Tesalate Workout Towel Review

Field test and review

Carrying a towel on your hikes isn’t essential, but depending on the environment, it can be a great asset in your kit. It might seem unnecessary at first, but after a few days on the trail, trust me, you’ll want to wash, or at least those around you will want you to. I always carry a lightweight microfibre towel on multi-day hikes, when there’s a likelihood of rain, where a river crossing is required, or when hiking along long stretches of our beautiful coastline. Towels serve a few functions for me.

• allow me to dry my feet before pulling boots back on if I remove them to cross water. It’s a good idea to keep your feet as dry as possible, particularly on longer hikes.
• are great on overnight hikes if it’s been raining all day and I need to dry off before crawling into my tent.
• allow me to dry off after a swim or wash at the end of the day.
• provide a bit of padding if I need to sit on jagged rocks when stopping for a break.

What type of towel to carry on your hikes?

A regular bath or beach towel is a bad choice for hiking. They’re heavy, bulky and slow to dry.

Hiking towels differ from regular towels in material. Regular towels are typically cotton, which dries slowly. Hiking towels are usually made from polyester and nylon microfibres, which dry much faster than cotton and are lighter and far more compressible, usually coming with their own stuff sack. The microfibre towel I carry fits in the palm of my hand.

The downside to most hiking towels is that they’re slightly less water-absorbent than cotton towels and can feel synthetic to the touch. Even so, they’re the best option for hikers and anyone else who spends a lot of time outdoors and on the move.

Field testing the Tesalate workout towel

In late December 2020, I was contacted by Tesalate and asked if I’d like to field test their towels. I love testing new gear, so I happily agreed. Tesalate make two different size towels, for beach or workout use. I chose the workout towel for this test, based purely on its size and weight compared to the larger beach towel.

Tesalate is an Australian owned company that designs towels for Aussie conditions. Here’s why they came about:

“The idea for Tesalate came to us when we were taking a hike to a secluded beach at the Royal National Park in Sydney. When it was time to head back, our towel was wet, heavy, and worst of all sandy. We started questioning if we could make a towel that not only performed much better but looked amazing too”.

In early January 2021, my wife and I headed off on a micro adventure to complete part of the Great South West Walk near Portland, Victoria. The plan was to hike 110km of the 250km circuit over six days, camping each night on the banks of the Glenelg River. That gave us plenty of opportunity to field test the towel, since we’d be swimming in the river every evening. The last stretch was a 23km hike along Discovery Bay, plenty of sand to test the sand-free claim.

We were blessed with fabulous weather over the six days, and found ourselves stripping off and swimming at every lunch break and evening before setting camp. Here’s how the towels performed.

Material

Material is one of the biggest factors in a hiking towel, it affects drying time, weight and packed size. Most hiking towels use polyester and nylon microfibres, which is what makes them compressible, lightweight and quick drying. The fabric usually contains modified fibres that trap water in pockets between them, since polyester and nylon fibres by themselves absorb very little moisture, and that structure is what lets the water be squeezed out easily so the towel dries fast.

Tesalate’s workout towel is made from a bespoke microfibre blend they call AbsorbLite™. It’s lightweight, packs small and dries quickly. Over our six days we were hiking in 30 degree heat every day, so a swim before lunch and again before setting up camp was pretty much guaranteed. The fabric feels like most microfibre towels, dense and a little coarse, but it was genuinely absorbent and got us completely dry in no time. Tesalate claim the towel can hold up to 1 litre of water without dripping. I didn’t test that claim myself. What I can vouch for is the drying time: strapped to my pack after the lunchtime swim, it was dry as a bone by the time we reached camp each day, and after the evening swim, hung up, it was dry again within 30 minutes. The fantastic weather we had obviously helped with that.

