Stories of bad weather and how your shelter went

A couple of friends and I went to the Lost Coast during some pretty bad weather. My friends were not the most experienced backpackers.

We are heading down the beach in the rain and it's getting dark, we need to set up camp. We cross a stream and follow a small path along the stream heading inland. Just a short walk and there is a nice flat campsite with lots of trees. But no, my friend refuses to camp there because of poison oak. He wants to camp on the beach.

We had a flat tarp and I let him get it pitched while I searched for some dry firewood so we could at least warm up a little before bed.

After gathering some wood, I come out to the beach and see that he has pitched the ridge line of the tarp off a few big driftwood logs and staked it out using rocks. These rocks were not big rocks.

That night the wind and rain picked up. As the wind tugged on the guy lines, the rocks slid through the soft sand because they weren't nearly heavy enough. As the rocks got dragged around the shelter would no longer be taught and it would start to flap. The rope would often get pulled off the rocks completely because these were smooth river rocks.

Me and the other friend had to get up regularly to pull the rocks back out and re-tie the lines onto the rocks. At one point, all of the lines on one side of the A-frame got pulled off the rocks and I awoke to the tarp completely blown over with rain landing on us.

Meanwhile, the friend who set up the shelter has his hearing aids out (completely deaf without them) and has his sleeping bag pulled over his head. Didn't wake up once.

The first time I slept in my factory seam sealed TarpTent Rainbow was in a thunderstorm in North Carolina. The silny leaked under the heavy rain.

Here's a good read

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=44862

Recently spent a night at the Iceland Alftavatn campsite where we experienced a few hours of sustained 25-ish mph winds with blowing mist with gusts up to around 40 mph. I tried a Big Agnes Fly Creek UL1 on this trip and it did well with the front to the wind. A friend had a Cabelas 2 person shelter having the same pole shape (hub in front with spine to foot end) and it was angled foot end into wind. The wind was pushing the spine over which caused him to tear his inner while trying to keep the pole spine from deflecting..lol. The weather cleared by 10 PM and was calm the next morning.

A few years ago my hiking buddy and I did a section of the Long Trail in Vermont in mid-March. I was trying to get my winter pack weight down to a minimum, partly by using a tarp and bivy sack for shelter. The first night the wind blew horizontally at about 30-40 MPH, carrying a moderately heavy snowfall with it. The wind caused the snow to blow around the edges of the tarp, piling up on my bivy sack. Let's just say it wasn't my happiest night out camping.

A buddy and I were on an above treeline trip in Ireland and we tried to
pitch two TT Scarps in 70mph winds gusting from all directions (measure with a wind meter), his got thrashed, but by using his pegs and guylines we managed to nail mine to the ground and we both slept under the flysheet of mine.

I slept well (I had ear plugs and I was exhausted) but my buddy told me in the morning he saw the tent pole nearly touch my face during the night.

Hammocking in the pouring rain and 40 degree weather. Rain fly sagged in the middle of the night when I was fast asleep and started funneling water into the underquilt. Woke up floating in a cold soggy hypothermia-inducing mess.

Not my best night out ever.

Camped in a saddle on the Pine Mountain Trail in Virginia in late March with a group of college students, about 10 years ago. It's been lightly raining all day, but at sunset the wind shifts and it starts to get cold. I have my 5×8 sil tarp and a water resistant bivy with a lot of mesh over the chest and head. At 1am I wake up to water dripping on my face through the mesh — huh? Turns out I am covered with several inches of snow under my tarp. I can't get out of the bag without getting a lot of snow inside, and I have to pee something awful. Made for an interesting night – finally got up around 6am, still snowing heavily, and found the nearest tree. :) The more interesting part was getting all the students up and packed and back to the car in one piece – some of them had never been backpacking, and many had barely adequate gear. But we got them all back with all their fingers and toes, and it made the hot meal at the restaurant on the way home that much more memorable. Lesson learned: tiny tarp and bivy can work in snow, but it's hard to answer the call of nature.

Earlier this month, camped on the top of Whitetop Mountain, also in Southwest Virginia, in our Six Moons Designs Lunar Duo. We've had this in some epic thunderstorms, but that night was the best/worst ever. Two solid hours of massive thunderstorm directly over our campsite (in the open but carefully chosen to be out of the wind). It started as a frog strangler, went to raining cats-and-dogs, then raining elephants-and-rhinos. Every time I though, "Man, it can't rain any harder than this," it would start raining harder. We were totally dry and happy inside the SMD tent, and even camped on grass in pouring rain we had almost no condensation inside. Lesson learned: man we love this tent.

A fun thing to think back on, actually.

