Tarp tents.

[Neil]

Last summer my wife and I made use of a 10x12 tarp for a tent in fair weather.

This summer we plan on using the same setup for a 4 or 5 day off-trail backpack. Does anybody with more experience using tarp tents have any advice or previous experiences to share?

 

[Rick]

Neil, I used to have a Betalight, which I enjoyed somewhat, as well as my old standby - 8x10 tarp. If you don't already have some, I encourage mosquito mesh. I have some 36""x36" Nets that were used on our son's jogging stroller and they weigh about 2 ozs and work great draped over me when it is really buggy - If you don't like the feeling of mesh on your face, you can also jury rig a line with a bit of duct tape on the ceiling of your tarp and dangle it down over you as you sleep.

 

[percious]

An alternative to no-see-um mesh is "funeral veil" material, which can be found at any fabric store for about $1.50 a sq. yard. It works well against the black flies, and is considerably cheaper and lighter.

-percious

 

[Gris]

+1 on the mesh, but my advice is go all the way and get an insert w/ a WP floor. I'm a tarp cheater. Been using a home made tarp-tent w/ an old style MSR mesh insert w/ bathtub floor for a few years. The insert doubles the weight from 1.5 to 3+ lbs, but it's worth its weight in gold to me to me both from a bug-haven and must-keep-important-gear-dry standpoint. Allows me to lay on top of my bag warm nights and sleep well not worrying about bugs, critters or rain puddles...

 

[JimB]

Neil, my son and I did a few fast and light bushwack trips with a tarp for less weight. We each used a nylon "bivy" bag that was no more than a big nylon bag that we could get our sleeping bags inside of and was waterproof. It folded up to about soda can size. We used bug nets over our heads when we slept to keep them at bay. Our tarp was a cheapie that was about 8 by 10 and was mostly to put our gear under. If the weather was bad we used a rope to get one end up and put wood on the sides to hold it down. It sounds rough but we could cover a lot of trailess ground when we only carried 20 lbs of gear .

 

[jrichard]

I have a ray-way tarp, which has an optional net tent. You have to sew these things yourself (it's actually quite easy), but you might be able to find a golite mimic for sale somewhere.

The tarp setup works great. I used it for a couple weeks on the Cohos trail, and for various overnights in the Whites. We opted not to carry the net tent on account of the 1lb weight it adds. Instead, we just threw a couple scraps of netting over our heads. It worked surprisingly well.

 

[TomD]

Go to www.backpacking.net (the Lightweight Backpacker) and the forums there (Community link on the home page) have all the tarp info you could want from regular users, plus links to various manufacturers, including Henry Shires, who makes the TarpTent brand lightweight tents that look like a cross between a tarp and a tent. Check out the gear store and the other links for all kinds of tarp related designs. I had one of the TarpTents but never go around to using it and sold it a while back, but it was really well made from what I could tell. I'm more of a tent person, but I've even seen people using them in the Winter-a little too adventurous for me.