Dimensions

Hiking towels come in a range of sizes, and which one you want depends on where and how you’ll use it. On day hikes I typically carry a smaller towel, no bigger than a tea towel, since it’s only wiping hands, feet and face. For overnight hikes I’ll carry something bigger, since I’m more likely to be drying my whole body after a wash or swim.

Tesalate’s single beach towel is 80x160cm, and the double is a massive 160x160cm. We felt both were too large for hiking, so we carried the workout towel, which is 45x100cm. That was the right size for this trip, large enough to dry off properly and still small enough to pack away neatly. Just don’t expect it to cover everything if you feel like wrapping it around yourself walking around camp. We had every campsite to ourselves, so that didn’t matter much, although one koala didn’t seem impressed.

Rolled up, the workout towel packs down to a neat 23x5cm, easy to stuff into a pack.

Weight

Lightweight hiking gear lets you move faster and easier and takes load off your body, so it’s worth choosing a towel that doesn’t add much to your pack weight, particularly on multi-day hikes.

The Tesalate workout towel isn’t the lightest towel I own. At 160 grams it adds a bit of weight, and it’s certainly at the heavier end of the scale, other towels of similar size run around 100-120 grams. Against that, it feels thicker and more durable than most, which matters if you’re using it for padding on rocky ground.

Antimicrobial Treatments

Some hiking towels use antimicrobial treatments such as Polygiene, which inhibit odour-causing bacteria and help the towel stay fresher for longer. Worth knowing that these treatments eventually wash out, so I don’t rate it as a major factor when choosing a towel.

The workout towel has been treated with antibacterial tech. A moist towel exposed to bacteria, from sweat or general hiking grime, is an excellent breeding ground for mould, mildew and bacteria, and Tesalate build a safe antimicrobial additive into the core of the fabric, effective against bacteria as well as fungi like mould, mildew and algae. Combined with the fast-drying fabric, that meant the towel didn’t stink even after six days of continual use.

The antimicrobial treatment is a good addition, particularly if you’re hiking in poor weather and have no choice but to stuff a wet towel into your pack. You don’t want to expose your food or other gear to extra bacteria or smells from your towel. As a side note, I always carry a small dry bag to stuff wet gear into.

Sand Free

One of the claims that caught my attention in Tesalate’s adverts is that you can have sand-free days at the beach. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of picking up a towel at the end of a day at a crowded beach and trying to shake the sand off without giving your neighbour a face full. Tesalate’s AbsorbLite™ fabric is purpose-engineered for sand to slip off easily, so you can leave the beach at the beach.

We were able to test this on several occasions during our final 23km day along one of Victoria’s most pristine beaches, plenty of sand. Every time we stopped for a break, we’d roll our towels out on the sand so we weren’t inviting it into our pants every time we sat down. If you haven’t experienced chafing from sand getting into your pants on a long beach hike, give it a go. Not fun.

My wife and I were both amazed that every time we picked up our towels, the sand simply fell off. No need to shake or bash the wet sand out, it was just gone. We tested it with dry sand, wet sand, and at one point buried the towel in sand hoping to catch the claim out. No sand.

After our six days and 110km, I was glad these towels came along for the trip. We used them multiple times a day, got them wet, covered them in sand, rolled them up, hung them out to dry, sat on them, stood on them, did everything you’d practically do with a towel, and they finished the trip looking and smelling as good as when I first pulled them out of the postage pack.

They’re not the lightest towel available to hikers, but the durability and the rest of what they offer make them a worthy contender, and they’ll have a place in my pack whenever the hike and terrain call for carrying a towel.

Tech specs

Features:

• Perfect size: 100cm x 45cm
• Weight: 160 grams
• Compact and lightweight (Rolls up to 23 x 5cm)
• Ultra-absorbent
• Rapid-drying, half the time of a regular towel
• Handy hook, hang it anywhere

• Washing your Tesalate towel is easy. Tesalate recommend cold machine wash and simply put it out to dry. It dries fast.

Buy direct from Tesalate for $49

(for the Workout Towel)