Advice from experienced poncho tarp users

[Paul Luther]

See http://www.conney.com for 18″ Tyvek “sleeves”. $10.95/bag, 10pr/bag.I don’t know what type of Tyvek they use, nor do I have any experience using these “sleeves”. I’m going to try them during a trip to Glacier NP. Does anyone have experience using them, with a poncho, in the rain?
Thanks,
Paul

[Pedro Arvy]

Well this morning there seems to be a solution I didn’t think of – the vest. It sounds like I need a vest plus an Epic windshirt and I’ll be pretty well right if I choose this system. I’ll ponder this some more. I wonder who makes a warm Polarguard vest?

I do hike with poles by the way.

[Vick Hines]

Sure you could use arm chaps, but why not just use a 3-4 oz W/B wind shirt such as Sportshell or Durafab?

[Roger B]

Montane in the UK does, not sure if you can get in the USA but some companies will ship to the US.

[Vick Hines]

Freezing below 50? How far below 50? Poncho/windshirt/ base keeps me OK to about 32 if I’m moving.

Consider: You’ve spent the last 2 hours ascending through freezing rain at 40 falling toward 32F. You are wearing a conventional W/B rain jacket and pants. Your pack is soaked, your back is soaked where your pack rubs and your jacket and pants are wet on both the outside and inside. The temp reaches a good hard freeze about the time you reach camp, promising to fall further. Now, your jacket and pants are wet and so are your base layers. So everything has to come off then the outer garments go back on…wet. You dig extra base layers and a vest or pullover out of the wet/flacid but rapidly stiffening pack.

Compare this to the situation with a poncho: The poncho has covered your pack, so it’s dry, and you are wearing a W/B windshirt, so your arms are dry except a few dribbles that got under the cuffs somehow. The space between your back and the pack is mostly dry except for a little sweat. The temp feaches a hard freeze, you reach camp and shed the poncho and reach inside your dry pack for dry insulating garments. Wow! Comfort.

[Dale Wambaugh]

Vests…..

First of all, a vest was my choice for cost, weight, and small stowing space. I have a polyfill sweater/jacket that is good for really cold weather, but I wanted something for three season use. My polyfill sweater is 19oz and the vest is 10oz.

The rest of my three season layering system is a long or short sleeve polyester top, a long sleeve micro-fleece type top, and a wind shirt. I like the underlayer selection as I can wear any one item comfortably, or pile on the rest as needed. I am not really exposed to extreme weather– I’m aiming from 30F-90F. My sleeping bag is rated to 20F and I can always sleep in any of my layers.

I came on a Moonstone Cirrus vest via a trade and it suits my needs. I prefer full zippers on all my outer garments for ventilation and the Cirrus has that. The Patagonia Micro Puff is great, although it is a pull-over (and I didn’t get the deal I did with the Moonstone). Integral Designs makes a Primaloft vest (full zip too), but I’ve never seen one up close.

All these polyfill vests give a layer of insualtion and some wind stopping value– nice around camp with just the vest and a layer under, you can sleep in one, etc, etc. I can’t tell you which is warmer– perhaps some of the others here can.

I have a 200 weight fleece vest and a Windstopper too. They all provide a good intermediate layer of insulation. A fleece vest would go a long ways, especially on a budget, with a little less adaptability. It would be fine for summer if nothing else.

I don’t like down because of my local climate and my ability to sweat buckets, but down vests are certainly a possibility.

This selection of clothing suits my physiology and the climate I usually hike in. Your mileage may vary :)

[paul johnson]

Vick is right. An Epic fabric windshirt alone might not suffice for long term medium to heavy rain. Additionally, it won’t work at all when the pressure of the pack straps forces the water through the area of the windshirt that it contacts.

It is for this reason, that other than very light short duration rain, i always don the poncho or cape.

Furthermore, i believe the great performance i’ve received from the Wild Things Epic windshirt is because it’s only the forearms that are exposed due to the poncho or cape. The forearms are moving since i use trekking poles and not basically in one position/orientation relative to the falling rain the way the shoulders and upper back is. The chances for wet-through with Epic is less for the forearms than for the upperback and tops of the shoulders even without the pack harness.

A poncho also functions superior to a pack cover, IMHO. No water gets between the pack and your back.

These are all points Vick mentioned in his post which i will echo here in agreement.

However, if you’re bushwacking and not staying on trail or in open areas, then a poncho or cape may snag quite a bit on brush.

