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How to Sleep Under a Tarp in the Rain

How to Sleep Under a Tarp in the Rain

Tarps are a great ultralight backpacking shelter option, provided they’re used in a climate where there’s no rain or occasional rain. To clarify, I’m talking about square or rectangular tarps with or without catenary cut ridgelines and sides, and not single wall shelters like pyramids and their numerous variants.

Tarps are super lightweight and depending on their dimensions, fabric, and cost, it’s pretty easy to get ones that weigh between 8 ounces to 16 ounces without breaking much of a sweat. Here are a few good examples, but many manufacturers make them.

Make / ModelTypeMaterialWeight
Hyperlite Mountain Gear Flat TarpFlat TarpDCF8.85 oz / 251 g
Zpacks 8.5' x 10' Flat TarpFlat TarpDCF7.1 oz / 201g
Gossamer Gear Twinn TarpCatenary CutSil/PU Nylon9.5 oz / 269g
Mountain Laurel Designs Grace DuoCatenary CutDCF6.25 oz / 177g
Hammock Gear The Traverse TarpFlat TarpSilpoly13.7 oz / 388g
Hilleberg Tarp 5Catenary CutSilnylon11.3 oz / 320g
Paria Outdoors Sanctuary Sil Tarp TaperedCatenary CutSil/PU Nylon10 oz / 283g
Mountain Laurel Designs TrailstarCatenary CutSilnylon, DCF15 oz / 425g
Slingfin SplitWing UL TarpCatenary CutSil/Sil Nylon7.9 oz / 224g
Warbonnet Mini FlyCatenary CutSilpoly, Silnylon13 oz /369g

The advantage of using a tarp, besides low weight, is the ease with which you can find good campsites. A simple A-frame style pitch is easy to squeeze in between two trees, even in thick forest. Flat tarps (those with 90-degree corners) can also be pitched in a wide variety of “shapes” to provide more weather protection, although it takes some practice to get good at it.

Rectangular and square tarps with 90 degree corners can be pitched in weather resistant "shapes."
Rectangular and square tarps with 90-degree corners can be pitched in weather-resistant “shapes.” This is a 16oz, 10’x10′ square tarp. Having the extra fabric makes it much easier to pitch in different ways.

How to Avoid Getting Wet under a Tarp

Splash-back

There are three common ways in which you and your gear will get wet when camping under a tarp. The first is something called splash-back and it occurs when raindrops hit the ground next to your tarp and bounce back at you, spraying you and your gear with water. Splash-back is usually more of a nuisance than a threat to your survival, as long as you take the time to dry out your gear in the sun after a storm.

There are two common ways to avoid splash-back.

  1. Pitch your tarp down low to reduce the open space between the edges of your tarp and the ground, while moving to the middle of your tarp and away from the edges. Having a wide, two-person tarp is often better than a narrow one-person tarp for just this reason. While you can go as far as to stake your tarp sides all the way to the ground, most people leave an air gap for better ventilation and increased width.
  2. Augment your tarp with a lightweight bivy sack, like the Mountain Laurel Designs Superlight bivy (2010 SectionHiker Gear of the Year Award). If you have an ultralight load, a bivy sack is usually large enough to hold you, your sleep insulation, and all of your gear. Even if it’s not waterproof, it will usually keep splash-back from wetting your gear, in addition to providing a bit more warmth, wind, and insect protection.

Flooding

A second, higher consequence way to get wet, is to pitch your tarp in a bad campsite where water is going to pool under you, or on a very hard surface with poor drainage like a wooden tent platform or a hardened campground tent site. Avoiding sites like this is a bit of an art form, and is usually referred to as “campsite selection.”

When tarping, the best campsites are ones that are slightly elevated mounds that are higher than the surrounding ground, with porous absorbent soil, rich in organic matter, that will soak up rain rather than splash it back at you. The elevated portion of ground need not be as wide or long as the sides of your tarp, provided it’s big enough for you to lay on top of, even if the ground on either side slopes away.

Already Wet Ground

If you decide to set up your tarp in the rain or after a storm on wet ground, your best defense against getting wet is to carry a piece of plastic window wrap (also sold under the name polycryo) to use as a groundsheet. While it’s very thin lightweight plastic, the stuff is tough enough to last an entire season if you’re careful with it. A lot of people carry a bivy sack and a plastic groundsheet, even though there is some redundancy between the two.

The chief benefit of a tarp if the flexibility it gives you in campsite location
The chief benefit of a tarp is the flexibility it gives you in a campsite location. Note: wide tarp, use of bivy sack, and plastic window wrap groundsheet.

Damp Management

If your gear does get wet, it pays dividends to dry it out the next day. If your quilt or sleeping bag are soaked, hike to town and dry it in a commercial laundromat drier. If it’s just damp, hang it up during breakfast or stop during the day and lay it out in the sun while you have a rest and a snack.

People are so focused on hiking speed or miles per day, that they forget about basic skills like stopping to dry their gear, which are required for self-powered travel. Gear gets damp or wet, so deal with it. Build damp management into your daily schedule if it’s a persistent issue, and relish in the fact that you can sit there and watch your sleeping bag dry while listening to the birds and little creatures scurry about, instead of sitting on a conference call in a cubicle.

Ray Way Tarp Beak
Ray Way Tarp Beak

Tarp Beaks

Don’t underestimate the benefit of using an oversized tarp when it comes to providing additional weather protection. But if you want a bit more protection, consider using a tarp with a beak. A beak is an angled overhang added to the front or rear ends of a tarp that provides additional weather protection.

