By Will Rietveld
What you use for a groundsheet under your shelter or under
your sleeping bag depends on the ground surface.
If the ground is fairly smooth and you use a groundsheet
mainly to keep your gear clean, the Gossamer
Gear Polycryo Ground Cloth is ideal because it’s very tough and very lightweight.
No need to look any further.
For a bomber groundsheet, many hikers use conventional Tyvek
housewrap, and there are places on the Web where you can purchase it piecemeal.
It’s very durable, and will soften with a few trips through the wash machine,
but it’s a bit on the heavy side.
A better option is Type 1443R Tyvek, which
is a lighter, softer version used in Tyvek clothing. It’s inexpensive, weighs
about the same as silnylon, and its waterproof like other Tyvek. It costs about
$3.50 a yard (60 inches wide) at stores that sell kite-making supplies, like Into
The Wind. Since it’s breathable, some people argue that it’s not
waterproof, but I have yet to have a problem with water passing through it,
even when camping on wet ground.
Soft Tyvek (Type 1443R) used
as a groundsheet under a Gossamer Gear SpinnTwinn tarp.
The breathability of this Tyvek makes it
usable beyond groundsheets. An inexpensive Tyvek bivy works wonderfully for
sleeping on the ground under the stars or inside a floorless shelter, and it
adds a few degrees of warmth to your sleeping system. It’s very simple to
construct a simple bivy by folding a sheet over lengthwise, sewing one end and
one side, then turning it inside out. This yields a bivy with a 60-inch girth,
which is a bit on the slender side. For a roomier bivy, especially if you put
your sleeping pad inside the bivy, you will need to add a strip of Tyvek to the
open side. Adding a 7 inch strip yields
a 63-inch girth (the formula is to add 2 inches for each inch of girth you want
to add, plus a 1 inch for seam allowances). Type 1443R Tyvek is very easy to
sew, or you can tape it with filament or ripstop tape. If you want to seal the
seams, use Roo Glue.
Great reaading
ReplyDelete