Submitted by Eric Daniel
You never know how much you miss having someplace to sit until they take your tank away. For the first part of my career I was in Armor, and our motto was "death before dismount." Sure, we'll complete the mission, but on the tank. Then I went to the Scouts and we had trucks. Granted, they were draftier, the heater didn't work as well, and they leaked (well, ok, so did the tank) but, at least, there was someplace to sit. Now, I'm a hapless leg, and all I've got to keep my butt out of the mud, or snow, or wet, is my k-pot.
No more. After a little bit of research and a little trial and error, I have found Nirvana. The Walkstool Comfort 22.
Manufactured in Sweden, the Walkstool line of lightweight chairs is really quite impressive. Made from a trio of aluminum tubes topped by a heavy duty mesh seat, the walkstool has two settings; collapsed and fully extended. The one I opted for was the 22" model, where 22 refers to the chair's fully extended height. The feet on the stool's three legs are large diameter and made from textured rubber so they provide not only low ground pressure, but good traction on unstable surfaces. The stool is black in color, though the leg extensions are silver (may get around to painting them so it's more "tactical") and in the case of this particular model, the weight rating is 495 pounds. Now, I have to admit, when I was looking for a combat chair, most of the ones I say that even listed a weight rating, were all in the 175-250 range, so if ever I was going to use the thing, I was going to have to strip all my gear off, so when I saw the stool's was rated to nearly 500 pounds, that pretty much closed the deal - I could take this thing anywhere and it was never going to break on me. Naturally, Walkstool makes a number of "ultra light" models, with lower weight ratings, but given that this "monster" only weighs 33 ounces and collapses to the size of my Thermos, I concluded it was money, and weight, well spent.
Check out the Walkstool field chairs here.
