A reader writes:
I’m 60 and been a cyclist forever but, aside from a 2 week youth hostel JOGLE in 1993, I haven’t toured. I’m planning a 3 night first go to start a week on Monday. I have a great tent (second-hand Wild Country Helm 1) and all the basic stuff and all second-hand but how to pack away a damp tent? Do I just do it and hope the sun comes out and I air it at some point during the day or not worry about it until I set it up at the next stop?
Thanks for the question! There’s plenty of general advice available on the subject of ultralight tent care and storage – and tent manufacturers will usually tell you not to pack your tent away wet.
However, there’s not so much advice on how to actually achieve that on a long bike trip.
What if it rains for weeks on end? What if your tent is still covered in dew and condensation every morning when you want to pack up and leave?
Perhaps an underlying question here might be – how can you avoid ruining a very expensive ultralight tent by not knowing how to look after it properly?
This seems a good opportunity to share a few of my own tent care tips from long personal experience of cycle touring in wet and damp conditions.
I have indeed destroyed at least one top-of-the-range tent by not paying attention to drying it properly over long periods of wet-weather riding, so this post is partly about helping you avoid making the same expensive mistake!
Why You Shouldn’t Store A Tent Wet
As you’ll have already heard, storing a lightweight tent wet or damp over long periods of time can cause issues. That’s because water is incredibly good at destroying delicate things.
Left damp for too long, the waterproof coatings of your rainfly and floor bucket will start to disintegrate or delaminate from the fabric. Seam tape will start peeling away. You might even find mould or mildew starting to appear. Metal (usually aluminium) parts such as poles and fastenings may start to oxidise, and the risk of breakage at the weakest points will increase. In short, you’ll end up with a tent that is no longer waterproof, and possibly weaker as well.
So you’re right to be concerned about your tent staying permanently wet on a bike tour, stowed damp on a rear rack by day, pitched in wet or humid conditions at night, and never fully drying out for weeks.
(I can’t help remembering riding in the Pacific Northwest of the USA one spring when it didn’t stop raining for a month! On that ride, I was less concerned with tent care and more about simply having a dry place to sleep on every night – before putting my wet clothes back on and continuing into the rain. I paid dearly for that lack of care later on, when the entire waterproof coating of my rainfly began to flake off on the inside of the tent.)
You already know all this and are looking for ways to avoid such problems, especially since you’re planning on touring in England!
Well, the good news is that it is possible to protect your tent from the deleterious effects of moisture, mainly by working a few simple steps into your daily routine.
Here’s a few tips on how to achieve that:
Tips On How To Dry Out A Wet Tent
If you’re camping in damp conditions (which can mean morning dew and condensation, not just overnight rain), and you’re rising early and hitting the road at the break of dawn, it’s honestly unrealistic to expect to depart with a 100% dry tent.
But there are techniques you can use to get your tent perhaps 90% dry.
Assuming it isn’t raining hard, in which case you’ll have other concerns as a rider in the rain:
- Let the tent air out in any available morning sun (freestanding tents are great for this as they’ll hold their shape if you want to move the tent to a different spot),
- Use a travel towel or microfibre cloth to wipe remaining moisture off the taut surfaces of the pitched tent before you strike it,
- Vigorously shake as much water off the various parts of the tent as possible (maybe wearing a waterproof jacket while doing so!), and
- Leave packing away your tent until the until the last moment, so it gets maximum drying time.
But even in good weather, if you want to get an early start, it’s likely that at least some parts of your tent will still be damp when you leave.
There is a simple solution to this. As soon as the day warms up and/or the sun comes out, you simply stop, unpack the tent again, find a suitable railing or bench or fence to drape it over – your bike will do in a pinch – and have a tea/coffee/snack/nap while it finishes drying out.
It’s really worth making a habit of fully drying out your tent during the day, as it’s probably the one thing that’ll best prolong the life of your tent in the long run (as well as occasionally giving it a good clean).
As you’ll know if you’ve ever done your own laundry, full sun and a bit of breeze will dry things out most rapidly. Ultralight fabrics in particular, of the type most of the best cycle touring tents are made from, tend to dry very quickly in these conditions.
