Camping in treeless alpine terrain in rain- anyone use a tent AND a tarp? If so, how?

[Dena Kelley]

I have a trip scheduled this weekend with a local all-ladies Meetup group to hike into an alpine lake and camp there. August is our rainy season, and this year has been true-to-form, raining all but about 2 days and sometimes quite hard.

This doesn't deter me from the trip itself, but I wouldn't mind carrying a little extra weight and making a rain-proof extension off the top of my tent to create a covered outdoor area for cooking and lounging.

The area we'll be in won't have trees, which takes away the most obvious method of using a tarp with a tent. The area probably will have rocks aplenty for use as anchors. My tent is a BA Fly Creek UL2. I do hike with adjustable hiking poles. My thought is to take a 5' x 8' tarp and somehow connect it to the tent (I'm thinking lay it over the top of the tent and tie it down to the side guylines on the fly) and then extend it out with the two trekking poles into a flat covered roof. Due to the low pitch of the tent, odds are the rain would actually drain back on the tent and then down off the fly, but I don't see that as being a problem. The tent has always held up well to precip.

I'm going to try setting it up at home first, to see if the idea is even feasible, but my question is- has anyone here done it or had hiking buddies who did it, and was it worth carrying the extra weight? If you did it, how did you set it up?

[Eric Blumensaadt]

1. tarp as a stand-alone cooking fly

2. tarp as an entrance "porch"/cooking area. IF the fly extends to the tent's back so runoff stays away from the front you are better off. The alternative is to place the tarp so it is nearly touching the ground on the windward side and high enough to get under conmfortably on the leward side. This puts most of the rain on the ground at the windward side, not on the tent's front.

3. tarp to connect two entrances (same caveat as #2.

(Never as a "ground cloth" unless on snow)

[Greg Mihalik]

nm

Someday I'll learn to read….

[Ryan Slack]

On a ridge in the Glacier Peaks Wilderness: My 8×10 Cooke Custom Sewing tarp, plus my brother's TNF Rock 22. This was a very solid setup, pitched low in a bid to limit the intrusion of the clouds that were wisping through. Very luxurious.

The tent is side-entry, so very different from what you are using, but on this it was great.

[Dena Kelley]

Eric- I'm thinking of #2, using it as a stand-alone awning over the entrance to my tent.

Ryan- Thanks for the photo, that's pretty much exactly what I'm envisioning. Hopefully I can execute it that well.

[Sara Marchetti]

This is EXACTLY the terrain we backpack in in the Uintas of Utah.

Assuming you have a light ground cloth, you could conceivably create a patio by fastening your tarp to where your two arch poles connect to the ridge beam. This might require adding some grommets to your ground sheet at those points (these can't be in the corners because that ridge beam isn't long). Then add grommets to the corner of the ground sheet in the opposing corners and attach some trekking poles and guy lines to create a taut patio to the side of your tent. Nothing you could stand under, but definately a place to sit. I think it would be easy and not very heavy at all.

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