Fall Foliage camping

[hwc1954]

Just got back from a couple of days car camping in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Probably my last camping of the year as the campgrounds close on Monday. Pretty chilly with a low of 36 degrees last night.

First outing for the new MSR Zing. Awesome. I ended up using two 8 ft poles on the ends and two 6 foot poles on the sides. Took me 30 minutes to put it up, solo, but that including a lot of fiddling around. It should be much quicker in the future

The freed up the Noah tarp to use as a tent porch. Wow, is that nice. Basically, unless it's raining cats and dogs, the vestibule door can stay open. Very handy as it did shower a couple of times.

The Noah 12 worked great as a tent tarp. I played around with a couple of different configurations and ended up with the one you see here. The only problem is that it's huge and takes up a lot of real estate. The Noah 9 would actually be a better size for this purpose.

The winter tent was fantastic. It makes a big difference to be able to close up all the mesh, especially on a cool breezy night. Full moon. It was gorgeous in the middle of the night!

Got a great hike on a little mountain on the Kancamagus Highway. Awesome foliage, although it was breezy. Had to go to a jacket and light gloves in the wind.

Here are a few campsite photos:

[hwc1954]

Re: Fall Foliage camping

[a65hoosier]

Re: Fall Foliage camping

Nice pics! Esp the 2nd one....the Noah looks like the shuttle about to land on your tent. Man, I just love how the wing tarps look. Easy setup also. lol...I wouldn't fret about the fiddlin around....I do it...and like it.

The Noah does seem really big over the tent. Larger than some of your previous pics with it over the picnic table. I assume both tarps performed well during the times of showers.

What poles did you use with each tarp?

On the use of MSR reflective line....Do you use the MSR ring 3 hole adjusters? Do other adjusters work? (I am planning on retying a tent and my Noah with reflective line over the winter-still deciding on what type)

What Marmot model is your winter tent?

[a65hoosier]

Re: Fall Foliage camping

Oh....love the Zing! The yellow color looks great with the changing trees. I have to figure out a way to trick Santa into bringing me one of those. lol. Any differences now that you've spent some extended time under each of the tarps? Stretching from rain, readjusting, pitch tauntness, etc.

[hwc1954]

Re: Fall Foliage camping

I assume both tarps performed well during the times of showers.

Yes, it was little more than a spitting drizzle. It would take a lot of rain for leakage to be an issue with either one. The bigger challenge was a brisk wind, but both tarps did fine.

What poles did you use with each tarp?

That's what I fiddled with quite a bit. I ended up using my four Kelty poles on the MSR Zing. The end poles set as high as they go (99 inches). I have a second pair of the same poles that have one section removed (adjustable from 53 to 72 inches). I ended up using those set at the highest setting (72 inches) for the side poles. I started out trying the 90 inch fixed length MSR poles for the sides, but they really don't need to be that tall. The adjustability of the Kelty poles is really handy. You can set them up at the lower setting and then raise them the final 18 inches to tension the tarp. The Kelty poles are the beefiest of the bunch.

I used one 8 foot MSR pole for the front of the Noah and two lightweight MSR adjustable poles set to 51 inches for the side wings. The back of the Noah was guyed to the tent guyline stakes.

[quote]On the use of MSR reflective line....Do you use the MSR ring 3 hole adjusters? Do other adjusters work? (I am planning on retying a tent and my Noah with reflective line over the winter-still deciding on what type)[/quote[

I have some of the MSR round adjusters and some simple adjusters (aluminum versions of the plastic ones). Both work with the MSR or similar cord. Actually, the MSR adjusters are better on a tent than a tarp. They are little hard to adjust under high tension (like on a tarp). I think the MSR, Kelty Triptease, and Nite-Ize reflective guyline would all be fine. I went with the MSR because the red is visible in the daytime as well as lighting up at night.

What Marmot model is your winter tent?

A Thor 3P. It's 74 x 93 inches -- actually a perfect size for a 2-man tent! Great for cold weather car camping. The two mesh panels in the two doors and the two mesh vents in the roof can all be zipped up closed. And, the pole structure is just ridiculously strong. I hope I never get to test it, but it will handle more wind than I would ever intentionally camp in. Here's a YouTube of a Thor 2p with NO guylines at all:

The cot won't fit in the Thor (well, maybe it would, but it would be a fight to get it in there. So I put the 30 inch Thermarest on the ground. Still plenty of room for duffle bags and so forth. With the tarp over it, I just folded the entire vestibule back on top of the tent, leaving a wide open door under the "brow pole" of tent.

Any differences now that you've spent some extended time under each of the tarps? Stretching from rain, readjusting, pitch tauntness, etc.

