5 mistakes EVERY new camper makes in WET WEATHER ⚡️⛈⚡️

what's up guys my name is dan and in this video we're talking about five mistakes that tense campers make new tense campers make or any tent campers make in wet rainy spring weather oh by the way it's spring here in wisconsin this is like the best camping weather of all time even though it's uh technically raining right now and we did not plan this for rain we actually planned this video today and didn't know it was gonna rain so perfect timing all right the first mistake is that most people don't realize that there's actually a difference between water resistant and waterproof as a matter of fact people think that water resistant and waterproof are actually the same thing we've got a water resistant tent here technically water resistant and we have a technically waterproof tent here so let's go check them out let's go check out the water resistant tent here this is a tent from big agnes this is the copper spur this is the platinum version pretty expensive tent so you would really really hope that this would be waterproof but even a tent like this is not waterproof it's made out of nylon and nylon isn't waterproof it's just very water resistant depending on how it's manufactured this one's already starting to sag a little bit in the rain it stopped raining now but it's only been set up for maybe an hour and what you can do is go online to whatever manufacturer um that you're purchasing your tent from and see if it lists what's called the hydrostatic head all right so you could see that this tent very very thin um when i put my hand on it you can just see right through it pretty much uh but what you could do is check with the manufacturer if um the hydrostatic head has been measured and that's super confusing hydrostatic head what is that well essentially what that means is it's measured in millimeters so you're going to see a number listed in millimeters and the higher the number the more water resistant the material is so what they essentially did is to test the nylon is they took a column of water and they filled it up and at whatever height whatever amount of millimeters height that water started to leak through the bottom that measures the hydrostatic head so if the tent was measured at a thousand millimeters of water that's you know it's okay it's not terrible probably going to drip through at some point uh but if it measures at 5 000 milliliters that's a much more water resistant tent and you could probably depend on that a little bit more in the rain now you may or may not pay for that when you're purchasing it but at least you kind of know what to look for when you're testing out some of the materials for your water resistant or waterproof waterproof water resistant well just make sure you get a waterproof or water resistant pen okay let's go check out the waterproof tent which this one actually is pretty waterproof uh this is a extremely expensive tent made out of a material that's called dyneema or dcf dyneema composite fabric and it's essentially like a piece of plastic is it's almost like um a really really strong grocery bag that's kind of what it feels like and it is totally waterproof like waterproof to the point where water is not going to get through this at all you could pile water in here for a very long time and it's not going to drip through but you're going to pay a premium for this and the reason you're going to pay a premium is because it's just a special fabric that's extremely strong and extremely lightweight and so it was originally designed for sailboat sails but this is going to be a waterproof tent now just because something is waterproof from the material doesn't mean you're not going to still have issues and let's go inside one of these tents to talk about that all right we're not going gonna go inside the tent i found an easier way to do this we're just gonna disconnect the tent so inside of a tent if you when you get in the tent you look up check to see if your tent is seam sealed what that means is this so you can kind of see this is a seam so they had to sew the tent together the nylon together to another sheet of nylon and there's a piece of tape on here that they put over the stitching here and that's really important because if you didn't have that the water would leak through and some manufacturers have seam sealed their tents and other manufacturers have not seen seed their seam sealed their tents so just make sure that that's done now if you already bought your tent and you're going to looking at it you're like oh wow mine's not seam sealed you can actually do that yourself it's not very difficult to do there's kits that you can buy but that's really something to know for sure when you're purchasing your tent about water resistance and waterproof also uh everything else that you're wearing in the weather while you're camping is subjected to waterproofness like your rain jacket uh this is i actually have the tag in my pocket right here this is a mountain hardwear stretch a sonic rain jacket uh the dry q active stretch 40d 2.5 l is 100 nylon the dry q active waterproof technology banishes moisture why do you have that in your pocket uh because i just bought this jacket from backcountry actually they're the sponsor of today's video you can actually buy everything i'm showing you at backcountry.com and you can actually talk to what are called gearheads they're the people that chat with you online to ask them whether or not something is waterproof water resistant what the hydrostatic head rating is if it's seam sealed all of