Terra Rosa

Another photograph from the recent bikepacking/location scouting trip.
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The tarp you see here was custom made to my specs by Evan at Terra Rosa Gear.

As is customary with Evan and his work, it’s a wonderfully crafted piece of kit and I know it will serve me well for many moons to come.

So, the technical details… It’s 10×12 foot in a Multicam PU coated ripstop nylon, 70 denier and has a fire retardant coating. There are 16 perimeter tie outs, 3 ridge line tie outs, 3 interior ridge line mitten hooks and 4 panel pull tie outs. This is my bushcraft and base camp tarp and as a result it is much heavier duty & larger in size than my cuben and sil-poly options. A major draw for me choosing this material was the fire retardant coating. A practical feature for a tarp that’ll see endless use around camp fires. It weighs 1620 grams including excessive guylines, a carabiner, snake skins and the stuff sack.

To rig it up I have a carabiner secured on an overhand loop at one end of the continuous ridge line, of which I sling around a tree and clip back onto the cord & pull taut. On the other end of the ridge line I use a truckers hitch, finished with two slippery half hitches. Prusiks and mini-biners affix the tarp to the ridge line. The perimeter guylines are larks headed to the tie out points & finished with adjustable grip hitches at the stake end. When the ridge line is set and the tarp is ready to deploy I slip back the snake skins and position/secure the guylines, often to surrounding trees, rocks or wooden stakes I’ve made up.

I’m a big proponent of the versatility of tarps, and this one is exactly that. All the tie out points allow for some fun tarpology. In terms of the pitch, I opted for a simple lean to here and raised the centre most tie out point to provide a lot more interior space. Finally, I added in a wooden toggle and attached the front panel pulls to the central tie out point.

Who else camps out with a tarp? Let me know in the comments below!