Bivy Sacks

[Guest]

You can get any number of double walled, mosquito netting interior tents at around 3 pounds, which might serve your purposes. As I mentioned, my Big Agnes solo tent weighs 2 pounds even--lots of others with similar specs.

Hopefully no-see-um netting interiors.

Although weight in not a big concern I have gone that mostly mesh route, but in a slightly more robust tents than the ultra-light weight versions.

I don’t remember the exact numbers, but a study of mesh vs nylon interior walled tents showed that a mostly mesh interior was something like four or five degrees cooler when used in colder temps. I can easily compensate for that with an appropriate sleeping bag.

As a three season tent I like the ability to open the vestibules in warmer weather and let a little air move though. Even if very little; no-see-um netting is a pretty effective breeze blocker.

One use in which mostly mesh tents do not pass muster is in blowing sand and dust conditions; the mesh may stop no-see-ums, but fine grain sand or dust not so much, even with the vestibules snugged closed.

Saving a pound or two with an ultra-light weight tent has some construction drawbacks. The hydrostatic head rating for a lot of UL tents is low (3000 mm, 1500mm?). A slightly heavier tent may have a floor rated at two or three times that number, and that criteria at least is often included in the tent specs.

The bigger drawback for my hopefully long term use is sometimes not listed in the specs - the fragility of zippers on UL tents. One easy way to knock weight off a tent is to use skinny little zippers. Being dependent on the zippers in bug season I’d like something more dependably robust.

Bivis are not fun to hang out in.

Despite using a tarp I do hang out in the tent sometimes. I don’t use a screenhouse, and if the bugs become intolerable at some dusk point I may retreat to the tent to read or write until the worst of the onslaught is over. If it starts raining sideways or blowing an unexpected snow and the tarp isn’t cutting it, tent here I come for a spell.

I tried a bivy years ago for backpacking, and experienced all of the downside issues folks have mentioned above. The biggest fail for me was the simple lack of interior space. Admittedly I find most “one person” tents do not have much more floor space than a bivy. The “two-person” tents we use as solos would be ridiculously small for two people, but at least there is some headspace to sit up and elbow room for one person and a bit of narrow gear.

I read in the tent every night before sleep, which is not as convenient in a bivy. And I keep a good portion of camp (except food & stove) either in the tent with me - book, journal, clothes bag - or stored in the vestibules – shoes, empty dry bags, pee bottle.

And, um, as an older guy having to extricate myself from a bivy to piss in the wee hours would be a huge PITA, especially in foul weather.

 

[dougd]

Bivies and me do not agree and I cringe when I see my friends crawl into theirs for the night. I figure one day down the road I'll be laying in a wooden one permanently. I'll take the extra weight of a tent any day. Oh yeah, as I age those late night callings have become more frequent, nope, no bivy for me.

dougd

 

[Black_Fly]

Bivies and me do not agree and I cringe when I see my friends crawl into theirs for the night. I figure one day down the road I'll be laying in a wooden one permanently. I'll take the extra weight of a tent any day. Oh yeah, as I age those late night callings have become more frequent, nope, no bivy for me.

dougd

I've gotten so I carry a yellow Nalgene to pee in at night. Sets in the vestibule until morning. For solo trips it's da bomb.

 

[Mason]

I've gotten so I carry a yellow Nalgene to pee in at night. Sets in the vestibule until morning. For solo trips it's da bomb.

That'll be fun in a bivi bag, with a dog.

 

[Black_Fly]

How in heck do they sell any bivy bags at all? Can't pee in a bottle, can't spoon with a pup, wake up in a puddle...not my idea of good night's sleep.

 

[Mason]

How in heck do they sell any bivy bags at all? Can't pee in a bottle, can't spoon with a pup, wake up in a puddle...not my idea of good night's sleep.

Started with climbers mostly--bivi is short for bivouac, a short respite on the way up a climb (emphasis on short!). Although I've used them for such things, I still prefer mountaineering tents for most all I do (lugged a 10 pound MH Trango for my last trip up in the Barrens--security counts for something).

 

[Zac]

I have never used a bivy and do not intend on trying one out. Anyway, here are my thoughts on the matter:

I spent 8 days in the BWCA last year with a friend of mine who brought this unique hybrid shelter:

https://www.lawsonhammock.com/produc...amping-hammock

At 4.25 pounds it is not the lightest option, but it is lighter than most tents and much more versatile. More like a solo tent than a bivy, it can be hung from a tree like a hammock or placed on the ground like a tent. Rain fly included just like a tent. My friend placed his on the ground on the colder nights for more warmth. It has bars on the ends to keep the fabric from surrounding you like a normal hammock, something people who don't like hammocks should appreciate, and actual poles to keep the netting and fly off of you, something people who don't like bivys should appreciate. It does require extra guy lines to keep it from flipping over. It will fit 200# me and 100# labrador, but I wouldn't try that hanging for multiple reasons.

