From Marie Henderson – Gear Custodian
These are useful, and sometimes critical, shelters. Like all gear they can take a bit of a battering. They do better when used the right way and shown some respect. So it seemed a good topic to review. A double skin tent is one like the club alpine tents that have a inner and an outer fly – these can be separated (yes I am not fibbing!) and you can pitch one without the other – either as just a fly or just an inner (useful in dry hot places to maximise ventilation). Double skin tents retain more heat and can get quite tropical on a warm night.
Pitching
Take a good look around for a site – slope, ground condition, vegetation, wind direction (current and expected), general shelter conditions of the area are all things to consider. Basically try to picture where the bodies will lie and pick a good spot – a little effort now is going to be well worth it. Note that small slopes and holes can be managed with careful placement of some spare clothing once inside. You don’t want your hip on top of a bump and even a light slope can mean everything, including people, just slide to the bottom – you are not going to get that comfy nights rest you probably need. Heads up slope are the way to go if you do have some slope.
Before you pitch make sure the ground is clear of anything that might puncture the tent floor or your ground sheet and pad. This is not meant to be a full site excavation – just remove bigger branches and sharp sticks or stones. Remember all the rest of the plant matter will form part of your mattress and give some thermal protection from the ground. Once a tent is up you can check the floor inside by hand to see if there are any sharp twigs/stones under there that you missed, before throwing in all your gear. Even a tiny pin prick size hole can suck in a lot of water through capillary action. Digging a moat to redirect water should not be necessary and degrades the natural aesthetics of a site – using care when picking your site is preferable to ‘gardening’. Respectful trampers want to leave a site as they found it or even better (by removing rubbish you find left by inconsiderate others or just by mistake).
When you are ready to pitch, first thread the poles through the sleeves. Don’t flick the poles for the sections to join, as you can damage the section ends. Never pull poles through a sleeve. You’ll just pull a pole section out of its neighbour and end up wasting lots of time trying to rejoin them in the sleeve and potentially putting lots of little bite holes from the pole ends in the sleeve as they try to snap back together. Any holes will make your shelter less secure and the threading of poles harder – hardly what you need.
Pitch out the tent/fly using pegs you brought, sticks, trees, rocks, basically anything to hand which will do the job of securing it. Tight is good, floppy or slack is bad. Sometimes you are limited by the terrain, but do the best you can as you might be thankful later if conditions deteriorate. Take care that the guy ropes won’t be cut (e.g. the wind can make the guys ‘saw’ across a sharp rock edge and cut through it). It pays to peg out the guy ropes of a double skin tent too (club tents are these types) as they are designed to pitch best with the guys set – otherwise they will billow in on you and be even more claustrophobic! I like to pitch all the guys I can anyway, as the wind generally chooses to pick up in the wee hours of even the stillest of nights and it is much nicer to be snug in your pit at four am than wandering about in your smalls, in the dark, trying to peg out the guy ropes! You can, in theory, also tension the fly down further using the tabs near the pole ends – I may have done this once or twice in my life, but never found much slack to work with.
Basically pitch so that the smallest surface area is in to the wind and also the back if you can arrange things that way. You don’t want that howling southerly coming in your front door. The club tents must have the guys pitched to have any real strength against a wind. Try shaking the tent/fly while holding a pole, once pitched to judge how much strength it will have (if you don’t believe me on the use of guy ropes, try comparing shaking it with and without them pitched!).
That dry, sandy stream bed might look comfy, but even light rain could turn it in to a swamp. Moving a tent/fly in the rain and dark in the wee hours is best avoided. Treat all depressions as suspicious looking water catchments. Bucket floor tents (like the club ones) can handle a puddle, swamp or small stream, but better to not risk it if you can. The thing you want most as it buckets down outside is peace of mind – that helps you to better sleep through it.
Most tents have some vents to help with reducing condensation. If you put large loads in to the tent pockets, you risk having the outer contact the inner – which could mean water can run in to the tent. A mop can be handy for removing condensation or any puddles you get from the floor – I use my bandana. Don’t fret overly about a little damp, you will stay snug as long as your sleeping bad is not sodden. So even if it is getting a bit damp inside you are certainly going to be better off there than trying to decamp to a hut through a deluge and raging rivers. If you dry clothes by wearing them inside the tent/fly or erecting an indoor clothes line, you are more than likely to make ‘indoor rain’ and so just spread the damp around more – choose carefully!
If you don’t know how to pitch a tent/fly, then when this happens at camp try to pay attention and offer to help. This is how to pick up the basics and also to learn from someone who has some experience. As with most tramping skills, ‘doing’ is far more useful to you than any ‘book learning’.
