I decided to do an overnight in my garden to test out what tarp shelters are like, before leaving my tent at home on a hike.
Besides the usual dew, it was a dry night without any rain.
I really enjoyed the experience, my only issue was moisture.
When I entered the tarp after sunset, the grass was all wet from dew, I rolled out the ground cloth and sleeping bag, and when I woke up in the morning there was quite a lot of condense on the inside of the tarp and my sleeping bag was wet on the ouside, as was the ground which was once again covered with dew.
The tarp and ground cloth used was cheap plastic tarps.
The tarp used for shelter is 8" x 12" pitched up in a diamond shape (one corner in the air, three on the ground), the tarp used for ground cloth is 4" x 8".
I pitched up the tarp in the afternoon, sunny weather temp. around 77F, I went to bed after sunset at this point the temp. was about 50F and the temp. continued to drop during the night to about 40F, when I woke up the temp. was around 55F.
On top of the ground cloth was a three part ground insulation made from my bag pack, a short evazote pad and a fleece shirt used as pillow.
The sleeping bag was a Marmot Hydrogen, no bivy bag was used.
I stayed perfectly warm all night and the water on my sleeping bag never got through the outer fabric.
My concearn is that I might need to spend a lot of time in the morning drying out all of my wet gear.
Usually I only need to wait for the fly on the tent to dry.
Can anyone help me out, how do I stay dry inside a tarp ?
Thanks …
/Brian
