Hug your tee shot as close to that bunker as possible for the best approach into the green. A miss left of the green will create a challenging up-and-down. Enjoy the game’s pristine water features, large fairways and greens, and spectacular 19th hole—the Big Rock at Payne’s Valley™. Wetlands give way to ridgelines at the start of the Blair Creek section. The 26-mile route follows Blair Creek south as it carves down a valley through oak-hickory-pine forest before merging with the emerald waters of the Current River. Here the 30-mile Current River section picks up, following the river for two miles before veering south toward Stegall Mountain.
You can certainly find stronger lights with better optics, but this one occupies the part of the Venn diagram where price, reliability, performance, and ease of use overlap. After a new round of testing, the Black Diamond Spot 400 is our pick for the ozark trail canopy best headlamp. It may be intimidating from the tee box, but the large green provides plenty of landing space with additional room right of the green for a safe miss. Avoid the left side to stay out of the heavy rough, deep bunker, and the lake.
Instead of using a dial that fills the air mattress to pre-set firm, medium, or plush settings, the Skyrise Raised Express Air Mattress uses an electric pump to inflate the bed to capacity. Then, you control the firmness with the one-touch adjustable comfort button on the mattress. This gives you the ability to adjust the air mattress to suit your needs, rather than relying on fixed settings or manually letting air out from the valve. It didn’t move when we lightly jumped onto the bed, and it lost less than 1 inch of air in our overnight weight test.
Keep your tee shot on the right side of the fairway for the best opportunity to get home in two on this risk-reward par 5. This relatively small green is heavily protected by a creek and lake in front of the green with bunkers on the short and left side. At 35 liters, this pack is perfect for day trips or for hikers who don’t need to carry a lot of gear on the trails. Also a good choice for youngsters who are new to hiking, or who need a rugged pack for toting school items. The Black Diamond Astro 300 offers many of the good qualities of the Spot, for less than half of the price. It’s a solid option to keep in your toolbox, but for trail adventures, we’d want the battery-light warnings and red-light mode of our top pick.
Erica Puisis has been a writer for The Spruce since 2017, specializing as a product researcher for home products, including mattresses, bedding, and small appliances. To find the best air mattresses, she compared the features and benefits of some of the most popular options on the market—paying special attention to design and comfort features. The research also relied heavily on firsthand testing reports from The Lab, where we tested 10 air mattresses for their stability, support, durability, portability, and more.
Overnight, we challenged this mattress with 100 pounds of distributed weight. It deflated from 21 inches to 19 inches, but this isn’t overly surprising for a mattress ozark trail backpack that lacks a secondary pump for overnight inflation. We also think it’s an excellent value—it’s neither the most expensive nor the cheapest air mattress on the market.