there’s one thing you want to keep dry on a rafting trip, it’s your sleeping setup. Do yourself a favor and get a Watershed bag.

An often overlooked piece of gear for a rafting trip is a lantern—specifically, a personal one for your tent (opposed to one that will be shared among the group and probably live in the kitchen box until someone forgets to charge it and then ultimately loses it). I brought the BioLite AlpenGlow 250, and it worked perfectly (I don’t even think I charged it once the entire trip). There’s a hook on the bottom, which is great for hanging it from the loop at the peak of the Mountain Hardwear Mineral King 3 Tent, and the light has white, soft white, and red lights. And as a bonus, it also has a Multicolor Party mode. The one regrettable thing about these lanterns? It’s micro-USB (and not USB-C).

Why do I bring a BIDFUL Collapsible Mop Bucket as part of my sleeping setup when rafting? Because when you’re rafting (high-volume rivers), you’re meant to pee (and spit your toothpaste and dispose of liquid waste in general) into the river. Campsites along the river are heavily used, and if everyone were peeing and pouring liquid waste out on the shores, these campsites would quickly become disgusting. So what do you do instead when your tent is too far from the river to warrant walking back and forth? You use a bucket. Don’t believe me? Get one anyway. You can thank me later. Just make sure it’s collapsible to store it somewhere on the boat easily.