tarp shelter

here is another lightweight shelter that can be set up,
using an 8 ft. x 10 ft. tarp with six stakes and a trekking pole.

this would make a very quick and easy shelter, and not much weight
in the pack.

for bugs and rain, you would need to add another piece of fabric
with some mosquito netting sewn on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkBeZqXU4zk

Wild Oasis

Six Moon Designs "Wild Oasis" tarptent, shown with fly open

various shelters

this is the silnylon shelter I am currently using
Six Moon Designs "Wild Oasis" seen at Kirkwood Ranch campground in Hell's Canyon



Brawny Tarptent




correction: it is the REI Roadster tent that I used, not the Coupe (that is the two person version of the Roadster).

the Wake Up Call (part 7)

ah, tents.....I can never have enough TENTS. During a recent garage clean-out session, I made a big pile of all our tents. Most of them are car camping sized tents. I have used many different types of shelters in my backpacking adventures. I have used small 7x7 ft dome tents. I have used a polyethylene green tarp. Once in the Seven Devils mountains I experimented with an orange poly emergency tube tent (it was lightweight, but slept very cold with the wind blowing through both ends!). I also have spent a couple of nights sleeping without a shelter with just a small 5x7 ft. tarp beneath me for a groundcloth. For a couple of years I had good results with the REI Coupe, which is a double wall tent that weighs 2 pounds (+ a few ounces). Although the REI tent was a bit small for my size (I am 6 ft. 3 in.) I felt very comfortable inside it. It was/is a good ventilating double wall tent with some vestibule space outside. My most successful lightweight shelters have been silnylon tarptents. My first one was a Brawny Tarptent. It weighs about 1 pound. The tarptent I have been using for the last two hiking seasons is a tarptent called Wild Oasis, made by Six Moon Designs. It is based on the successful Gatewood Cape design, with the addition of mosquito netting sewn along the bottom perimeter and with a zipper added for access. It does not have a floor. I lay out my 5x7 tarp as my groundcloth, then tuck the edges of the mosquito netting beneath the tarp to keep the bugs out. I have been very pleased with this shelter system. I have been through three good rains inside this tent and I have stayed dry. My biggest challenge, as with all single wall silnylon shelters, has been condensation on the INSIDE. The answer to the condensation problem has been to keep the bottom edges raised a few inches to allow ventilation. This shelter has a ton of room underneath, and for 13 ounces it saves on weight in the backpack. I will try to post some pictures of the various shelters I have mentioned above.

landing in Atlanta Idaho

the Wake Up Call (part 6)

The sleeping quilt keeps a person warm on the top, but what keeps him/her warm on the bottom? The answer is an insulated sleeping mat. A closed cell foam mat can be used, such as Z-rest or Ridge Rest, or an inflatable air mattress with insulation. Here is another area where I gained significant weight savings in my pack weight. I used to carry a twin-sized inflatable blow up mattress which weighed about 6 pounds. Now I carry an REI 48"x20" inflatable insulated mat which weighs about 1 pound. Various sizes and shape configurations are available. The closed cell foam mats tend to be bulkier in size but very light to carry. Next time I will discuss the process of reducing my tent weight.

the Wake Up Call (part 5)

The sleeping bag, or sleeping *system* as it is sometimes called, is another part of the Big Three. The sleeping bags I carried before were always bulky and had 4 or 5 pounds of loft. I also carried an inflatable camp mattress that weighed 6 or 7 pounds. HEAVY. BULKY. did I mention it was HEAVY? In the Beyond Backpacking book, Jardine describes an ultralight sleeping "quilt." It is not a quilt in the sense that your grandmother made for a bedspread. Using the new ultralight synthetic insulations available today, Jardine describes how they constructed a two person *quilt* by laying the insulation between two sheets of 1.1 ounce un-coated nylon material. It has to be UNCOATED so it will breathe. With the two sheets sewn together, a loop of knitting yarn is threaded through at 12 inch to 18 inch intervals, to hold the insulation in place. It was easy to make one for myself, after I ordered some specialty insulation and fabric. I didn't need the two person model, so I guess-timated about 84" by 60" wide. My wife sewed the perimeter of the two sheets together, after we had them sandwiched over the double sheets of insulation. Then, as shown in the diagram in the book, we laid a ruler over each location to be sewn. The loop of yarn went through the layers, out the bottom, back around the bottom, back up through the layers, then was tied off on the top layer. This helps to hold the insulation in place. The first few times I attempted to use this quilt on a trip, I had to also use a fleece sleeping bag to supplement. I didn't realize that the quilt had to be CLOSED at the foot end in order to keep the feet warm! I think it says that somewhere in the book, but I must have missed it! It wasn't too hard for my wife to retro-fit the quilt with a footbox. We simply folded two corners in towards the center, then used an extra piece of fabric to sew them together. The result is a MUCH warmer and highly useable piece of gear for about a pound. This quilt has now served me for many backcountry nights over several seasons, and is still going strong.