I hang most of the time these days in conventional hammocks. Dog goes on the ground wherever he wants. He prefers to be outside even when a tent is an option unless the rain or bugs are unbearable. I run cheap nylon hammocks with built in zippered-bug-netting, DutchWare whoopie sling suspension and a OneTigris 10x10 tarp with quality small diameter cord for the ridge line/guy lines and quality aluminium or titanium stakes. Altogether it ends up a little lighter than my 4.5 pound Brooks Range Mountaineering Foray 3 tent and much more comfortable unless I add a few pounds of air mattress to the tent. Considering that I almost always bring the tarp in addition to the tent it saves a couple of pounds. More money spent on hammock and tarp will lighten this up someday. I'm still shopping for the right underquilt to extend my hanging into the shoulder seasons... you really pay for weight just like a bag.

I just checked my tent weight and it's a very packable 3 pounds. I can't complain about that. But I was wondering if anyone had ever left the tent at home and just slept under the freestanding rain fly? A ground cloth under the sleeping arrangement and a fly above must cut the weight down to ounces. The question of bugs might complicate matters. With or without a bivy this seems a lightweight option. Anyone try this?

A couple years ago I had a Big Agnes Tumble 2 tent. I bought the additional footprint to go with it just like my current Brooks Range Mountaineering Foray 3. With the footprint, both of these tents can be set up in the "fast fly" configuration which saves the weight of the mesh/nylon "tent" itself but you still need to bring the rods.

I spent one cold, buggy morning in the "fast fly" Tumble 2 when rain drove me and a friend out of our non-tarped hammocks during the night. It was miserable. The fly didn't come close enough to the ground to stop wind, bugs or rain splatter. The fly on the Brooks Range tent goes lower, but in all honestly I haven't used it in the 'fast fly' setup as anything more than gear storage.

I will bring the footprint from my Brooks Range tent as a second tarp and use it to cover gear/firewood and on "fast fly" occasions as a ground tarp under my main tarp. I prefer this to either of the tents I described and I know it is lighter (no rods). My next tarp will be from Kifaru, SeekOutside, Brooks Range or CCS but for now the $40 OneTigris gets the job done. I really want the $188 13.4 oz ParaTarp or the $310 17.6oz SuperTarp from Kifaru (add their "annex" and it's ready for a stove!) but it's awfully hard for me to spend that kind of money on a piece of gear that is really just replacing a $10 blue tarp. The right tarp is a big deal but I feel the skills to set it up properly are more important. I'm no expert but my skills get better every year.

On the same BWCA trip I mentioned earlier with the Lawson hammock we set a tarp up over our kitchen area and by day 3 or 4 it was pitched quite well. A group of paddlers on their way by pulled over just to ask us what brand our tarp was! Apparently the blue color didn't give it away.

A quality tarp is one of the very last things I would eliminate from my kit, probably right ahead of "knife"

 

[Bothwell Voyageur]

I think the idea of a bivouac dates back to the Napoleonic wars; soldiers would carry a bed roll and make a very simple camp to enable them to travel much faster across the land.
I used to backpack with an ex-army buddy who could shut himself away in a bivi for 10 hours at a time.

I've mostly used a bivi along with a smaller tarp, allowing me to cover my head, shoulders and paddling gear while leaving my legs out in the elements. I'll use two paddles to support the tarp peak allowing me to camp right on the shore.

If paddling solo plus dog I will always use a tarp of some sort. You need a groundsheet anyway so I added a half bivi on the lower end, pairing it with a bug net for the top half. As mentioned the bivi end also helps stop drafts. I used some Goretex Driloft, used for sleeping bags. It is more breathable than standard Goretex though not as waterproof.Good for keeping the foot end of the bag from getting wet with condensation from the tarp and with the top half open I don't have to worry about condensation build up.

I'm in the process of making some winter bivis for a school group. They want them for use in quinzees so have a waterproof base and uncoated top. I have also put a full length zipper down the centre and wrapped the waterproof fabric up around the top of the hood and under the foot box to help keep the bag from getting wet against the snow.

Unfortunately a waterproof outer on a sleeping bag is not that great an idea. Unless you can keep that membrane warm enough perspiration will simply condense on the inside. In mountaineering you would use a vapour barrier on the inside to stop this. At least with a loose bivi you can simply brush the frost off the bag/bivi.

 

[Chip]

I use a Mountain Hardware bivy that is made of some kind of breathable fabric--nylon with some-kinda coating. Breathable works--I've never had an issue with condensation inside the bag.