Just to give you a fuller picture of Epic’s performance in torrential rain, i offer the following experience. The factory where i work is about 1/2mile long; the parking lot longer. Sometimes i park far away just to walk uphill a good distance to my car – for exercise. So, one day, not checking the weather forecast ahead of time, i wore, some Epic fabric pants to work and a Wild Things hooded Epic fabric windshirt which i use as a non-trail-use jacket in cooler temps. I wore very breathable mesh shoes and P’Down socks. Just before i left work, the skies let loose – torrents of rain – almost like taking a shower. My feet soaked and squished with water in less than a minute of walking to my car – which i did at a normal, for me, 3mph pace – watching my co-workers running and getting partly or fully drenched with or without an umbrella from the rain. The asphalt tar parking lot was covered in a layer of water. Even where one would think that the pavement was level, a flow of water was clearly seen. Impact splatters were bouncing up as high as my knees. My cotton ballcap brim sticking out from under the Epic hood quickly soaked and wicked the water to the underside of the brim, up the front of the cap which was under the hood and also a bit around the sides of the cap (also protected by the hood).

However, my Epic pants and windshirt did NOT wet through in a bit over 10minutes of walking in this veritable deluge of near-Noahic proportions. The rain was making such a racket on the roof when i got into my car. The wipers (plus Rain-X treatment) did very little the rainfall was so heavy. Visibility from the heavy rains limited 40mph travel to 10-15mph. The wipers sometimes didn’t clear the windshield when they swiped as the rain was coming down so heavy. 55mph travel on the parkway was limited to 25mph on the usual 20minute drive home which took more than twice that long – my route home follows the usual prevailing winds (other than the rare Nor’easter) so i had the joy of riding under the storm the entire way home.

Note that this was only 10minutes and i wasn’t wearing a pack. I still wouldn’t use Epic fabric as my sole raingear as, in my case, i could be exposed to all day lighter rain.

I also don’t use a BD Lightsabre Epic bivy alone if the weekend weather forecast predicts a wet weekend with a lot of rain.

One funny thing about Epic, particularly if the rain is cold – it feels cold and “wet” against the skin, even before it wets through, but it really isn’t wet. It just gives the impression of being wet. After noticing this on my forearms, when wearing a short-sleeved shirt, i tested this in the kitchen. Ran cold water forcefully for 20seconds on the sleeve with my arm in the Epic windshirt. Then sprayed the sleeve for another 20seconds with the sink’s spray attachment. The shirt sure felt wet against my skin. Taking my arm out showed no wet hair (and there’s a LOT of it) on my forearms. Also, turned the sleeve inside out and lightly rubbing and patting the inside of the sleeve with an absorbent paper towel resulted in the paper towel NOT absorbing any water. It’s just funny the way Epic feels wet against the skin and it hasn’t wet through yet. I have since read of others having this same “wet” sensation.

Also, Epic “talks” to me, so to speak. That is it lets me know when i need to launder it. It is well known that when Epic fabric gets soiled that it’s water resistant properties are diminished. The first place oils, sweat, and dirt from my hands soils the Epic windshirt is near the cuffs where i grab to pull my arms out of the windshirt sleeves when taking it off. When the performance degrades there, which it does first, i then know that it is time to launder it. This goes for both the Wild Things Epic hoodless zip-pullover used on the trail and the hooded one i wear as a casual wind/rain jacket to work.

[John Brown]

There’s an old joke that sums up my recent poncho tarp experience:

Traveller: Why don’t you fix that leak in your roof?

Farmer: When it’s raining it’s too wet to fix it, when it’s dry it’s just as good as any man’s roof.”

Just got back from a 4-day trip in the Escalante area, where I brought an ID poncho tarp + Equinox bivy as my shelter. My guess was that rain was a distant possibility. On my first day there was high winds, blowing showers over. Around camp time, I raced to find a site w/ decent drainage and set up a tight tarp (will post photos as soon as I can get it scanned.) It ended up showering lightly for a few minutes then blowing over. I have to say, given the wind, it felt to me like if it had really rained, I would’ve been wet, no doubt. For better or for worse, it didn’t, so I won’t know.

The upshot of that first poncho tarp experience was that if I was expecting much rain at all, I’d bring a bigger tarp.

Although, when it didn’t rain for the rest of the trip, I felt pretty smart packing the 6.5 oz tarp over the 2 lb tarp tent.

One more thought is that the bushwacking I did was extensive and gnarly. Had it been cold and rainy, I would’ve had to wear that poncho, and quickly shredded it (or had to travel even more slowly through the brush).