Ages ago on Longs Peak I decided to camp up near the boulders to set myself up for a summit bid, as it was slow going through October snow. Shelter was a 3 pole, 3+ season Wild Country dome tent. It took longer than it should have to guy it out to various shrubs and rocks, but the 50 mph storm that blew a foot of snow in that night didn't phase it and I slept well.

A year later I did a 10 trip in the Escalante out of a Bibler bivvy sack, which wasn't really needed as it never rained, but the one massive sandstorm up on the bench between 25 mile and Scorpion Gulch was not fun as I rolled into the lee of the storm and held open a little breathing hole against the sand. I've been a big bivvy skeptic for backpacking ever since.

Right down the street in North Wash I rode out another impressive wind/sand storm in a first gen BD Firstlight, which I had lazily not staked at all after a long day. The storm blew up around midnight and soon it was only my body weight holding it to the earth. During a lull I dove out the door and held one guyline with one hand and grabbed enough rocks with the other to keep it in place. Once it was anchored I slept pretty well, though it was loud.

While testing for a BPL article I brought a poncho tarp and only a poncho tarp on a late May traverse of the Bob Marshall. The first day stretched past dark (11pm) to get down out of the snow and I made a quick a-frame pitch on the edge of a meadow. Woke up in the morning with the tarp 3 inches from my face and piles of snow a few inches to either side of me. My sleeping bag stayed dry and with tighter guying the sagging would have been a non-issue.

Same year I foolishly decided to camp on a gravel beach along a lake in Glacier during a November windstorm. My Trailstar shed the wind well, but deadmen in the gravel didn't work well and I had several spectacular zippered anchor failures until I got everything cinched down tight. Thankfully it wasn't also raining or snowing at the time.

Two winters ago along the same lake I purposefully headed into the teeth of a winter storm, which ended up exceeding expectations. Gusts reached 70 mph (roughly) rain turned to snow around midnight, and an old growth, still-living pine about a foot in diameter fell over the trail I had just skied in on. I pitched the Seek Outside LBO on many feet of snow, and harvested many 3-4 foot sticks 2-3 inches in diameter as anchors. The shelter was moving plenty, but held fast and I slept well with only one excursion during the night to shovel.

This past winter during a kayak trip in Fiordlands NP (NZ) we had our first night out in the strongest rain I've ever experienced. We were in tents provided by the outfitter, in my case an older Macpac similar to the current Minaret. I could see what was coming, and made a point to pitch it out of any low points and especially tight. We stayed perfectly dry when many others did not, even when the rain was so hard it seemed to cut off air flow. The waterfalls the next morning were most impressive.

Take away lesson seems to be that sloth and arriving at a hasty campsite late and when very tired tend to correlate with poor setups. Putting my boy scout days of crap tents aside I can't ever recall getting wet or beat up when I took the time to pitch camp well in a good location.

I don't have a lot of exciting bad-weather stories to share. The one I have is pretty ridiculous, actually.

So we were hiking on Mallorca (a balearen island). As a detour from our multi-day hike, we wanted to do a canyon-day-hike and stayed on a campground for two nights for that reason. Due to usually dry weather and overusage of the campground, the ground was dry and really packed. During our first night, it rained heavily for many hours. Our tent (Golite Shangri-La 2) held up perfectly fine. However, we did not have a bathtub-floor (just polycro-sheets) and puddles started building on the superdry and packed ground. At some point in the early morning hours, we had to pack our stuff and leave the tent as puddles were forming inside the tent. The entire campground was kind of flooded. We took the chance for a breakfast in a nearby cafe. When we returned to our tent, the ground had finally softened which caused the pegs to come undone, so our (thankfully empty) tent was lying in a puddle of mud. Needless to say that due to the heavy rain our canyon-tour had to be canceled.
Ironically that entire situation would not have been an issue if we had wildcamped (as we did the nights before) instead of going to a campground.
I don't think I will start bringing an innertent w/ dedicated bathtub floor as a "lesson learned" from that trip. Rather, I will try to avoid shi**y campgrounds in the future.

About 40 years ago I spent a night in this myog tent during a heavy wet snowfall (over 1 foot) that continued all night long. Had to push the snow outward from inside the tent several times during the night. Tent was pretty well buried by morning but otherwise I had a problem free night.

Hard part was the next day trying to get out. I had gone several miles cross country to get where I was. Going out over boulder fields, streams, steep gullies and down trees was tricky and exhausting. I was joyful when I got down to a snow free trail.