I love sleeping out in the open, but mostly, I camp in a tent. In winter, I will sleep in the bivy under a tarp, or open sky if it absolutely is not going to rain. I like the space and headroom in the open, and a tarp will keep off most of the precip. Bugs and creepy-crawlies make the tent desireable in summer. I've tried hammocking, and will hammock camp in summer when it is hot and buggy, but I've never gotten very comfortable in the hammock. Most of the time, I bump up against the side of the hammock and get cold.

Hammock and bivy share a common challenge: where to put the rest of your stuff. I like a tent because it provides a place for your stuff. If you are bivy or hammock camping, where do you put the clothes you take off before crawling in? You better put them in a bag so they don't get covered with dew or other precip, blow away, or get dragged off by an animal. Now let's say you wake up in the morning and want that fresh pair of socks you packed--they are somewhere in the pack, and you may have to unpack to get them. Where do you put the stuff you unpack? The ground may be wet, frozen or muddy. Your bivy may be covered with dew or wet from rain. Inside the tent, just turn the bag upside down and dump it out. So, if you bring stuff when you camp, a tent is nice.

An obvious solution for where to put it is to not bring stuff in the first place. So if you are ultra-light enough, store your stuff in a zip-lock and challenge resolved.

The bivy does extend the range of your sleeping bag by 5 or 10 degrees. But so does a tent. And if it is windy, the wind is right on the bivy, and you give back those 5 or 10 degrees.

The bivy weighs 17 oz, saving 2 lbs vs my ultralight tent. However, I consider a tarp and a ground "cloth" essential for bivy camping, so the weight saving evaporates. But unless I'm backpacking it, the tarp is coming anyhow, so the bivy still saves weight.

I have never had to get into/out of the bivy/bag while camping in the open during a rainstorm. Once in the bag, I think I'd be okay, but I don't think there's a way to remove your clothes, put them away, and get into the bag without clothes, body, and bag getting wet. Bivy-only camping is for tougher campers than me.

Then there's the day you decide the weather is too extreme for paddling. I was on the Alligash during Hurricane Irene. We decided not to paddle the day the storm hit. Most of the hurricane went west but we still had two nights and a day of heavy rain and winds, a day I was very happy to have brought a big-arse tent. We set up chairs and a roll table inside the tent. Try that in your bivy.

 

[PaddlingPitt]

I have found this topic to be very interesting, although I have never considered using a bivy. The criteria regarding weight savings is particularly interesting. Kathleen and I used to be backpackers, but took up canoeing because we could go tripping farther and longer, with much more gear. We no longer worried about weight. Even on portages, we care not about weight. A portage is just a short backpacking trip. And half the time we are just sauntering back, easy as you please, to get the next pack. A big, roomy tent is ideal to escape the wind, the rain and the bugs. I don't even know what our tent weighs. It matters not. It is big, roomy, dry, calm and bug free.

Canoe tripping is the best!

 

[Sturgeon]

I have an uberbivvy that I use on solo trips sometimes. I like it a lot.

http://www.milesgear.com/UberBivy.html

It is much less fuss than a hammock, lighter than my hammock, is waterproof and breathable, and there is always a piece of ground the length of a human in which to put it. What this means in practical terms is that i can paddle longer because i don't have to futz about setting up a hammock, which takes a long time to get right, no matter what people tell you. I can eat dinner early, paddle right until dark and be in bed ten minutes after landing. And if I need to, I can camp literally anywhere.





That's the good part. The bad part is that if you use just the bivy alone, you will get rained on, and it's very unpleasant to be kind of stuck in there in the morning, waiting for the rain to abate. So of course I usually put a tarp overtop, so I can cook under there in the morning . At which point I don't really need a good waterproof bivy, do i? At this point it becomes a bug shelter-bag protector. And there are better lighter bug shelters on the market. also it is a bit difficult to scooch out in the middle of the night for a pee, as mentioned above.



I don't really want a tent, because i want to sleep outdoors, not indoors. But if i were to do it all over again, maybe I would buy a nice single person solo tent like the MEC Spark UL.

https://www.mec.ca/en/product/5036-963/Spark-1-Person-Tent

 

[Zac]

Hammock and bivy share a common challenge: where to put the rest of your stuff. I like a tent because it provides a place for your stuff. If you are bivy or hammock camping, where do you put the clothes you take off before crawling in? You better put them in a bag so they don't get covered with dew or other precip, blow away, or get dragged off by an animal. Now let's say you wake up in the morning and want that fresh pair of socks you packed--they are somewhere in the pack, and you may have to unpack to get them. Where do you put the stuff you unpack? The ground may be wet, frozen or muddy. Your bivy may be covered with dew or wet from rain. Inside the tent, just turn the bag upside down and dump it out. So, if you bring stuff when you camp, a tent is nice.