[Dale Wambaugh]

Ryan Jordan’s account of his trip to the Lost Coast is my favorite record of camping in windy rainy country with a small poncho tarp. I’ve been there (Washington coast for my trip) and have the tee shirt using a tube tent years ago:

http://ftp.backpackinglight.com/galleries/LostCoast04/

[Antonio Abad]

The other consideration for the poncho/tarp is set-up. Even if I had managed to stay dry while walking, setting the poncho/tarp up soaked me in no time. I’ve read about people doing a convoluted sequence of movements to pull off the trick of setting up while staying dry. While possible, I loathe the hassle. I’m not that limber at the end of a long day’s trek. ;-) It seems that a cape might allow for an easier set-up in these conditions, hence my renewed interest.

FWIW, I am a big fan of insulated vests. My upper body clothing system closely resembles Dale’s: generic synthetic tshirt, polarguard vest (Patagonia Micropuff Vest), lightweight microfleece pullover (Mountain Hardwear Microchill) and a Pertex wind shirt (Montane Featherlite). In cooler weather I swap out the pertex wind shirt for a heavier softshell pullover (Cloudveil Prospector, Inertia fabric). That combo works wonders for me across a very broad set of conditions. IMHO, an insulated jacket is something you only need to carry along in Winter conditions.

[Dale Wambaugh]

Antonio wrote: “The other consideration for the poncho/tarp is set-up. Even if I had managed to stay dry while walking, setting the poncho/tarp up soaked me in no time. I’ve read about people doing a convoluted sequence of movements to pull off the trick of setting up while staying dry. While possible, I loathe the hassle. I’m not that limber at the end of a long day’s trek. ;-) It seems that a cape might allow for an easier set-up in these conditions, hence my renewed interest.”

I’ve never though much of plans to try to pitch a poncho while wearing it and I don’t think you would have any more luck with the cape. Although it looks possible, I’d approximate a drunk butterfly trying to get out of its crysallis. Like you, I’m not very limber after a day work hard walking. A garbage sack or even one of those plastic emergency ponchos would take care of keeping you dry while pitching the shelter, assuming it’s really nasty with no letup in sight. If it was just a squall, I’d opt for sitting under a tree for a nap with my poncho on and a garbage bag or ground cloth over my legs.

Now that I think of it, a resonably clean ground cloth would keep you dry while setting up the tent too. Someone had a link to photos on how to make a cape from a tarp by draping it properly. A Space Blanket would fit that niche too.

It was quite a process to get to the layering system. I asked questions and read a lot of gear lists and made comparisons of what I could inspect in stores. Ultralight, multi-day hiking comes up with a set of criteria that found me buying clothing I normally wouldn’t look at. Each layer needs to compliment the others without duplication and have as many uses as possible. That’s quite a chess game.

I like the polyester base layer with the microfleece second layer as either one or both can be worn and feel good against the skin. The vest can be worn with any combination as can the wind shirt. Any can be worn comfortably for sleeping, camp, or on the trail.

My bottom layering is simpler with briefs, polyester long johns (mostly sleeping), zip-off nylon pants with drawstring or elastic cuffs and Marmot Precip rain pants.

My $1.02 :)

[Pedro Arvy]

Dale wrote:

Ryan Jordan’s account of his trip to the Lost Coast is my favorite record of camping in windy rainy country with a small poncho tarp. I’ve been there (Washington coast for my trip) and have the tee shirt using a tube tent years ago:

http://ftp.backpackinglight.com/galleries/LostCoast04/

I actually emailed Ryan about this in 2004:

I have a question or two for Ryan or anyone else there that can help.

I have been reading your magazine and experimenting with tarps and want to go lighter.
The lightest combination seems your Bozeman Mountain Works SpinPoncho “T” with a bivy.
I read your article about the trip to the wet and rainy Lost World coast and was wondering:

1. Give the extremity of those conditions, when would you not recommend using this combination?

Answer: The T and bivy combo was inappropriate for the lost coast for 99% of folks. I have a high tolerance for
discomfort, so my experience was jaded. I would do it again. However, 10 degrees cooler and it
would have been severely uncomfortable and cold, and my bag would not have dried out through the night.
In that case, a larger tarp would have been great, and I would have taken the Stealth 1 tarp
and a waterproof breathable rain jacket and pants set.

2. Do you personally always use this combination?

Answer: Yes, pretty much during the summer, often into the early fall. Then I switch to a hooded poncho.
For severely wet and cold hiking above the treeline, I’m taking a Stealth zero tarp and rain jacket and pants.

From the sound of this and what others says, it sounds like the poncho bivy is best in milder temperature. Not when it drops below 50 consistently. Ryan is also pretty hard core and will do away with comfort in order to push boundaries. This is fine but its not the expereince I’m after.

