Sat Apr 5, 2014 @ 04:21

Low Gap Shelter camping

The state of my hands after brushing leaves and detritus off the bottom of the tent. It rained a bit yesterday and the ground in the tenting areas was a bit mucky because of that.

This is just one reason (of quite a few) we don't like pitching our tents on dedicated tent pads. Whenever possible, we avoid them. But the site was packed last night and our 2 tents have a larger footprint than the one person models most hikers use, so we had to take what we could find.

The compacted ground of an established tenting area does not absorb water well. If you experience a lot of rain overnight in this scenario the tent will be resting in a pool of water by morning and you may be sleeping in a pool of water if your tent "bath-tub" (the bottom of the tent) is damaged, of poor quality, or isn't seam-sealed well.

We'll hang the tents out when we get off the trail today to more thoroughly dry the bottoms and just to air them out.