I know what you're thinking. You're thinking this is just going to be another pillow thread where everyone suggests the same 5 pillows under 3oz that work for no one who doesn't sleep on their back and a few /r/ultralight_jerk troll-baiting comments that say crazy /r/lightweight shit like "I know the Thermarest compressible pillow is 55oz but it's just so worth it." So it is completely reasonable to believe that this thread is going to be one of those. But it's also completely wrong.

First, some preliminaries: I'm a 6' ~165lb side sleeper who has tried everything in a fit of UL-driven consumerism. Nemo Fillo? Check. Nemo Fillo Elite? Check. (I'm not proud of this one but I was desperate okay and I returned it the minute I realized how heavy it really was) Klymit X? Check. Big Sky Dream Sleeper? Check. Montbell, Trekkology, Goosefeet Gear and a bunch of other shit I can't even remember now? Check, check, check, and check. In fact, and I've never even told a soul about this before, I even tried an S2S stadium seat folded in half (spoiler alert, it fuckin sucked a lot) and finally even those insane medical pillows that some business school grad figured out people would pay $5 for if you put them on Garage Grown Gear and marked them as UL.

My previous experiment was a small-sized goosefeet gear down pillow with the stuff pocket holding a Big Sky Dream Sleeper with whatever random shit I had with me thrown in the mix, which was usually like socks or something. For a while I added a carwash sponge to the mix -- this put the Big Sky GG combo up into "not completely terrible" territory, but this luxurious indulgence also pushed the total weight to an outrageous 4.25oz (1 oz for the sponge, 1.5oz for the GG pillow 1.75oz for the Dream Sleeper). Worst of all, one section of the Dream Sleeper would stick out of the too-small GG pillow, and the thing slid all over the damn place even with a couple well-placed sil dots on my mat and my pillow.

In other words it sucked, and it was heavy, a sort of worst-of-all worlds, Frankenstein-level catastrophe. But that failure was worth it because it taught me three lessons. First, it's very important that the base of the pillow be large (this prevents you from feeling like the thing is going to fall off and gives more surface area and thus more friction when placed on your sleeping pad). Second, a large base makes it so that you can reduce the size of the actual platform you place on top of it and put your head on. This is critical because the base is filled with air and you incur a very minimal weight penalty going bigger, while the platform is filled with something much heavier and so a larger platform = more space to fill = more weight. And third, you need a way to precisely control the height of whatever you're using to build the platform so that you can match it to the exact height your neck is used to without using down which is turbo heavy for the amount of loft it provides and unnecessarily comfortable.

But before we go any further, I want to clarify something: this pillow system is designed to be optimal in a world where you have nothing to goose it up. I mean literally nothing, not even a buff or a pair of socks or down booties you leave off your Lighterpack but secretly bring. Why nothing? Because anyone who's not going to sleep with all their insulating layers is a heretic and a fake ULer, and the kicker is that, in every pillow thread when they mention how they just "make a pillow with my spare clothing" as if they have reached some UL nirvana, all they're really doing is outing themselves. I know this one hurts because it hits so close to home for so many of us. This used to be me at one point in fact, so no judgment here. But the harsh truth is that you guys are absolutely trolling and you're doing it in plain sight.

Why is that? Because carrying stuff that keeps you warm and not wearing it at night is the least UL thing you could ever possibly do. In fact, I want to emphasize that if this is you then you should know that you've probably sinned not once but twice. First, you brought a sleeping bag/quilt that was rated too warm for the conditions and thus carried all those extra ounces of down fill for nothing. Not knowing the conditions is a fail because skills are the most UL thing you can have and failure to match your sleep system to the prevailing temperatures is a skill issue. Then you compounded that failure by carrying insulating layers that are unnecessary at the very time they should be most useful: when you are sleeping. You are literally laying on top of insulating layers you could have used to push your sleep system lower while being kept warm by a bag/quilt that is the definition of overkill.

In other words, if your pillow looks like a luxury hotel loftmonster because it's filled with 12oz of down you should be using but aren't because you brought a 25oz 20F bag and a 10oz puffy to a 40F knife fight then you're absolutely trolling and this post isn't for you and I don't want to read a single fuckin comment about your DIY version of the XXXXL 15oz Thermarest Compressible Pillow.

