How To Sleep In A Tent And LOVE It

so you wanna sleep like a baby in a tent hey what's going on guys my name is Dan I am into backpacking hiking gear all that stuff if you guys are into that stuff to just go ahead and subscribe to the channel that's what you're gonna get when you're watching this channel so you're here probably because maybe it's your first time backpacking or you've been backpacking a while and you are not getting good sleep at night and you're like who's this guy that's gonna give me this magic solution to sleep good in a tent and I will tell you right away I don't have a magic solution I'm gonna tell you how I have been able to sleep in a tent all night long with no issues whatsoever comfortable each and every single time so real quick brief history I started out hammock camping and if you don't know what that is it's just you grab a hammock yeah tie it up between two trees and you sleep in it now there's a lot of other variables that go into it and the argument is is that's the most comfortable way to sleep out on the trail and I would agree it is extremely comfortable it does take some time to figure out for a lot of people and it does take some time to dial in so it could be kind of a challenge but I was forced into tent camping because I bring my kids along with me I also bring a lot of people that are first-time backpackers so they borrow a lot of my gear and sometimes they borrow my hammock so I'm stuck with the tent because I'm the nice guy right and then also my kids love to sleep with dad in the tent they're not ready for the hammock just yet so I was forced into it and I had to go from this beautiful comfortable sleep to not sleeping well at night in a tent and I needed to be able to do that because if you guys know and a lot of people preach this is that you invest in your sleep now the big reason you want to invest in your sleep is pretty obvious you've hiked a long day you're gonna hike a long day tomorrow you need to get some good sleep to do that otherwise you're gonna be miserable the next day now I'm not really going to talk to you about the specific gear that I use but I will put the gear that I use down in the description below so that you can go take a look at it for yourself it is definitely expensive gear because I do this often but it will fit the bill for the majority of the backpackers out there it's excellent gear and it does help nice similar to how I sleep at home I didn't bring my pillow from home okay I didn't bring like the comforter from home I didn't bring the mattress from home anything like that at all but what I realized is that night after night after night I sleep in a house in my own bed and whenever you're taken out of that norm and you're put into the middle of the woods and you are trying to sleep at night it can keep you awake so my plan was how can I mimic how I sleep at home in a tent all right so let's dive a little bit deeper let's talk about some of the things that I think are gonna help you guys out sleeping a little bit better first of all you need to make sure you've got the right tent you wouldn't sleep at home with no roof on your house right you wouldn't sleep at home with your windows wide open when it's cold outside so what do you think you're gonna do when you get out into the backcountry you're gonna want a roof over your head that's not going to leak you're gonna want to make sure that your tent is ventilated but not to the point where you've got wind and weather whipping through all night long so you're gonna want to make sure that your tent is well built and waterproofed so a couple things about your tent really quick if you want to make sure you don't get wet at night one make sure that you have a double wall tent the single wall tents are great if you want to save weight but the double wall tents help you from getting water on the inside of your tent because one of the biggest problems with tents is that condensation does build up on the inside of the tent especially when it's warmer inside the tent than it is outside the tent you know from breathing or just multiple people being in there and then you wake up in the middle of the night and you're like man it didn't rain but how did the water get in here well that's condensation I would encourage you guys to get a double wall tent when you're starting out I think that will help you guys out and as you grow if you want to get a little bit lighter you can get a single wall tent and learn to experience that way as you get better out in the backcountry learning how to use that tent to avoid the condensation by leaving you no vents open and that kind of thing you also want to make sure that you have a good footprint underneath the tent if you don't know what that is it's essentially a big tarp that goes underneath your tent but you want to make sure that it's the size of your tent or a little bit smaller than your tent and the reason is is you don't want that footprint sticking out around the outside of your tent because rain will get on it and then it will slide in between the footprints and the bottom of your tent which can then soak up inside of your tent causing a lot of problems throughout the night a footprint also protects the bottom of your tent makes it a little bit more comfortable inside the tent kind of thickens up the floor a little bit from some of the ground underneath you and so that way if you do kind of roll off a little bit there's a little bit of extra cushion there for you helps out make sure you have a good footprint also how good is your mattress at home do you sleep good at home most people they've got a decent enough mattress that they're sleeping all night at home I would encourage you to get out and find a air mattress that's going to do the same thing for you mimic what you've got at home and I'm not telling you to go out and buy those like super car camping you know one foot thick air mattresses by any means but those cheap foam pads that you can find at Walmart or those accordion ones that you can get online those can be very uncomfortable and if it's gonna be this huge switch for you from sleeping at home to sleeping in your tent you're gonna want