Taking a fly/tent down
Once the gear is out, un-peg the guy ropes (leaving tent standing still) and give the tent/fly a good shake to remove excess water and any little critters that have decided to call it home. No point carrying water you can’t drink and those critters belong with their families. You can sweep out a tent floor with your dry socks if you need to – quite a bit of stuff can collect in there even over one night. Any zips should be done up as the little teeth of the zip as less likely to be damaged if they are together. Some may need a little gap so that air can escape, when you roll a tent say. Remove pegs and poles – again only ever push the poles through the sleeve (see above). Fold the poles up starting from the middle rather than one end as you are less likely to run out of cord ‘give’ that way – never force the cord though – if you find it gets too tight to take a section apart, just start again.
Fold and roll a tent with the floor side out (as the floor is made of the toughest material it takes handling better). If you roll the poles in with the tent, be careful to make sure the pole section ends are clear of the tent at the ends as they can puncture through material. Rolling with the tent helps get the air out, but I generally carry them separately – hopefully in someone else’s’ pack! On the down side for this, two packs need opening to pitch the tent – not great in the rain. I sometimes carry poles inside my spare socks for extra protection from the section ends. Clear the dirt off any pegs you carry – again no point carrying stuff you can’t use and it belongs where it came from.
Tents/flys (basically everything) should be packed inside your pack. Anything strapped on the outside of your pack makes you look like a chump and old experienced trampers are unlikely to want to give you the time of day while discussing routes graded above ‘guided tourist track’ with you would obviously be tantamount to manslaughter (if you don’t have the nous to pack your pack right, they will think you are a ‘townie’ of the ‘white shoe brigade’ and should never really have left the shopping centres). Losing or damaging your shelter (or any other gear) because it is on the outside of your pack not only makes you look silly it raises your risks and costs. Sometimes it can’t be avoided, but hopefully this means you are doing one of those trips where no-one will be there to catch you in that state either. For trampers, packing badly is to be accompanied with a sense of shame.
Take a scan of the area before you depart. Pegs especially always want to stay in the bush and not go back home with you.
When you get home
Once you are clean, fed and rested it is time to show your gear some love. Like most un-fun jobs, better to get on with it than to put it off. Tents/flys must be stored dry or they will grow mould – like Wellington homes, this damages the fabric as well as making them unpleasant to live in. So you need to make sure they get good and dry. But don’t lie or hang them out in a brutal sun for hours on end – what the sun does to your skin it will also do to your tent/fly, damage and age it. The best (easiest) way is to re-pitch it. If you don’t have a space for this, then just lay it out and give it a shake/reposition every now and again. Lying out on a bit of floor somewhere won’t hurt it, so there is no rush. A double skin tent dries best if you separate the inner and outer to lay them out. The inner should also be shaken inside out to clear any internal ‘fluff’ whether it is separated from the outer or not. You don’t want to be crawling in to snuggle up with old bits of hair, skin, toe nails, teeth and so forth next time you take your tent out in to the wilds! No one wants to snuggle up with ‘ex bits of you’ either, so this is basic politeness with club tents.
Putting a double skin tent inner and outer back together is a bit of a puzzle. But you have been out working on your physical fitness and it is now known that we also need to work on our mental fitness. No puzzle is ever solved by giving up.
Club Gear
If it is a club tent and you really can’t get it dry, let the person on the gear room know. Rather than biting you, they will be most grateful to have been told. Also let them know about any other issues you had with the shelter (as with any club gear) the only way we know something needs to be done is if we are told.
Now if you suspect that some punters don’t take good care of tents/flys, it might be a good idea to check them before you leave civilisation (as we know it). It is your responsibility to ensure both you and your gear is fit to go tramping and also that you have the right gear. Gear room people will have no sympathy if you found you had no pegs when you set up camp – they are more likely to think ‘chump alert’ and reply “well did you ask for any?” Gear room people are not mind readers, or soothsayers, or know what gear you may be taking from home.
The club tents are alpine tents and so we only let them out for alpine trips. So if you want to go beach tenting with the banjo, or tenting on any other non-alpine trip, you will need to find your own tent. The club does have a couple of old large ‘family style’ inners that are designed to have a large club fly thrown over them – they are large and heavy and I would only ever take them car based, or maybe truck based, camping myself.
Many fun days… and restful nights
Huts are great, but you get closer to your environment in a tent/fly and can take it with you. That gives more freedom and ability to get away from it all. I find nothing more restful than holing up in a good, well pitched tent for a few days, patiently waiting out the weather, while it blatters away outside. You might not plan for that to happen, but you should always plan in case it does.