I normally use a dry bag of clothes as a pillow so clothes come off, go into the bag, bag goes under my head. Reverse procedure in the morning. This should work with a bivy just as well as in a hammock or tent. Sometimes I will just hang my clothing from the hammock suspension or on the extra ridgeline/clothes lines I normally have rigged on the underside of the tarp. Depends on dew/precipitation/wet clothes/etc.

I've found that with a 10x10 tarp and an 11' hammock there is plenty of room under the tarp for gear storage. I used to be really messy and leave stuff laying about in the tent, but now I get everything organized and put away in my pack with tomorrows clothes in my "pillowcase" before going to bed so I can get out of camp faster in the AM. If conditions are right for a heavy dew I just wrap my pack up in the ground cloth or put a fly on the pack (Note to self: buy new rain fly for pack) When it's windy or raining I set everything up low to block as much of the weather as possible. When I know inclement weather is coming it's nice to find a little cluster of evergreens or cedars to set up in. Most of the time I can fit the tarp and hammock in tighter to this natural cover than any tent or bivy.

I brought hammock, tarp and tent along when I paddled the Upper Missouri River Breaks solo in 2017. Out of 11 total nights camping, only one night was I able to set up the hammock. When the improved campsites had suitable sized trees, but they were either too close or too far apart. I had rigging to set up in trees anywhere from 11'6" to ~24' apart. A bivy would have worked well for that trip. However, hammocks are undeniably snake-proof. I'd hate to wake up on the ground with a rattlesnake cuddled up next to me.

I started using a sleeping bag liner full time last year and really like how it adds warmth to the bag and keeps it cleaner for just a couple ounces. Now this thread has me thinking I need a lightweight bivy or sleeping bag cover too. I'll even have to try it out in my hammock (Blasphemous!) when the wind would normally have me sleeping on the ground. I own a full assortment of temperature rated sleeping bags but traditionally bring one size too light.

Sturgeon - I can set up a hammock pretty fast after finding the right trees, even one of my current ones with the zippered bug netting requiring it's own ridgeline or two if I want to utilize the insect protection. The tarp takes me much longer than the hammock. When solo, the hammock and tarp do take me longer than my current tent and fly.

 

[Iskweo]

We only used bivvy bags in the military for winter. Camping in snow caves and such or out in the open. Not a lot of fun. Tents are a better deal as you can actually get warm, change clothes, wash etc etc etc without the bugs driving you crazy or freezing your arse off. A bit of tent eye is a small price to pay. I tried all manner of contraptions from shelter halves and bug nets to lean to tarps to you name it and in the end they were all lacking something.

I have a two person North Face tent...cant remember the model...that is really quite roomy and is ideal for one.I did have one of those tents from MEC that were like Sturgeons above and while it was nice and light and worked well enough, I missed being able to sit up. We sold it, and went with a Wanerer 4 for the two of us...I KNOOOOOOW ....its decadent. I have my own little tent for soloing or tripping with VERY good friends.

Having said all this...I still like to think about late fall trips with a tarp stretched over the upturned canoe and some paddles holding it all up like a lean to, on a sandy beach by the edge of the bush. The classic canoe fantasy camp. I think Robin came really close at Marshall the year he saw the caribou. That is now my quest for this summer. Film at 11.00.

Christy

 

[goonstroke]

This is a great thread, but this Thanksgiving (south of 49th) I will be giving thanks for my tent. 4 lbs with all the trimmings, and there's a lot of comfort in that stuffsack.

 

[Holmes375]

I don't do well with extreme confinement. Tried a friend's bivy many years ago and thought I was gonna die. Even an ultralight one man backpack tent gives me the willies. Mummy bags? Nope. Perhaps I'm mildly claustrophobic, I don't know. Just can't do ceilings and such right over my face.

For the last few years I've been using a Marmot Limelight 2 man tent and love it. More durable than an ultralight but not terribly heavy as 6.5 lbs packed with my extra guys, stakes and a footprint. Nice roomy solo tent for a tall guy. Two doors and vestibules, 43" height with vertical walls so nothing is in my face. Very affordable, too, considering today's tent prices. https://www.marmot.com/limelight-2p/27930.html

I raise a 10x12' tarp most times to relax under in the mornings and after dinner. The tent has enough room to be comfortable if I'm caught in a couple days o' snotty weather.

One of the reasons I left the kayak side of paddling 10 years ago was so I could pack more comfortable gear and better food. Comfort plays a larger role in my back country adventures as I've gotten older. No more hatches and tiny dry bags for me. Canoes, tents and tarps rule my way