How To Choose The Best Tent You Need

If you’re trying to survive on your own resources for more than a few hours, your first priority is most likely going to be shelter. That’s especially true as the days shorten and cold weather approaches. You can last days without water and weeks without food but, in much of the northern hemisphere in winter, if you don’t have some protection from the climate your chances of making it until dawn aren’t looking that great.

The most obvious way to make sure you have shelter when you need it is to carry a tent – but it’s not the only solution by a long way. Soldiers and ultralight backpackers have been using one alternative for decades – a poncho and some string or bungee cords. The appearance of Gore-Tex bivi bags in the 1980s offered an even more minimalist alternative. You could just crawl inside that in your sleeping bag and it would give you excellent protection from the wind, and pretty good shelter from rain as well.

So, what’s wrong with tents? Nothing really. They used to be much heavier than they are now, so a poncho could save you a lot of weight but modern fabric and alloy poles have cut the difference substantially. A tent gives you more shelter, too. Zip it up and it’s almost completely windproof, while an improvized poncho shelter tends to have lots of big gaps for the weather to get in. The obvious solution – and the one now usually used by the military – is to combine a poncho and bivi bag. That makes the most of their strengths; the bag will give you a snug little cocoon of warm air to sleep in while the poncho keeps the rain off. A Gore-Tex bag is pretty waterproof, but after you’ve spent a night in one with a heavy downpour battering it you’ll probably decide that isn’t quite good enough.

You’ll also have much better situational awareness in a poncho shelter, because the sides are open and you can see what’s going on around you. That can be vital; as well as the obvious military benefits, they make great temporary hunting shelters. If you’re lying up in the rain there’s no need to get soaked, because you can just string it between a couple of trees and lie underneath. That doesn’t work so well with a tent.

At the end of the day, the right shelter for you depends on what you need it for. There’s no doubt that a good one-man tent, with its spacious and completely enclosed living area, is more comfortable and gives better protection for about the same weight. If you want somewhere to sleep on hiking trips and don’t plan on sleeping in the undergrowth, it’s probably your best option. But if you need adaptability, a view and the ability to get out in a hurry, then an improvised shelter could suit you better.

Blog Source: US Patriot Tactical | Choosing the Best Tent For Your Needs