I have high hopes of doing some camping from my mountain bike in 2013. In some circles, this is called BikePacking. It’s similar to the long existing form of bike touring and carrying all your gear except this done on a mountain bike and is done off the beaten path (mostly). I’m spending some time figuring out how to pack my camping gear onto my bike which, of course, leads me to reducing the packed size of all that gear so I have less total stuff to get onto the bike.
The item that has my attention at the moment is a tent. My current two-man-ish tent is pretty small and light when tossing it into the car or airplane. However; it suddenly looks huge when trying to stow it on my bike.
Some searching turned up a bunch of options. It seems the ultra light weight campers and hikers are using the tarp tents. These are not much more than a tarp suspended over your head. To keep it light, they are using cuben fiber which is pretty amazing stuff. I like the idea of sleeping under stars of even just a tarp. However; I do NOT like the idea of being unable to get away from bugs and having snakes (or anything else) crawl into my sleeping bag while I am sleeping in it. So, the tarp tent approach just won’t do.
This then led me to super light weight tents having a bath tub style bottom. I am really interested in the “Moment” tent by TarpTent.com. Do any of you have experience with this tent? If so, please share it via a comment below! I would love to hear your thoughts.
This style of tent seems like a good compromise as it keeps the critters and rain out but is relatively small when packed. The site reports a packed size of 20″ x 4″ x 3″ and weighs 30 ounces.
The next option seems to be a hammock like from Hennessy. They certainly pack down to a small package. I like nearly everything about the approach except the idea of being stuck in a multi-day storm inside a hammock. Perhaps that is just not reality and I should not worry about it. I do live in the desert where trees can be scarce so the hammock approach is not ideal but probably workable. On the positives, getting up off the ground and away from the moisture and critters is a big plus. Here again, if you have experience using a hammock on a trip, I’d sure love to hear your thoughts on the experience.
Still thinking…
Leave a Reply