How to Make a Tarp Shelter | The $20 Tent

if you ever been shopping in your local gear shop wanted a tent but thought that price was just a little too high for you well today I'm backpacking TV I'm gonna be teaching you how to build the $20 10 [Music] so today on backpacking TV I want to talk to you about some alternative shelter options beyond just your classic two-man tent that you get from REI there's a lot of other options out there and one of my favorites is actually just a super simple tarp with some peat cord or some paracord and it's a very simple option and it's not the lightest option however tarps can be replaced with a little bit more of a technical fabric if you want to go lighter but today on the video I'd really just want to show you about tarp shelters and other kinds of shelter options I spent three years backpacking as a wilderness therapy guide and actually this is what I lived out of the whole time the whole year round so it can be done and it actually works surprisingly well so I just picked this tarp up at my local Sportsman's Warehouse and anything you'd find the same thing at a Home Depot this one was like I think literally twelve dollars this was seven dollars so if you talk about your $200 tent at REI this is saving you quite a bit of money so first let's open this baby up and lay it out this is going to be the first time used here for this particular part okay I've got my big tarp laid all the way out here and now I just need to connect this Pete cord on to the shelter and make six points of contact one here at the center another one opposite and then one at each of the four corners basically what I'm going to be doing is building an a-frame and this tarp already comes with grommets which can be really handy to use but sometimes if heavy winds are coming in I actually don't want to use those grommets because that will actually be a weak point and a point where the whole thing the whole grommet can rip out of the tarp if the wind is really high and leave you in a pretty bad position so I'm going to teach you one other little trick to help make your tent extra secure now if you're not using the grommets what do you use well a little rock or a little pinecone it actually can be quite useful and there's a there's a cool way to connect it here I'll take the rock and I'll make a little knob like so and I take my string you're going to fold the rope over once fold the rope over twice and then you bend one behind the other and then you wrap that over this little knob you just made or as I like to call it a ghostie and now you have a super strong point of contact here and that rock it actually gives it something firm to kind of cinch against and that clove hitch will stay pretty much until you undo it like that now I'm going to run this whole knot around to here giving myself some extra room to play with I've got a hundred feet of rope or P cord here and since this is the first time I am now making it however long I feel like it so let's go about right there hopefully that'll do and I'm going to do the same thing over on this other side another rock I collected the trucker's hitch is super useful and I have a big advocate of it so learning how to tie it is very very handy now that I've got two sides up I'm going to implement my second knot which is the trucker's hitch so what I do here is I create another point this is an anchor point can show you in tighter here in just a second and then this becomes where you pull from it'll make more sense when I actually have something to resist against when I set up the other side let's get this back up so by pulling a back against this I can create quite a bit of tension and the benefit of it is that it's still super easy to untie so if I ever feel like I'm tying it and redoing it I simply pull on this line and it comes out think I'm gonna want to raise this other side up a little higher now I'm noticing that this rope is just a little bit slippery so I'll just double it back and make it extra strong you see how that works this is your anchor point wrap it around the tree come back to this and then that's what you can pulley against pretty handy okay now I'm going to do is I'm going to see how much of this rope I have remaining and try to cut it into relatively equal lengths bear with me it's now I'm going to take this end I'm gonna use this reinforced corner here make what's called a girth hitch very simple connection points doesn't require any tying and just that simple thing is how I'm gonna fold that over then I go and use this starting to rain here so actually see how this gets used make another trucker's hitch now I don't want to tie everything off too tight quite yet so kind of see how everything sits and then once I am sure where I want it then I'll adjust the tension this one's gonna be a little off angle unless I wanted to I could make a Deadman Inc or right down here by burying a stick or a bunch of rocks and then that's going to give me the angle that I do want but for the sake of expediency I'm gonna make it a little bit off angle I might adjust it later just in case yeah I definitely like having a better angle it's it's a lot cleaner but I may adjust that once I get the other ones rigged up looks like I'm gonna have to show you how to do a dead man anyway okay so here I'm going to show you how to build a dead man anchor and really that's just because none of these trees are currently at the angles that I want them to if if I had all of these trees like this first anchor everything would be nice and 45 degrees and looking good but that's okay because we'll do something different and I'm basically going to dig a hole for this to go in and then that becomes my new anchor point probably go grab some of those big rocks slow slow digging yeah be right back rains picking up I gotta hurry up with my shelter okay so set up the girth edge here and I just wanna one thing I can do a simple thing is just to wrap this a bunch of times that will create enough friction with the bark but of course you can always make another trucker's hitch or a clove hitch then I'm gonna bury this guy and put a big rock there so now the log is under ground being pulled against this rock and that creates some anchor now let's do it again so if you've missed how I do the girth hitch all I do is I take the end of my rope or peak cord or whatever I just fold it over give myself about six inches there put it up through that hole back on itself where I can then grab all of this and then I just pull it through and as I then add more friction to this or more tension it creates more friction and it'll hold it there as long as you want I'll tell you what I actually truly love a shelter like this and one of the things I love about it is that you feel a little bit more connected to the elements while you still actually are protected and safe I can't tell you how many monsoon storms I've watched pass by overhead seeing lightning striking all from the comfort of my tarp shelter I hope that you've learned something today I hope you learned a few knots that you can take to your camp and if nothing else you're gonna show and impress your friends with the new shelter that you can make Iram a big advocate for this style of camping I think it's underrated and not nearly enough people do it anymore so give it a try and I'd love to hear from you if you have tried it or if you're interested in trying it or maybe you say no way not for me buddy leave me a comment let me know what you think I'd love to hear from you for those of you who stuck around to find out how I packed it up well it can look as tight and neat as this all you do is you take down the four corners leaving the ridgeline intact at first then take off the ridge lines then you just fold it in half and in half and in half and then you've got a nice long line of tarp and then you fold it partially and then you fold that again and then you fold that again and tell you need to start rolling and it gives you a super tight roll and then you've got a nice little bit of cordage to just wrap it up tie it up attach it your backpack and move on

Channel: BackpackingTV

Views: 114,150

Keywords: tarp tent, how to make a tarp shelter, survival, Bushcraft, camping, the $20 tent, BackpackingTV, tarp shelter, survival gear, shelter, tent, survival skills, tutorial, Heliconia, outdoors, building a tarp tent, building a tarp shelter, camp craft, DIY camping shelter, DIY tent, camping hacks, hiking hacks, Epic Trails, minimalist camping, how to make a tarp tent, tarp set up, setting up a tarp, setting up a tarp for camping, open air camping

Id: t0zTSBL53Ac

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Thu May 21 2020