Ultra light fly

One more suggestion for anyone who doesn't know what to think of tarps: 1. Surf the net and read everything you can find about how to use them, think about it a bit, and then 2. Make a 20 dollar poly-tarp and try it on a few overnighters. If you're unsure, take youre tent as well so you feel safe. After that, you'll know a LOT more about tarps than before. Matt

Paul, one more thought: If you're set on ultralight, can treat your gear carefully, and are not shy of spending a lot of money - or alternatively, of DIY - think about cuben fabric. I don't know a hell of a lot about it, but it seems the "latest, lightest, hottest" ultralight fabric for tarps currently on the market. Matt

fruitbat's husband was telling me about this hot new fabric. But apparently it is just about impossible to sew. Maybe she will chip on that one. With tents vs Flys, Matt, we will have to agree to disagree. I am not a particulaly lightweight tramper and that is OK. I also concede that most trampers seem to prefer flys these days because of the benefit of weight. I just think it needs to be pointed out that shelter under a fly is a different kettle of fish from a tent. I have seen many people get wet under flys or get cold or have to get up at night to secure flapping while I have slept snugly. I agree that if the fly was the right design and pitched in the right place then this wouldn't occur. The time we spent 3 nights in a downpour under a fly was a long time ago. There were 4 of us and we had 2 large flys pitched end to end. We were in the bush but still the wind got in enough to blow rain in one end and out the other. It was miserable. A tent would have been fine under the circumstances. I have never had any real problem with condensation in a tent. MacPac tents have ventilation systems which allow a through draft between the inner and outer. Any drips that fall onto the inner tent are absorbed in the inner fabric and I find that by body heat soon evaporates that. There is always some moisture on the inside of the outer but it never comes anywhere near me or my stuff. I don't even have a sleeping bag cover because the fabric on modern sleeping bags is designed to handle that sort of moisture. When it comes to room, I have more room than I need in a Microlite and I am over 6ft tall. Matt, you have your system and I have mine and as long as it is sorted then that is OK. However I sometimes do like to sleep on the tops or out in the open on river flats. I am not sure that there would be as many places open for me to camp if I was fly camping rather than tenting.

I have one of these -- http://www.outdoorsupplies.co.nz/bivvy.htm#hunt It's not quite a tent and not quite a fly and not entirely light-weight, about 1.1 kg give or take, but enough space for 3 comfortable people unless they're all giants. It'll stand up to some wind if needed and is happily the worst of both worlds. :)

We spent 5 days under a flysheet in fiordland once: 5,000,000 sandflies and myself. Never again. So that's why they call it a fly sheet.

Like pmcke I am not known as a lightweight tramper, however as age progresses I am tending to think a little more in the lightweight direction. However I don't get a comfortable feeling thinking about using a fly only. Not that I am averse to a little air flow when sleeping at night, but I cannot help wondering where all the water flows if it rains. Even more so if one is not on entirely level terrain. Thus I ended up the other day looking through the data on the web in respect of Hammocks. Has any one had any experience with these, i.e. the Hennessy Hammock. Based on the blurb available they look like a good idea, but how are they in all weathers? What is the comfort factor like? I guess you would have to carry a good waterproof outer for the pack too? Seeing as you can't simply stash it inside the hammock with you. It looks like a more equitable compromise to a fly only arrangement.

There are Henessy Hammock forums on the net. If you check them out, you'll probably get a good sense of the answers to the questions you pose. I imagine a pack would be stored under the hammock. Mr Henessy spends some of his time in Oban on Stewart Island and the rest in Canada. They can be cool at colder temperatures with the air flow under the mattress but it is possible to buy a thicker grade mattress to mitigate that. I have always wondered about pitching them with contact on ground canopy plants e.g. beech regen which would trap air under the mattress and keep things warmer.

Hey, Matt. This poly-tarp material at Mitre 10...is it black polythene that you would use as a soil cover, the same stuff the hunters often use in their fly camps? If so, do you need to join the strips together and if so, how? Maybe I should pay you a visit and see your set-up. I have a sketch of the "bombproof" set-up for a fly and had mine modified to do this but haven't bought the string and played with it yet. It pitches the rectangular fly on the diagonal so that the windward end is down against the ground.

I used to always carry a piece of that black polythene for a groundsheet. Hunters have used it for flys for many years, however they have a bad habit of leaving the stuff in there for next time. OK as long as you carry it out with you.

One of the patients I used to take blood from told me he went down to Port Pegasus every year, diving and hunting. They went round there in a zodiac tidying up and burning rubbish from abandoned hunters camps. He reckoned they had done this to about 60 camps! Mates and I did the same thing to a camp we found at Smoky Beach in 1995. It took us 2 hrs to burn all the rubbish,food scraps and bits of deer ears they'd nailed to nearby trees (jerks). We even had a tyre inner to help things along but there was so much to burn.