[Dale Wambaugh]

If you go on an overnighter and get your gear wet, you have something to talk about the next week, but chances are you’ll survive it and maybe learn what not to do the next time. I grew up with wet camping and lousy old tents and know what it’s like to wake up in a soggy cold sleeping bag (that doubled it’s weight). I got some good lessons on where to pitch my shelter too.

On a multi-day trip, this sort of stuff is just plain miserable and if the weather is more severe, it could be just plain dangerous. I could stay at work and get paid to be miserable ;) I like the challenge of staying comfortable in the woods and having a good time– more so than a 40 mile day or something like technical climbing. I *like* being chicken!

I don’t mind rain and gray skies, but the joy is hearing the pitter patter on my tent while I’m snug and dry inside with a cup of hot beverage and a good book— giving the Rain Gods a big raspberry.

What got Ryan was the combination of wind, rain, and an open shelter. He was young and healthy enough that it wasn’t a problem, but I’ll bet a box of Java Juice he would do it different next time :) A properly pitched enclosed shelter like a Hut1, the Gatewood cape or a tent with well tensioned poles would have weathered that trip much better. I’ve done beach trips like that in a double-wall dome and had to use all the guy points to keep it stable in the gusts. It makes for a long night with water creeping under your tent. Simple things like rolling up the edges of your ground cloth can make the difference between cozy and wet.

[Antonio Abad]

Dale wrote: “A garbage sack or even one of those plastic emergency ponchos…”

I considered that option but figured that at that point I would be just as well-off with a tarp and a cheap, lightweight and breathable micropore jacket.

Dale wrote: “Now that I think of it, a resonably clean ground cloth would keep you dry while setting up the tent too. Someone had a link to photos on how to make a cape from a tarp by draping it properly.”

That’s a great idea! All you would need is something to broach the groundsheet together. I think it was Vick whom posted the link for fashioning a cape out of a blanket.

There are some other things of note from Ryan’s gearlist. First, he went with a less breathable/more water-resistant wind shirt (IIRC, Golite Helios). That would probably be a good choice in wet conditions (e.g. coast hiking, Spring hiking in NE) and would mitigate any wet-out issues with a poncho/tarp. Second, was his use of a hoodless poncho with a neck seal. My hunch is that this design would keep out more wind-blown moisture. Personaly, that’s what I’m looking to now given that jaw surgery left me with parasthesia on the right side of my jaw/chin. Anything that brushes up against my skin/lip there drives me bonkers (pins and needles feeling)!

What a surprise, my bottom layer is just about the same: spandex shorts, zip-off nylon pants, the infamous polypro pantyhose and pertex wind pants. ;-)

It is indeed a chess game. In this regard (clothing), I think Mark Verber (whom I think posts here) does a fantastic job of describing all kinds of options on his web page. It’s a great read, even for folks with an established clothing system.

[Dale Wambaugh]

For a trip like Ryan’s I think I would just have to bear up against the horrible strain of carrying a 12oz rain jacket and a few ounces more for a fully enclosed shaped tarp.

The hood on the Gatewood cape is flexible enough to tuck down around your neck and the drawstring can be pulled snug, giving a seal good enough for all but a monster downpour. I assume that most of the silnylon ponchos would do the same.

I had a GoLite Gust last year and switched to a Trek for more room, hydration sleeve and outside pockets. I have a Breeze for sale on the gear swap forum now— close enough?

[Antonio Abad]

Dale wrote: “For a trip like Ryan’s I think I would just have to bear up against the horrible strain of carrying a 12oz rain jacket and a few ounces more for a fully enclosed shaped tarp.”

LOL. That’s a defeatist attitude!! j/k I agree. My hiking is biased towards the fickle, humid and wet Northeast. Thus, a shaped tarp will always be in my pack. You know, despite the durability concerns of my Rainshield jacket, that sucker has held up for 2 seasons now, including some mild Winter mountaineering. For 6 oz and $20, I think it has the best ROI of anything I’ve tried. Of course, I went up one size to make sure I never busted a seam and I wouldn’t give the pants a second glance.

Good point about the tarp seal. My ID sil poncho probably would have sealed around my neck fine. I never got around to trying.

Yes, I’m officialy spooked: I sold off my Breeze 2 years ago. The functionality was fine, but I couldn’t stand the darn shoulder straps on that bag. I would be in heaven if I could get the exact same bag with a more ergonomic and beefy set of shoulder straps and an internal hydration pouch. That’s the reason I went for the Jam, despite the fact that it has a useless back pocket in lieu of the more functional and giant rear mesh pocket of the Breeze. I wish I could get Golite to do that mod for me (I’m still useless with a sewing machine). It would be the perfect bag for me.

End of tangent….back to your regularly scheduled thread…

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