While beaks were popularized by Ray Jardine, they are surprisingly hard to find on cottage-made tarps. Get The Ray Way Tarp Book, which goes into enormous detail about how to use tarps for backpacking and bikepacking. Adding a beak to a Dyneema DCF tarp is also a pretty easy mod. If you’d rather buy a beaked tarp, your best bet are the beaked hammock tarps made by Warbonnet.

However, there’s also a downside to adding a beak or its bigger brother, a full vestibule, because you’ll forever be limited to an A-frame pitch. This limits your flexibility in terms of adapting a tarp’s shape to your surroundings, so I thought I’d point it out.

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20 comments

  1. The link to the Ray-way tarp book brings you to a book on Amazon that costs $920!!

  2. Back when I was a kid we camped with just a plain old tarp and rope like you pick up at the hardware store. We has a big enough tarp to tuck the sides into the inside and lay on that to keep the rain out. It wasn’t elegant but it worked.

  3. As a hammock bigot, I’m also a tarp camper, including in the rain on multiple occasions. Your tip on setting up over porous absorbent soil rather than a hard packed surface cannot be over-emphasized. If your tarp is set up over a well used, beaten down campsite with hard dirt and no ground cover, the rain hitting that hard surface will definitely splash and splatter. But if you can set up on (or in my case over) a soft surface like thick leaves or pine needles, the rain won’t splash back on you, but will instead filter down through the soft surface. Being picky with your site selection is an under-utilized skill, so I’m glad you mention it frequently.

  4. I’m glad for this article as tarp camping is my next quest in section hiking, and the need of knowing different tarp pitches for the inevitable rain/snow. I do LOVE my sixmoon skyscape tent but pitching in the rain I find it a bit of a challange to keeping it really dry inside, also I’ve tried making the trekker into a tarp (in order cook coffee for breakfast) which sort of worked just not real well. So with just a tarp available to hole up under during a storm, also the ability to (carefully) have a place to cook while raining, able to pitch the tarp as a shelter in the rain with minimal consequences because of being equipped differently, plus weight savings going from 32oz for skyscape trekker and stakes, to about 18oz for Zpack 8.5×10, plus Borah gear bivy, with stakes and cord seems like a good idea, plus a new dimension to learn.

    • And we may just learn some of this at the same time! I’m also looking at a Borah Bug Bivy and using a tarp on our next hike together.

      If you see two old guys shivering under tarps in the Grayson Highlands some time this spring, it just might be us. If so, drop off some Disaronno.

    • “…the need of knowing different tarp pitches for the inevitable rain/snow.” The first several times I hiked with Larry, it ALWAYS rained the 1st day and snowed the 4th, whether we hiked in October, November, December, April or May. We have finally broken that string… but I’m waiting for the locust plague!

  5. Informative article. These tips will be helpful when I have to go to ground with my hammocks.
    “Beaked” tarps aren’t that hard to find if you don’t mind a seam. Warbonnet Outdoors has the Minifly, Thunderfly, Mountainfly and Superfly. All of them could be modified to permanently close the seam or you could have them do it. Dutchware and Hammock gear have winter tarps as well that could be modified too. Cheers!

  6. USed a canvas tarp for years in Boy Scouts for any number of camping trips. We created tented palaces with several tarps to house us in bad weather. Very versatile. It was fun to create such structures that kept us dry.
    Too much concern with right and wrong. Just play with your tarp, get it right for you. If it isn’t freezing cold, you will dry off.

  7. Did the AT last year with the Warbonnet Mountain Fly which has a slightly larger door than the Mini Fly. I didn’t have a single problem with the tarp and kept dry even during one tropical storm and several severe thunderstorms. I hammock and used drip strings on each end of my suspension to divert the water coming down the whoopie slings to the ground before it hit the hammock. During the rain events, I would stake each side of the tarp down low to the ground while during nice evenings I’d move the stakes further out which raised the sides of the tarp well away from the ground. I also used a underquilt protector to ensure that any splash up did not hit the underquilt. The protector also added a few degrees of temperature which was appreciated and since my hammock was single layer, the protector provided a second layer that prevented mosquitoes from getting to my backside.

  8. provided they’re used in a climate where there’s no rain or occasional rain.
    Really?
    Tarps are so versatile you can pitch them in so many ways to be completely weather proof
    Yes good site skills and a ground sheet and a bug net depending on the season

    • Yeah – to each his own. If I was in a climate where it rained all the time, I wouldn’t be using a flat or cat cut tarp. I’d switch to a tent or maybe a mid and a nest (which is effectively a tent).

      • Something my hiking buddy and I learned (the hard way… the ONLY way it really sticks with me!) is that if tarp camping in pouring rain, it’s really easy for gear to slide out or get knocked out from under the tarp’s protection during the night. With a tent, the walls will keep your things inside. If your site isn’t completely level and you use a ground sheet, it doesn’t take much for stuff to start slip slidin’ away. It’s all part of the learning experience for me.

      • Philip,
        Tarp camping is excellent in England for wild camping in the countryside, where quick and discrete camping is needed, especially on smaller footprint camping
        A 3×3 meter deals easily with heavy rain

  9. DD Hammocks and Alpkit, both British companies make excellent high quality flat tarps at very attractive prices
    The 3×3 flat tarps are less than 500g

  10. As I just found out, there’s another way to get wet: horizontal drizzly rain. It’s insidious, slowly builds up inside. The saviour of the day(night) was the bivvy bag, but most of the gear got quite wet, even the sleeping bag. Perhaps a better tarp shape would’ve helped, I was using a simple A frame. Any tips on setting up something where the “door can be closed”?

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