Survival expert can’t figure out how to pitch a tarp…

"I got the impression that Mark was using a tarp above treeling in very inclement weather, specifically in the Wind River Range. If so, I woudn't use a tarp in those conditions either."

That may be true, but even if that is the case there are plenty of sub-5 lb tents that I wouldn't want to use above the treeline in high winds as well. So, his advice isn't very helpful. Instead of learning the wrong lesson and giving bad advice about tarps, I wish he had instead written about choosing the appropriate gear for a specific area and actually knowing how to set it up in the field.

Also, in any situation, pitching a tarp by draping it over a rock and then piling rocks on the edges sounds like operator error to me. At another point in the article, he camped under some debris the he saw, but decided that it "hadn't moved in ages." Yet, during the night, some debris fell and ripped his tent. Should he blame the tent?

Overall, this is my problem with the article. We all make mistakes. He highlighted his mistakes, and I liked that aspect of his article. That said, you don't want to learn the WRONG lesson from your mistakes.

Meh, it sounds like the article has a basis in fact but has a heavy coating of satire.

I mean why get bent out of shape over the tarp use and the author saying not to use plastic because it will break? If I recall one of 'outraged' BPL'ers commenting on this thread wrote a very similar 'article' here where he said that unless you're wearing out your backpacking gear through heavy use every season you're not really backpacker.

The previous comment about tarp setup and user error, in the context of whether a tent might be preferable, got my attention. And brought back this memory. It was our first backpacking trip to Guadalupe Mts. National Park. We were camped at the group site at Pine Spring. That area is famous for strong winds, especially in spring and early summer. 60-80 mph is common, 100 mph sometimes. Most in our group had one- or two-person backpacking tents (an early Half Dome, a couple of Clip Flashlights, a Walrus, and the like). Two of our number had Kelty Noah's Tarp 9's. Catenary, heavy, but tarps. That evening one of those windstorms blew up right about supper time. Within half an hour, *all* the tents were flattened, some with serious damage like broken poles. Only the two tarps remained standing and unscathed. I attribute this to two things: both were set pretty low and well-staked, and their catenary cut.

Fortunately this was after the backpacking part of our trip so the damage to the tents didn't interfere with the fun. In fact, the kids loved the excitement of the storm.

Backpacker has gone downhill. Nowadays it's mostly just dry trip recommendations and (suspect) "skills" bits that get repetitive if you read enough issues. It used to be a lot more fun to read, when there were articles about backcountry concerns and issues, and narratives of peoples' adventures.