Chinook 12 x 14 eval

Just returned from a 4 day BWCAW canoe trip. The woods were beautiful, resplendent in their fall colors. Unfortunately, we had 3 days of winds and sporadic rain and one really clear one...the last day on the way out! :shades: Anyway, this was my first trip with my Chinook 12 x 14 tarp and it performed flawlessly, short of Owner error issues. I pitched it with the 12 ft. length over my hammock and staked out the sides so the 4 ends swung in like doors. WOW, was that nice when the temps dropped below freezing. I'll bet it was 10 dregrees warmer in my shelter with the "doors closed" on the ends. I will attach bungies to the corner door stakes (I'm thinkin' of running some small bungee to the outter corner stakes where the tarp turns inward so I have enough bungee flex to tension the doors) so I can pull the doors apart for passage and have them snap closed behind me. Maybe use"biners so I can easily unhook them and open the ends out and around the sides and clip them together so they don't flap in nice weather?

I made the mistake of finding two "perfectly spaced" trees that I set up between that gave me decent shelter from the wind. Only problem was that in the hard rain that followed I was sleeping over a ground depression and the water tended to run inside my sleeping area. No pooling, but who wants to sleep and dress over a muddy floor? Fortunately, the water was in a confined area and I use a waterproof back pack and I was able to just keep putting things in the pack for dry-keeping. Next time I will choose a higher-dryer site with better drainage.

One downside to the tarp is that I'll need to add a couple of side pull straps to guy out the sides. I was able to push them out with two angled canoe paddles and made the space inside seem much larger. Surrounded by four walls, I potentially missed some of the surrounding beauty, but with darkness coming so early in the evening and sunrise delayed in the morning, I did get a chance to catch up on my rest! I probably will watch the weather predictions more closely for warmer summer trips and decide which tarp to erect based on wind and rain predictions. It was also nice to have a hand crank weather radio to better anticipate weather changes!

Short of my own set-up shortcomings...the tarp worked great and all the rain was a perfect test of it's waterproof-ness!

Quote:(One downside to the tarp is that I'll need to add a couple of side pull straps to guy out the sides.)
I also have a Chinook tarp (12x9) and I think side pull outs would improve the tarp quite a lot . On one of Shug's videos he illustrates how much room the pullouts increase the room inside the tarp. I thought I heard him say sewing the tarp was hard. If you have the instructions for this DIY project please post a link. Thank you

If you don't want to sew you can use these:

http://www.jacksrbetter.com/shop/gri...bric-fastener/


Or these:

http://www.outdoortrailgear.com/feat...arp-pull-outs/

I've seen those before...but had kind of forgotten about them. I've been thinking about the proper positioning of said pull-outs and the grip clips would allow me to experiment. I want the tie-outs to pull down slightly and I think it may take a position slightly above center to get the desired effect?

What is the weight of those Chinook tarps, may I ask?

Mike

In another thread, I saw that the 12x9.6 weighs in at about 1.8 pounds. I would imagine the 12x14 would be up over 2 pounds.

My 12 x 9.5 weighs 31 oz

GroundHog thanks for the Fastener tip
4 Dog Knight how tight do you hang your Tarp and can you make it too tight

I had it pretty taut...and it still whipped in the wind a bit, so the next night I re-tightened everything. The side pullouts would've minimized some of that. It was a very windy period that blew all night long. No complaints if I can do the side pullouts and bungee the closed ends as doors. As a conoe camper I'm not a total weight weenie, but making my pack lighter is still a good thing. I would trade a few pounds over extra protection in late fall weather anyday. I was traveling with 3 adults and 7 kids under 14...so I had extra dining fly's, an extra sleeping pad, plenty of large group cookware, etc. I will return to a smaller, lighter tarp in summer weather...but this time it was a dream.

I take my 4 sled dogs in every winter on a winter trip. It's like Christmas as far as they're concerned. The just flat LOVE being out in the woods and running the trails in the BWCA. Having "cold tented" and hot tented it...I'm musing about how nice it would be to sew in a stove boot and bring my wood stove. It'd cook me out of there in a hurry. If my Big Buddy worked better in cold weather that would also do the trick. IF I were to go to that "extreme" in hammocking I would need an even larger tarp then a 12 x 14 to gains some headroom. With all those clothes to put on and off and the need to dry things more headroom would be really nice.