Anyway, I was starting to believe that a UL pillow was a sort of Platonic ideal whose form could only be imagined but never realized. I thought that the only choice you had was whether you wanted your pillow to be too small, too hard, or too heavy. Wrong. Here are the ingredients you will need to build the last, best, and only truly UL pillow you will ever use:

1. 1 LARGE replacement air bladder from Zenbivy
2. 1 50-count pack of melamine sponges from Amazon
3. Scissors to cut the melamine foam into tiny pieces.
4. A draw-string or zippered pouch (zippered preferred for reasons you will understand below) made of Argon or nylon, that, when filled with the desired amount of cut-up melamine, is just big enough to rest your head with an inch or so to spare in all directions. (If you don't use your buff to keep you warm while sleeping, you can simply find a suitable ziploc bag and skip this step -- when the buff is stretched over both the melamine-filled bag and the bladder the bag will not move). Bonus points if it has little grosgrain loops for shock cord at the sides or on all 4 corners.

Now it's obvious what you do. First, inflate your enormous Zenbivy bladder. Then, cut up the melamine sponges into little slices and stuff them in the pouch. Place the pouch on the bladder to check if you've reached the desired loft. Rinse and repeat until you do so. (Full disclosure, the melamine sponge idea is not mine, as evidenced here, but for me the breakthrough was realizing how much work the large base and horrible material of the Zenbivy bladder was doing once you put something on top of it.)

First pro tip: start bigger than you think you want since you can always slice them up finer later. The tradeoff is finer = more comfortable but also heavier since there is less air in between the melamine slices and thus more of them are required to achieve the amount of loft necessary. The good thing is you've got 50 melamine spongers and you'll probably use only about 10-15, so you can make mistakes without having to make another contribution to the Jeff Bezos Supervillain Fund.

And that's literally it, it truly is that simple. If you want you can attach some shock cord to the grosgrain loops and create a pad strap. You can also run a buff over the whole system to make it nicer to lay your face on (but this shouldn't be an issue because you should be wearing an alpha direct piece with a hood and if you don't have an AD piece because [insert X reason here] then just know that you're trolling). You can also throw any soft-feeling things into the pouch on top of the melamine slices.

But, and here's the important thing, none of that is necessary for this pillow to be stay on the pad or to be comfortable. The star of the show here is the truly awful, rubbery-type plastic of the Zenbivy bladder. It is remarkably sticky, so sticky in fact that it will hold the whole system securely on your pad and the melamine-filled pouch securely on the bladder without the need for an attachment system. Its badness paradoxically produces a UL trifecta: less faffing, less DIY, less weight. The slices will also last forever and since you have extras if they end up smelling funky because you put dirty clothes in there just throw them out and cut up new ones.

Now, the most important part: for me, an average 6' dude, the total weight of this system is 2.4oz (1.7oz for the pillow and 0.7oz for the pouch and foam). I have a pretty heavy pouch at the moment, so I'm guessing you could quite easily get this down another 0.2oz or so with some very basic sewing skills. You can goose this system up in a million ways, but I would start with making the slices thinner until the lumpy-ness is bearable (obviously adding things like a buff around the whole thing or throwing random clothing into the pouch will allow for thicker slices and thus lighter overall weight). It's also surprising how well stuffing things as trivial as underwear into the pouch helps smooth out the melamine mountains. Another option is a very thin piece of foam placed inside the pouch but on top of the melamine slices.

Second pro tip: getting the pouch the right size is pretty key -- you want it big enough that you don't feel that your head is constantly wanting to fall off one of the sides. Fatheads obviously take a bit of a weight penalty here unfortunately. You also want to avoid a drawstring-style pouch because it will not be as square when placed on the bladder. I currently use a zippered hydration bladder holder I got from somewhere long ago (maybe ULA?) that is rectangular shaped when filled.

Finally, I will note that this entire system is unnecessary if you sleep on your back, and that retraining yourself to sleep on your back is actually the most UL pillow solution possible because it will enable you to use any number of low thickness pillows and also make your pad more comfortable since you won't have to lay on your chronically inflamed hip that you permanently damaged because you decided to go 30mph on your electric skateboard in the rain even though you're 35 years old and should know better and also because for some reason your body has not yet learned that it should stop turning to that side after you fall asleep.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk, all credit goes to the galaxy brains who came up the melamine sponge idea and to Zenbivy for accidentally and despite their best efforts making something that is actually affordable and actually ultralight. Also just so we can keep it chill and so the people carrying 16oz of deadweight down put the pitchforks down, this is 50% serious UL tech and 50% uljerk, let's not get carried away.