to rethink that pad a little bit you can actually find sleeping pads that you can fill with air that are much much better than those foam ones and can actually be even lighter than some of those foam ones now I went out and got the lightest one that I could find at the time but it was too narrow and it was too thin it didn't work well for me I rolled around on it at night I would fall off of it it was very noisy as they slept on it because there's some insulating values on the inside that would crinkle all night long it just didn't work for me so I opted for a much wider sleeping pad a much thicker sleeping pad still an air sleeping pad weighs a little bit more but it definitely mimics a little bit more what I have at home and it helps me to be able to sleep at night in the tent so maybe you've heard a lot of guys talking about quilts and sleeping quilts and how there's so much better than sleeping bags and I would argue that they can be as good as a sleeping bag and they will definitely save you weight and a quilt is what I do use what a quilt is definitely something that takes practice and especially for newer backpackers you may want to consider just sticking with the traditional sleeping bag I'm not telling you to go out and get the synthetic version I would encourage you highly to find an inexpensive down version in order to save weight but a sleeping bag will it least help you out now here's the basic difference between the two a quilt is essentially a minimalist version of a sleeping bag I mean really that's it it doesn't have a back to it and it doesn't really have a hood that goes over the top of you like some of the mummy bags it's essentially a blanket that will cinch around the bottom portion of your legs into a foot box and then you can also tighten it up around your neck to be able to kind of mimic that mummy style sleeping bag and it is much lighter weight and a lot of guys will argue it's the way to go but for somebody who's starting out or who's getting used to sleeping in a tent I would probably tell you that you should look into maybe a sleeping bag first because it's a definite learned experience the problem with the quilt is that when you roll around drafts can come up underneath you even with pad straps drafts can still get up underneath you I've experienced both a pad strap is simply being able to cinch down the sides of the quilt to the sleep pad so that it doesn't lift up around the sides of you for drafts to come in and that's exactly why I say that oftentimes a sleeping bag can be the way to go especially for guys who you know just don't backpack off in it's once in a blue moon every other year once a year twice a year three times a year even you're trying to mimic what you do at home it might be best just to go get the sleeping bag so if you're watching in my videos or you watch the trip videos that I've gotten I've got plenty of trip videos on my channel that you could check out I like to sleep with two pillows and I get asked all the time why I sleep with two pillows well the biggest reason is obvious from what I told you at the beginning of this video is that I mimic what I do at home I sleep with two pillows at home I'm a side sleeper I roll around at night so I sleep with one pillow under my head and then I prop myself up with a second pillow now I could save weight and not bring the second pillow but I wouldn't sleep as good so I want to make sure that I'm gonna sleep good at night and I bring two pillows maybe in order to save weight you just don't bring a pillow I would encourage you if you're not sleeping good at night just bring the pillow you'll be glad you did you'll be better off getting the sleep at night and bringing that couple extra ounces instead of having to worry about being groggy and tired and not being able to hike very well the next day because nobody wants to hang out with a cranky backpacker and finally the last thing that I did to sleep better at to make it so that I was actually kind of mimicking what I did at home and this is gonna probably be strange to a lot of you guys out there but I sleep with a fan at home I sleep with white noise at home I've been doing that for over 20 years and for me to be able to sleep at night it's helpful for me to have some sort of a sound so if I go backpacking and there's wind going through the trees that works for me if it's raining and I hear the rain hitting the tent that works for me but if it's like dead still at night I mean there's not a sound anywhere there's no draft I mean it's nothing it's like you could hear a pin drop I have a hard time sleeping so what I've done is I found an app that gives me white noise it just plays the sound of a fan so I plug my phone into my battery bank and I turn it on when I need it and that thing will play all night long it really doesn't drain my battery very much I can shut it off halfway through the night if I kind of wake up and find that I really don't need it anymore but that is on certain occasions something that I will do it if you guys are iPhone users check the description below i have a link to the app so you guys can check it out yourself okay so if you're watching this video and you're a seasoned backpacker do me a favor and help me out i have reached a point where I can no longer get to all of the comments in videos make sure you help and answer questions below for me make sure you're helping people by being encouraging and uplifting if you're not I will ban you I've gotten good at the band button but make sure that you're helping people in their quest to learn more about backpacking and get better at the hobby alright guys if you like this video make sure you hit that like button also subscribe for more make sure you hit the bell notifications so that I can send you a video every time it's released and I will see you on the next one

Channel: Dan Becker

Views: 469,186

Keywords: how to sleep in a tent, tent, big agnes, comfortable sleep, good sleep, backpacking, ul backpacking, ul gear, ultralight, lightweight, best tent, best sleeping pad, for backpacking

Id: YpNEPIoXCHc

Length: 10min 50sec (650 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 03 2019