Hi, so I have been an avid day hiker for many years here in the colorado rockies and I have been backpacking for a little over a year now and have quite a few overnighters and a handful of multiday excursions under my belt. I like to summit bag in the sumer and fall, and "tarn bag" in the winter and spring. And I have found backpacking to these locations and staying the night really amplifies the experience. I have some very heavy gear right now, 5.5lb synthetic -2f sleeping bag 4 lb backpack, just got an rei arete which is almost 6 lbs when going solo. I have a esbit stove system for melting snow in the winter and spring but would be okay with going stoveless in the summer and fall.... anyway I would like some comments on a sleeping system that i have been eyeing. I have an aurora 4 season bivy by OR and have had some typical condensation issues, part of the reason why I got a synthetic bag... but camping in the arete the other day I had the same amount of condensation except it was in liquid form on my bag as apposed to frost when I was in the bivy. To get to the point I want to use this bivy in conjunction with a golite poncho tarp and a jacks r better high sierra with my thermarest xtherm for a decent ultralight system for not too much money. I can use the tarp for a gear cover or ground pad if the weather is good or to keep the snow and rain from directly dumping on me. My main concerns are condensation and the poncho not functioning well as a poncho. I try to avoid bushwhacking as much as possible so the extra fabric shouldnt be too big of a deal. Also if anyone has any ideas going off of this concept of the two multiuse items of sleeping bag/down jacket poncho/gear cover/shelter.


Basic questions:
Will my jacks r better quilt be safe in a bivy when considering condensation/

Will the golite poncho function well enough to be my primary rain gear?

Can they be used together in their poncho form for a very warm weatherproof package?

if anyone has tried this combo that would be great to hear you experience.

you will always have condensation issues with that bivy no matter what you use with it, if conditions are such that condensation will happen. ditch the weatherproof bivy and get a water resistant light weight cover like the montbell version - if you are using the poncho tarp with it, no need for waterproof UNbreathable fabrics. and then if conditions are good, leave cover and tarp packed, and sleep out.

Condensation can happen on an open tarp - if the conditions are right. I have found that a little moisture on a shell of a quilt is nothing to worry about - putting a bivy on it will only collect moisture all the more, increasing the likelihood that it will get into the insulation. So a bivy is something I would consider only if the likelihood of precipitation were great - and learning to expect and handle condensation when it happens is also good. It will happen when there is not enough ventilation of your shelter. It may happen when the humidity and dew point are "just so" - for example, eight feet off the ground on both sides of a tarp being used over a hammock in a river valley with clear skies was for me a perfect setup for heavy condensation on everything, leading to a few hours of sunning the gear the following day.

I don't use a bivy as for the same weight (less than two pounds) as a tarp and sleeping bag cover style bivy, I can have a double wall shelter that is more weather proof, and more ventilated, decreasing the impact of condensation and giving me somewhere to sit up and read or eat in a rainstorm.

Your setup will keep off the rain. It may not be comfortable - I have noticed a friend who used a poncho and REI minimalist bivy as shelter no longer has either item....

Thank you very much for your reply. I have been doing so more thinking and have been toying with the idea of using a yukon bag with pipe insulation as my pack. The tarp I would use is a heavy duty polyethylene 8 by 10. I was thinking that the ultimate budget winter camping could be having a yukon pack with two pads wrapping my esbit stove, clothes, food etc, then I could quite easily set up camp anywhere where I could just put down my pack, unfold it, orient the pads to be parallel with the length 10 side, put down my 5.5 lb beast of a -2 synthetic bag, basically just find a couple of rocks and fold the excess tarp over me and hold it down on the open end with the rocks. I could leave a rock by the top and bottom and could seal off those depending on how i am feeling. Now obviously you are think a couple of things. One of them being, "this is not going to work, there is no breathability at all, condensation city." However if i were to bring 1.5 trashbags with me, and by that I mean one regular trashbag and one where I have cut the top off so i have basically and extender for the other one. Sew those two guys together, then basically have a vapor barrier for my body, thus eliminating part of the condensation issue. However if i close off the top part of the tarp due to not nice conditions, I am then obviously worried about my breath causing significant condensation, up to a half liter i read somewhere. SO to solve this I have two ideas, they are rough ideas in my head but here we go. I take a towel and fix it over my mouth...... simple enough and I wonder if the towel would be able to absorb the water molecules while letting air through. Second option that might sound even crazier is a snorkel like system where I would basically push my air out through a tube which will dump the evil air outside, unless i wanted to be constantly taking it off for my inhale, I would also be breathing very cold air so I might do something crazy to heat up the air. Or i could potentailly turn the tube into a distiller where the water will condensate on the tube and drip into something clever.

Any more thoughts on this potentially crazy idea would be great. Specifically if yukon packs are the bees knees or not.

Wouldn't all this be simpler if you got this ? It a dual wall 4 season tent and lot less items to carry... Dual wall should breath better than everything you mentioned.. Has more mesh than the REI tent you said you have and it weighs less and is cheaper..

Unless the temperatures are subzero, the vapor barrier idea is going to be a short-lived experiment. I suggest you read about vapor barriers before you even try it - there are articles around, not very many, but I believe Stephenson's Warmlite has one on their page.

The main problem with tents and tarps are having to stake them out. Check out the Mtn Hardware Ultralamina 15 bag. I've been using this in conjunction with an OR Alpine bivy in below freezing temps. Condensation inside is pretty minor (even with bivy zipped all the way) and the Ultralamina shell is more than suitable for the condensation. It's also got a dual zipper making it easy to climb into in a bivy. I like the Alpine bivy because it's got the pole keeping the bivy off my face.