that stuff so make sure you head over to backcountry.com they actually gave me a coupon code it's becker15 for 15 off some exclusions do apply but check it out see if it works and maybe it'll save you a couple bucks all right the next mistake is most new campers don't know how to use the guy lines on their tent or even what a guy line is so let's talk about that real quick so a guy line is simply a line that comes off of your tent like this to a tie out point some manufacturers give these to you others don't if you don't have this go out and buy it and find the tie out points on your tent but you're really just staking this out somewhere in the ground so that it just brings more stability to your tent in uh inclement inclement inclement weather in windy weather uh you don't really want this super tight you want it kind of loose so maybe you know put it back a little bit there's a little bit of slack there the reason for that is because it can really ruin your tent if it's really too taut it could actually rip your tent so a little bit of slack isn't a bad thing and that's what a guy lying in and if there's weather coming to your campsite make sure you got these out there because it's going to make a big difference especially in the middle of the night when you're trying to sleep the next mistake that campers make in really nasty bad wet spring weather is that they'll set up their tent like this and they won't put any type of a ground protection underneath their tent they're just going to completely rely on the tent itself to keep them dry or they just don't know any better they just don't know that they should probably do it so here's a prime example so look inside this tent real quick here this is that really thin tent you can see the ground cloth through it look at how thin this tent is now this is a very expensive tent and this ground cloth obviously got blown around in the rain and then the wind a little bit while we've been out here that's why it's misplaced but i would not even with this really expensive tent trust this very lightweight bottom of this tent to keep me dry in the rain and so what you want to do is place a ground cloth underneath your tent you want to make sure that the ground cloth is just slightly smaller than the bottom of your tent and the reason for that is because if you get a ground cloth that's too big and it's sticking out like this what's going to happen is the rain is going to come it's going to land right here and then it's going to seep in between the tent and the ground cloth and then eventually with enough pressure with you laying on it on the inside of that tent that's going to come up through the bottom of the tent and into the tent and make for a really really wet miserable night and then not only will the ground cloth keep you uh dry but it's also going to protect the bottom of your tent from you know just stuff rocks thorns uh sticks that kind of thing that could potentially come up and break through the bottom of your tent all right this next tip this can't be stressed enough most new campers make the mistake of looking for shelter underneath trees but they forget to look up when they do it and i've mentioned this in other videos recently but we're going to talk about it again so this is a tree that actually has come down where i once camped and good thing my hammock because i was camping in a hammock uh wasn't set up when this tree came down actually came back out here and noticed that it has come down since then but this is a dead tree that could have easily fallen down in the middle of a storm on me while i was camping so when you get to camp just make sure that you're looking up and looking out for what could potentially fall on you in the middle of night and make a really really bad camping experience okay the next mistake that i see a lot of new campers make in really bad rainy weather is that they don't use a liner in their backpack to protect gear from getting wet i'm going to show you a budget way to do this all you're gonna do is grab your backpack and a garbage bag you take your garbage bag you're gonna put it inside of the backpack first and then once you get it in there you can then put all of the gear that you don't want to get wet like your sleeping bag and your pillows or your clothing or anything that you want inside of that garbage bag first roll that garbage bag up and now all of that stuff inside of your backpack is completely waterproof and you don't have to worry about it in the wet nasty weather from spring hey man can i see that camera real quick yeah hey i got a quick question for you this is emmett by the way he's the new cameraman uh editor for me uh emma have you made any uh mistakes in the rain uh while you were camping before well i mean first of all i wasn't even setting this tent up correctly so there's that um but yeah he set the tent up for me absolutely i've forgotten tarps um i have not lined my backpack correctly um i've not brought in the property okay so this was a probably helpful video for you then right absolutely okay good so editing this video is going to be an amazing experience for you am i right of course all right tell emmett hello in the comments by the way for coming on board and then also put down in the comments if there's anything that you have done that has ruined your backpacking or camping trip because of wet weather and uh we'll see you guys on the next one

Channel: Dan Becker

Views: 143,095

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Id: HzktQBzrSQw

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 30 2022