I have bought 3 tarptents over the years. Non of mine were "factory sealed". I did not know they offered that as a service. Glad I did not know and sealed them myself when I got them.
Art

Theo's story about puddles forming on packed ground reminded me of the worst situation that I found myself in weather-wise. Overflowing trails that send little streams toward your tent can be a problem; certainly pooling/flowing ground water that you didn't consider when setting up your tent can be too.

Once in the Minarets a very heavy storm sent a stream from the trail 30 feet away right into my tent. Before I knew what was happening the inside of my tent was soaked; my clothes too–but not my bag. I had to get out and re-pitch the entire tent nearby in driving rain/sleet. It was the shakedown trip for my Hexamid solo and I wasn't very skilled at set up. In the end I did alright because my bag was dry–I would have been in trouble otherwise; it was snowing 300 feet higher, so cold.

a lot of people were hiking out the next day: there were standing puddles in most campsites that we hiked past.

It was still cold and raining as we packed up as quickly as possible (my friends clothes were wet too). I had to get going fast to avoid chills or worse. It was fine after 20 minutes however.

I have had a lot of trouble with wind in Southern California.

I've learned to pile large rocks on my stakes so that my tent won't fall down. But one time the rocks sawed through the ribbons that attached the guy lines to the tent and the tent came down with no way to put it back up. This was our Lunar Duo. They sent us free replacement ribbons and we've never had the problem again because we learned.

I've also experienced not being able to set up my tarp because it was just too windy. Other times I managed to set it up but had to get up multiple times during the night to search for the stakes and set it up again and again. It was an 8×10 silnylon tarp.

One time I couldn't set up my tent in the wind so I slept out. I woke up to pee and my whole bed flew away. Later I woke up with rain on my face. I had to resort to sleeping in my tent without setting it up, like sleeping in a bag. The wind beat the tent against me all night. I got no sleep. This was in my GG One. My One has fallen down many times in the wind but to be fair, that was on the PCT and that's the tent I had so I can't say the tent is to blame.

Once in Washington I set up my tent in the rain and in the night and the rain pooled at the foot of the tent. My fault because I could tell that water might puddle there so I dug a trench I hoped would drain this puddle but it didn't. A fine mist fell on me onto my face all night. This tent was a Contrail or some other one that starts with a C.

Once in Glacier, where you have to sleep in designated areas, we had an afternoon thunderstorm so we all jumped into our tents to wait it out. Our tent site filled with water probably a foot deep. Fortunately the tent (our Lunar Duo) has a big bathtub. I sat on my foam pad poking at the water bed-like floor hoping it wouldn't seep inside (it didn't). Our tent site was small so part of the roof was over a log, so water was trapped and was forming a huge bubble supported by the log. We couldn't push the water off or else it would just come inside the tent. So one of us (ha ha not me!) had to go out there, bail it out and fix it so it wouldn't fill up again.

Because of how awful it is to get wet inside the tent, I think maybe tarps have an advantage in rainy places. But because how wonderful it was to have such a deep bathtub floor when our mandatory tent site flooded, that's one advantage of tents. Nothing has an advantage in high wind with rain.

Could bring lightweight cord to make extensions to regular stake loops, and use those to loop around rocks instead of rocks directly on top of stakes. I have seen this done for extra tie outs (loop around large rocks).

My mate Pete and I were doing the Welsh 3000'ers one weekend in march and camped high to get a flying start on day 2. At 6am he got out of his sleeping bag to answer a call of nature and opened both zips on his Saunders nylon coffin flysheet-only pitch we'd made. The strong steady wind which had arisen took the flysheet and pegs straight over the nearby cliff and I was left stargazing from my sleeping bag.

We got an early start that morning.

I do remember him getting a bit grumpy when I told him to look on the bright side because we didn't have to carry the tent all day.

Moral, if the soils too thin for good peg holds, take spare cordage and the time to find big rocks.

I was sea kayaking in Georgian Bay (off Lake Huron in Canada – eh?) and had to sit out a nasty storm alone in my 3 man Eureka dome tent.

The storm was long and often intense, with lots of lightning but the tent, which I had weak sealed, held up just fine. I was snug and dry, if occasionally worried about the wind breaking my tent's fiberglass poles.

In 2010 I spent the second night of my attempt to hike the Tahoe Rim Trail near Susie Lake in Desolation Wilderness. It was mid-October and the week before there had been a lot of thunderstorms, and early season snow at the higher elevations. I delayed my start from South Lake Tahoe by a day because the first night called for 45-50 mph winds at Starr Lake, along with lightning. This would be only my third time sleeping out in my BPL Cuben Nano tarp, so I exercised caution. When I started down the trail the next morning, I shortly ran into two women who were finishing their TRT hike. They had pitched up right on the trail in the dark the night before in the middle of that storm, not knowing they were only a mile or so from the TH, and spent the night watching lightning flash while the wind shook their tents.

