I mentioned in another recent thread that I just bought a POE Ether pad. I have never slept so well in the woods before. My only concern is that the material it is made of seems a little thin compared to a Thermarest pad, which is what I am used to using. I got really paranoid on my first night out on a 7 day hike a couple of weeks ago. I set up camp in a spot underneath a huge Holly tree (has leaves with little “stickers” or “needles” on them if you are not familiar with this tree). I cleared the spot of all the dead leaves (from last autumn I guess), but was not yet satisfied. So I just laid my pack down along with a few other items in a line the length of the pad, and slept on the pad on top of all that stuff. There was not a comfort issue with doing this, but it turned out to be a kind of finicky setup as I used it the entire trip. The pad would slip off the pack or some other item, and getting up to take a leak was an irritating process as I had to rearrange everything when I got back in to resume sleeping.

So, my question is to other POE or similar air mattress users. How fragile are these things (if fragile at all)? Have you ever had a failure, and how hard was it to field repair?