Quick weight question for an upcoming trip

[Kat]

One more item, re: pad - I own one of these Thinline Seat Savers for horse riding, I have wondered if this would be sufficient (and a weight saver) for a traditional goat sawbuck saddle pad altho I'm not exactly sure what material they are making it out of: https://www.thinlineglobal.com/shop/west...seat-saver

I switched to the rookie lite saddle without pad last year.

[IdahoNancy]

The narrow end may be a problem. It would depend on the length of the product. If you could get the entire saddle on the wide part it may work. It says "super thin" and heavy riders may want to add the pad. Not sure the goat would get the protection it needed for a traditional wood or aluminum saddle. Is a rookie lite saddle the soft sopris saddle?

[Nanno]

Yeah, I don't think that pad would cut it. Wrong shape. I also wonder if the material would be too slick, causing the saddle to slide out of position. You also have to think about heat buildup under synthetic pads.

I have a Sopris Rookie saddle without the pad. It's very lightweight, and the new saddles all come with much lighter chest and butt straps. The old ones all came with felt, but felt is heavy and it grabs hair, so Charlie at Sopris started making the straps out of lightweight seatbelt-type material last year.

Aside from being very lightweight, the Sopris saddles will fit any goat provided his back is long enough. That's probably the thing I like most about the Sopris saddle--I have very few worries about fit. In fact, as you use the saddle it will actually crunch down and mold to your goat's back exactly. But if you switch to a different goat it will re-form to the new goat's back without sacrificing the integrity of the saddle. This is the style I use on Sputnik since he has a very wide, round back with almost no withers and a prominent dip behind his shoulders. Wooden saddles make him very uncomfortable, but we've never had a problem with the Sopris.

(Love how this "quick question" has become a lengthy discussion. )

[Kat]

For the pad I was thinking more using the same material to make a correctly shaped pad, but it is pretty thin. Maybe it would work for a regular Sopris hard to say.

If the rookie lite + small panniers could be reduced down to 3.5 lbs total that would be a light saddle! Right now it's still in the 5 lb-ish arena, don't have the exact figures at my fingertips at the moment. I did weigh all the pieces and record them, including the "regular" Rookie with pads (which, if memory serves me correctly, were just flat foam pieces covered by the same cordura-style material so also synthetic.) Not sure if my "lite" is the new strap design or not as it does have 2 felt lined pads in front and rear as well as regular straps. Guess I'll know when I receive the custom white one.