I spent from first night in a light rain at Big Meadow, and get off the TRT and take a shortcut between Big Meadow and Echo Lakes the second day to make up time. It rained and snowed as I passed along Echo Lakes, but at least stopped precipitating as I got passed Lake Aloha and set up camp around 6:30pm in dying light.

It started to rain again as I dumped boiling water into my Mountain Home bag, and as I waited for it to hydrate, I noticed that my tarp had been set up near the bottom and incline, and directly in the path of a narrow rivulet that was now filling with streaming water. I was sleeping on a polycro groundsheet, in a TiGoat bivy, in a down sleeping bag, and the temps were already in the 30s. So after a few moments of cursing myself, I unstaked the tarp and quickly but carefully dragged it , with my bivy/sleeping bag underneath, to a spot I had rejected earlier as possibly too small, but having the advantage of being on a small rise. In the process of unstaking, I had knocked the Photon Freedom off the brim of my cap. It was turned off, and black in color. I didn’t have time to search and possibly not find it. I had to use what natural light was left to get set up. The catenary cut did what catenary cuts are supposed to do, and made it relatively easy for an idiot to get an idiot-proof pitch, considering the situation, and the site was big enough, oriented such that the foot end of the tarp was windward. I couldn’t find my light, so I was consigned to eating in the dark, under storm clouds dimly backlit by the moon.

The hail and lightning started in earnest at 10pm. This was my first Cuben shelter, and the fabric felt so thin I was sure it would be shredded by the ice falling from the sky. Winds were 20-25mph measured on my Brunton ADC when I stuck my hand out the front. It was a scary but exhilirating experience riding out that storm in an open-sided tarp, watching the lightning flash, while the hail piled up around the perimeter of the Nano, waking up and banging it off the tarp to keep it from sagging. In trying to keep it low to the ground, I had pitched it too flat.

The storm ended up piling snow thigh deep up near Dick’s Pass, where I stood for a moment, looked at the snowy snowy landscape between me and Tahoe City, and further along the trail at Relay Peak, wondering if the snow would melt by the time I got there. I couldn’t risk being delayed any longer, being forced to choose between missing my flight; paying for an expensive ride back to South Lake; or abandoning the travel duffel left stashed in some rocks at the Kingsbury Grade TH, with my changes of clothes and the cardboard mailing tube for safely transporting my LT4s. I ended up backtracking, spending a night at Tamarack Lake, walking back to South Lake from there.

This past May I spent a night in Coyote Gulch, passed Jacob Hamlin arch, on outcrop across the creek and in line of sight of the pit toilet. Other groups had arrived earlier and claimed the more desirable spots under alcoves. The view was great but the exposure wasn’t. It was windy, 10-15mph measured on the Brunton, but not so bad I couldn’t get my spinnaker Solomid pitched. It wasn’t a great pitch though, a bit flat on the narrow, windward side. It seemed anyplace the sandy soil wasn’t too rocky to drive a stake(MSR groundhogs) it was too soft to hold them, and not deep enough to really dig a proper hole for a deadman anchor. I got three of four corners and the front pounded it and piled with big rocks to hold them down, careful to place the rocks so the line didn’t rub and abraid against them in the wind, tearing off a small corner of my ccf pad and wedging it between the line and the one rock where I couldn’t. The fourth corner and the back I had to bury the stakes in shallow holes and anchor with rocks on top of rocks, which I think led to the flat-ishness of the windward side. My LT4’s were sinking and sliding in the soft ground, so I had to put a pedestal built of a couple `flat rocks under the tip of each to brace them high enough. No amount of fidgeting could get the pitch completely tight, but I didn’t feel like taking it down and starting from scratch, and the occasionally light flapping of the spinnaker was tolerable. The wind gradually increased, until it was was blowing in the mid-20mph range by 9pm, gusting to 35 and up. The spinnaker flapped more noisily, but I got to sleep, only to wake up at 11:30, when the shaking jarred one of the poles off its rock pedestal, and it slid out, collapsing the tent, the windblown rattle of the fabric sounding like the world was crashing in. In my disoriented stated, I was frustrated when I couldn’t grab the pole and rocks and reset them, until I remembered I was sleeping in my Serenity net tent, and the mesh was blocking my attempts. I got it back up and rode out the night fitfully. In the morning I swore I was going to trade in the Solomid for a free-standing Tarptent so I didn’t end up in this situation again. Cooler heads prevailed and I’ve still got the mid.