The High-Tech Towel…No, Really
Your average towel is as technologically advanced as a ball of lint and as sexy as a pet rock, which is probably why you’re wondering why we’re reviewing one of the things. Fair enough. I’d be asking myself the same question. In fact, for the better part of three decades I didn’t even bother to squeeze one of the things into the very limited real estate within my backpack. Towels are heavy. By day three of a trip, they start to smell like roadkill. And if I had to choose between space for my sleeping bag and space for a towel…well, that’s not even a choice, is it?
But somewhere along the lines, I also realized that toweling myself off with yesterday’s socks after a refreshing dip in the lake was its own brand of stinky, anticlimax. Fortunately, there are plenty of lightweight, micro-fiber towels on the market. That’s the good news. The not so good news is that some of them absolutely suck at actually drying you off.
One of the better options is Sea to Summit’s Tek Towel. Yes, there are lighter options out there, but I like the fact that the Tek Towel feels like the real thing. While not exactly plush, it’s fuzzy enough to almost pass as terry cloth, yet at 7.2 ounces for the sized medium (20 inches by 40 inches) version, it’s light enough to have earned a spot in my list of essentials. Toweling yourself off with some of the lighter microfiber towels? You might as well be using a couple gas-station napkins.
In addition to being nicely fuzzy, the Tek Towel is also surprisingly absorbent. It soaks up enough water that I easily get by with the medium (it’s available in five sizes, from extra small to extra large). Thankfully, the Tek Towel also dries off more quickly than your average cotton towel-a real plus since Murphy’s Law dictates that there’s never enough time to actually let anything properly dry before you lump into a soggy ball and cram it back into your pack. I can get a solid week of travel and bathing in before my towel starts smelling like a lump of exotic cheese. Once that evil towel funk does start to invade my pack, a single trip through the washing machine with normal detergent removes it entirely.
The only thing that’s not so grand about the Tek Towel is that its textured surface tends to grab and hold onto sand: It ain’t a great beach towel. And that, frankly, is the only complaint I can muster. The Tek Towel ticks off all the right boxes: it’s light, rolls up and fits within a zippered, mesh bag about the size of my hand, dries you off like a champ and doesn’t smell like death after a week on the trail. Score.
$22 – BUY
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