If you want to forgo the snakeskins you might be interested in this!
Five Basic Principles of Going Lighter (not me... the great Cam Honan of OZ)
“If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.” ~ Gen. George S Patton
I love mine. I cried when the money left my bank account, but it was worth it to me. I cried again when the tent stake holding up my pack rubbed a hole in it overnight, but the great thing about DCF is how easy it is to patch up. It would surely put a dent in resale value, but perish the thought of getting rid of it! I save plenty of money making a lot of my own gear, but there are a few things I leave to those who can do it better, and the DCF tarp was one of them.
I can see a CF tarp for a serious hiker but, not for a weekend warrior unless plenty funds. For me it would be wasted money. I haul my gear on motorcycles. I spend about 25-30 night's a year in my hammock. Mostly use a PaHaQue double tarp (cheap light, packs small). Has works great for last 3 years. Have several tarps, 10 or so. 4 Hennessy Hex. Have a Super Fly I use only @ 30° & below. I like the biggest bang for the buck & I don't see the gain for the difference in money for my personal application.
I appreciate that silnylon or silpoly pack down to a smaller volume than dyneema. Dyneema might be a few ounces lighter, but my main pack problem is volume more than weight, at that level. Love my silpoly mountainfly.
It's several ounces lighter and being so, I feel much better shoving it into my large outside mesh pocket than my 12' Sil tarp in skins. I'm looking at both of them side by side. The Toxaway coiled up in snakeskins compared to my 11' DCF Hex in it's HG stuff sack using the cmoulder fold. It is very close to a push. At 14L available space I'll still always take the Hex.
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I guess I always thought volume was a bigger threat to my mesh than weight. I also shove my tarp into the mesh, but tearing the mesh by overstretching it with a large tarp seems more of a threat than the few extra ounces. Silpoly or silnylon clearly pack down smaller. HYOH and all.
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Mine is a bit old, it’s an eleven footer. Every time I hav used it, it has served me well. Time passed and longer ridge lines were attractive and as others have said, it is very bulky to pack. It languishes in my gear room, waiting for that time I will need its light weight again.
If you prepare for failure you will probably succeed.
If busting the budget with regard to DCF volume is the problem, IMVHO it pays to consider some other approaches that tackle it head on. If you're satisfied with 'this is how we've always done it' and aren't willing to break away from the herd, then you simply accept the limitations and live with them.
With DCF, snakeskins are a volume hog. DCF by its nature — being a stiff plastic material — doesn't 'like' to be stuffed or scrunched, and when you force the issue it creates thousands of little micro-wrinkles and air pockets that are responsible for all that excess volume.
If, on the other hand, you fold and roll the tarp it takes up much less space. I do a zig-zag fold at the ridge line, then roll the tarp toward the edges which expels all the air as I roll, finally rolling the ridge- and guy lines around the tarp. It stuffs easily back into its original stuff sack with room to spare, and it has the added benefit of reducing tangling to almost nil.
BUT people love snake skins because they make the tarp quick to deploy and easy to keep out of the way when lounging in the hammock on a nice day or for stargazing, yet ready to pitch quickly if bad weather threatens. Recently I've been using a technique that dispenses with the snakeskins but still permits very quick tarp deployment. You simply pitch the tarp, remove the stakes (or slip off the guy lines) from one end and gather the tarp panels at the other end and wrap them in shock cord. Re-deploying the tarp takes less than a minute.
Having done many trips with 28-36 liter packs, I can say definitively that a DCF tarp needn't be a deal breaker.
Pic of tarp pitched:
Camo_Hex_no_snakeskins_02_SMALL.jpg
Tarp retracted, no snakeskins:
Camo_Hex_no_snakeskins_01_SMALL.jpg
Tarp in stuff sack, about 1.5 liter volume:
HG_Camo_Hex_02_SMALL.jpg
Last edited by cmoulder; 03-26-2022 at 09:38.
Five Basic Principles of Going Lighter (not me... the great Cam Honan of OZ)
“If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.” ~ Gen. George S Patton
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