Not really. Both the Noah and the Zing work great over a picnic table. The Noah is less water proof, but I haven't ever reached its limit. The shape of the Zing gives you more headroom around the sides of the picnic table and generally covers a bigger area. The MSR pitches more taut, because of the larger number of guylines and the shape of the guy points. In the wind, the length of fabric between the four points tend to flop up and down, where all the edges of the Zing are taut.

The MSR was harder to set up than the Noah, mostly because I've set up the Noah solo quite a few times and have figured out a system and I have a feel for where the stakes need to go and how long to set the guylines before I raise the tarp. I had no clue on the Zing. It was also windy, which complicates pitching any tarp solo.

I love having tarp. When it starts spitting rain just as you are grilling your steaks, it sure is nice to be able to retreat to cover!

[coloradowalt]

Re: Fall Foliage camping

Great pics. Funny that y'all are shutting down, here in Florida we are about to gear up. The boys were over to watch some football today. Started kicking around some dates for our sometime annual Suwannee River float.

[James.]

Re: Fall Foliage camping

Great pics. Funny that y'all are shutting down, here in Florida we are about to gear up. The boys were over to watch some football today. Started kicking around some dates for our sometime annual Suwannee River float.

Same here in Arizona. Now that the heat of summer is starting to fade it is the perfect time to get outdoors. I was able to get up north and do some squirrel hunting with my brother and his kids yesterday. It was just a day trip (they were supposed to camp overnight but after my brother saw a bear my nephew didn't feel like camping anymore)

[hwc1954]

Re: Fall Foliage camping

Here ya go. Keystone Kops routine setting up the MSR Zing for the first time. In addition for having no feel for where to put the stakes before I raised it (complicated by the table making it impossible to stretch the tarp out on the ground), I skipped a fundamental lesson I learned with the Noah: use two guylines at 45 degree angles for the two end poles. This makes them freestanding in the wind as soon as you stand the poles up, which is a big help when setting up a tarp solo. In theory, the Zing doesn't need the twin guys on the end poles because they are sort of built into the design of the wing. That may be true IF you know where to position those guys before you start and IF the wind is not blowing. Lesson learned. I'm going to rig up twin guys on the two end poles and go back to my tried and true method.

Anyway, this is good for a laugh:

[MacGyver]

Re: Fall Foliage camping

I would never have made that video public. I can't tell how fast that video was sped up, but I'm pretty sure I've put up a 20 x 30 tarp faster than that - and they take some work to get right.

[hwc1954]

Re: Fall Foliage camping

Yeah. It was sad....

I put every single stake in the wrong place. But, even worse, I put them all too close to the tarp, so even when I moved the guy line adjusters as far into the tent as I could, there wasn't enough tension on the guy lines to hold anything up in the wind! Literally, I had to let the pole drop and go move every single stake. I didn't guess right on a single one...

I need to go back to the method I've been using with the Noah. Stand up one end pole with two 45 degree guys. Then stake out two 45 degree guys on the opposite end pole. Now two end poles are freestanding with the tarp suspended between them. From there, just stake out the sides.

If you had flat ground with no picnic table, you could stake out all the corners first and then insert the poles to lift it. But, the picnic table screws that up because you can't really see which direction each of the side guys need to pull, especially when you've never seen the tarp set up!

I was also trying to miss the fire pit with both the tarp and the guylines, because I knew the temps were going to drop before dinner!

Anyway, I thought it was funny. Gotta have a sense of humor about camping and hiking.

And, I was making faster progress than the two folks down the way setting up a brand new Pasa Que canopy:



You could tell it was a holiday weekend. Even in the "tent loop" sites, there were some pretty extensive compounds being erected!

[a65hoosier]

Re: Fall Foliage camping

Thanks for the info hwc....and a good chuckle. Been there....just never recorded it for others to enjoy. :he:

[MacGyver]

Re: Fall Foliage camping

hwc - I'm really glad you have a sense of humor. I somehow missed the fact that that was your video. I wouldn't have posted what I did if I'd known that. But it seems you're like me - of all the idiots I go camping with (not excluding myself, of course), and all the ragging that goes on, I'm probably the only one that laughs when someone throws a real cheap shot at me. (Probably because it annoys them when I run with it. )

[hwc1954]

Re: Fall Foliage camping

That's OK. I thought the video was funny, especially when the pole kept falling over.

This is what I do on my camping trips when I'm not wrestling a tarp to the ground or grilling rib eye steaks. Here's the first of two fall foliage hikes on my camping trips in the last two weeks:

[hwc1954]

Re: Fall Foliage camping

And, my fall foliage hike from last week's camping trip:

[terasec]

Re: Fall Foliage camping

not a camping trip
but here's a pic from my weekend
leaf peeping in VT
[IMG][/IMG]