Pitch Your Tent

In looking at the weather forecast for next weekend, it looks like we MIGHT catch some rain on Monday, towards the end of the kayaking trip. The weather isn’t enough to make us cancel the trip, but there are some precautions that we’ll be taking to make sure rain doesn’t ruin the trip!

This tent CLEARLY has an uphill side!

We’ll be taking a small shovel along for, ahem, waste removal purposes. But, it will do double duty if we feel we need to dig a water ditch. Digging a small ditch for the water to run away from the tent is a good idea, but heed this story!

My good friend Resa told me this story about the first camping trip she and her husband, John, took just after they were married. They knew that they should dig around their tent so moisture (in this case, a light drizzle) would run away from the tent. So, they dug around their tent and then left for a day of hiking and fishing. When they returned, they realized that they had made a moat around their tent and had flooded the bottom of the tent!

Moral of the story: if you’re pitching your tent on a slope and are going to alter the way water will flow, make sure that you start UPHILL and dig channels to send the water DOWNHILL and away from the tent. DO NOT create a ditch around the tent! If you’ll be pitching your tent on level ground, note that it isn’t usually 100% level. Use that as the “uphill” for your ditch. When you leave the area, you need to fill in your ditches! Not only do you want to leave a neat tent pad (in a campground) for other campers, but it’s also of the Leave No Trace principles.

Readers Weigh In:

• What are your tips for camping in less than sunny weather?
• Do you have any funny (or not so funny) stories to share about camping in the rain?

One Response to “Water Ditches”