Shelter decides whether a night out is a story you tell later or one you’re still recovering from. Rain off your back, wind cut down, and some of your body heat staying with you — that’s the whole job. This section covers tarps, hammocks, and emergency shelters: three very different answers to the same problem.
What actually matters
Shelter specs hide the important differences in plain sight. Here’s where they live.
- Tarp size. Finished size is what covers you, and it isn’t always the size on the tag — some makers list the fabric before hemming. A 10-by-10-foot tarp covers one person and their gear with room to cook at the edge; smaller tarps work if your pitch is good. Corners and edges are where coverage runs out first.
- Fabric. Silnylon is light and strong but stretches when wet, so a tight pitch sags by morning. Silpoly sags far less and costs a little weight. Hardware-store poly tarps are cheap, heavy, loud in wind, and their grommets tear out — fine over a woodpile, poor over your bed. Denier describes thread thickness; higher isn’t automatically better, it’s a weight-versus-toughness trade.
- Tie-outs and ridgelines. A tarp is only as good as its pitch, and tie-outs are what make pitches possible. Reinforced tie-out points outlast metal grommets, and more of them means more shapes — lean-to, A-frame, diamond. A continuous ridgeline, one line run between two trees with the tarp hung over or under it, sets up faster and handles wind better than tying corner to corner.
- Hammock length. Length is comfort. Hammocks around 10 to 11 feet let most sleepers lie diagonally and reasonably flat; short hammocks force a curved, banana-shaped lay that wrecks sleep. Width matters second. If a listing doesn’t state the length plainly, that tells you something.
- Capacity claims. Treat weight ratings with suspicion. Some are tested, some are estimated, and a few are fiction; what matters is whether the maker stands behind the number and whether owners near that weight report failures. And a hammock is a system: suspension straps, a bug net in season, and insulation under you — your back loses heat to the air even on mild nights.
- Mylar, honestly. Emergency mylar shelters reflect heat and block wind for almost no weight, and everyone should own one. They also tear at the first snag, flap loudly, collect condensation, and are close to impossible to refold. A mylar blanket is a last-resort layer that buys time — it is not a tent, and no plan should treat it as one.
Mistakes buyers make
- Never practicing the pitch. The first time you hang a tarp should not be in the rain at dusk. Two or three practice pitches at home, plus two knots you can tie with cold hands, are worth more than any upgrade.
- Buying capacity by headline. A hammock or tarp chosen because the box says it holds two people or 500 pounds — without checking size, what’s included, or owner reports — is how money gets spent twice.
- Counting mylar as the plan. A kit whose entire shelter is a space blanket has a layer, not a shelter. The fix costs little: treat mylar as the backup to something with structure.
- Forgetting what’s sold separately. Straps, stakes, guylines, and bug nets are often not in the box. Price the whole setup, not the hammock or tarp alone — the gap surprises a lot of buyers.
How we score gear in this section
Scores in this section use the sitewide four measures: evidence (30 points), cost of ownership (25), owner experience (25), and preparedness fit (20). Evidence counts heavily here, because shelter claims — finished sizes, weight ratings — are exactly where marketing stretches, and we check claims against what makers publish and owners report. Cost of ownership includes the parts a setup needs to actually work: lines, stakes, straps, and replacements when a tie-out gives up. See How We Rate for the full method.
Guides here take up the questions that decide a dry night: what tarp size covers two people, when a hammock beats the ground and when it doesn’t, and what an emergency shelter can honestly do in a car kit. Once you’re out of the weather, the next problem is usually a hot meal — Fire & Cooking is the companion section.