High Sierra Topix

I am an under the stars guy. I just wish I could see them. Without glasses on its all a blur. Many nights I fall asleep with them on and they end up crushed somewhere in my bag.
I did just buy a golite shangrila 2 for when the weather degrades and to help give piece of mind keeping the photo gear a little more dry.

You know, i've never really thought about it. I usually sleep in my tent, but I always really enjoy the nights I have spent outside of it. (mind is happily wandering back to the memory of watching a meteor shower at 3 am while sleeping on a boulder near Precipice Lake...) My tent is a tarptent which I strongly prefer - I hate the confined feeling of a 'real' tent. Maybe I should think more about sleeping outside - well, as long as the skeeters and wind aren't too bad.

Here is what I hate, being in a tent and hearing the crunch of footsteps outside, bear? lion? Charlie Manson? Lizard? squirrel?

In bear country particularly I like to be able to sit up and see who my new friend is.

I feel very insecure inside a tent.

I do about half and half, bivy and tent. I use a bivy pre-mosquito season, use the tent most of July, back in bivy for August-mid-Sept, tent after mid-Sept (I have been snowed on!). As tents have become lighter, I have used my bivy a bit less. Many of my trips with a bivy are 10-16 days long. One trip it seriously rained and I spent a day drinking tea on the porch of a backcountry ranger station! I like seeing stars, but I do the bivy primarily for weight savings and the fact that you can sleep almost anywhere you can find a small flat space and there is no set-up hastles. And if you do not like your initial spot, you just pick up and move. I use a basic bivy that weighs a bit over a pound. Personally, I do not like tarps - perhaps because I am so mechanically inept that I never can get them set up (plus I am mostly above timber).

I love sleeping under the stars also but I get eaten alive by bugs - I am the one in a group that mosquitoes always go after... I usually end up sleeping in the Tarptent . I have had a couple of interesting sleeping-in-the-open experiences that have kind of scarred me - one night I had something the probable size of a raccoon jump on my stomach as I was laying in my bag (heart attack material) and another in which I had my hiking boots dragged away during the night by something. This normally wouldn't have been TOO bad except that I am near-sighted and keep my glasses for safety in one of my boots. Finding them was uh, fun :-)

I have grown wimpy in my old age.

I used to sleep 'cowboy style' sans tent. Now I prefer a tent.

balzaccom wrote:We pretty much set up the tent when we arrive at our campsite every afternoon. While I don't mind ( and even enjoy) sleeping out under the stars, my wife likes the privacy and "security" of the tent. It's compromise I am very welling to make, if it encourages her to join me on trip after trip...

And she does.

+1 on all of the above.

I always take the tent to the trail-head. Depending on the weather and my mood, the tent stays or goes. The last couple of trips the tent has gone, even though the weather has been ideal. Its nice to get out of the elements after being in the elements all day, especially the wind.

This normally wouldn't have been TOO bad except that I am near-sighted and keep my glasses for safety in one of my boots. Finding them was uh, fun :-)

Nice Cloudy. I can relate.

I nearly always sleep in a tent, more often to keep the bugs off of me (they will always find me, except in the fall) than for anything else. Sometimes the tent helps with wind protection, too, and of course it is a rain shelter. Over the years there have been trips I've slept under the stars, and the majority of such trips were in the fall.