If windy, make sure all the various bits are tied or hooked securely to something, perhaps using the stake loops or guylines. That includes the lightweight carry sack. Ask me how I know.
If the weather stays wet and cold, don’t worry – your tent will survive short periods of being packed away wet. Issues arise when you forget to unpack a wet tent while taking time off the road, or you get really good at find excuses not to bother… and then the sun comes out and your tent ends up steaming itself inside its own carry sack.
Habitual daily airing and drying is the best way to avoid that happening.
Deep-Drying Tents & Camping Gear On Tour
As well as that, rest days are the perfect opportunity for deep-drying everything (also including sleeping bags, camping mats, etc).
As soon as you arrive, find a good drying spot in whatever campsite/hostel/guesthouse/host’s house you’re staying in and leave things to dry as long as possible.
Even if you think your tent is dry, it’s possible that the nooks and crannies, as well as more absorbent parts like zipper linings, stake loops, adjustable webbing straps, etc, are still holding a bit of moisture.
(You’ll see that in well-used tents, where it’s the corners that start to leak and where seam tape peels off first.)
Take the poles and stakes out of their separate carry sacks and dry them too. The elasticated shock cord holding your pole segments together? Make sure it’s left exposed so it dries out too. Seriously – that’s the kind of thing I mean by deep-drying.
Especially if you have a freestanding tent, actually pitching it somewhere completely dry (indoors, for example) can be a really good way of airing it out.
But even if you can’t do that, or find a suitable drying line to hang everything on, simply unpacking the tent fabric and leaving it in a pile in a dry corner will be much better than nothing.
How To Protect A Packed Tent From Rain While Riding
Some riders keep their tents in waterproof dry-bags strapped to their rear racks or handlebar harnesses in an effort to protect them from rain.
While I can see this working on short trips, I’m not a fan of this as a long-term approach, as it can easily create a pressure-cooker-type environment inside the dry-bag, gently steaming your tent in its own juices as soon as the sun comes out.
As mentioned above, in wet or damp conditions it’s probably wiser to prioritise tent-drying strategies over attempting to stop the tent getting wet in the first place, which in my experience is often futile.
The carry sacks that come with many popular tents are made of the same waterproof material as the flysheet, and if pedantically packed and precisely positioned provide plentiful protection in most conditions, allowing some air to circulate too.
Most seasoned riders stash their tents separately from panniers and other waterproof bags because they know keeping a damp tent in a shared stowage space would introduce moisture to everything else. This isn’t necessarily obvious to the newcomer as-yet unaccustomed to life on the road.
And whether you end up strapping yours to a rack or harness, make sure you’ve thought about protecting the tent from road spray, which tends to linger long after the rain stops and you’ve left that cosy café. (Hint: that’s what mudguards/fenders are really for!)
Worst case scenario in hideous downpour, or when wading through a swollen river, or both at the same time? Chuck the tent in a bin liner.
What’s The Best Way To Pack Away An Ultralight Tent?
Getting even deeper into gear-nerd territory, you might comes across disproportionately heated debates on the internet about tent-packing methods, of all things.
Should you fold or roll them up neatly so they take up less space, or simply stuff them into their carry sacks so they don’t develop creases?
And what’s the best way to pack a wet tent so the inner tent is still dry on the inside next time you pitch it?
Yes, these are questions bored gear nerds on Reddit absolutely love to argue about while procrastinating at work.
But rather than summarising these discussions and thereby sending you to sleep, I’ll simply tell you what I do and why:
- Assuming a two-part tent with detachable rainfly, I fold my inner tent in half across its shortest dimension, so the (damp) outer groundsheet remains on the outside and the (hopefully still dry) inner tent is sandwiched and protected.
- I then fold it again longways so it’s the same length as the carry sack, then lay the disassembled poles at the end where the first fold was made, and roll it up. Any remaining air gets pushed out through the mesh panels of the inner tent as I roll.
- Then I shake off the rainfly as much as possible, fold it similarly (the shape will likely be a bit weird but you’ll eventually find a way that works), and roll it up with the inner tent inside. Done this way, the important part – the inside of the inner tent – stays separated from any wet or damp parts.
- This all goes in the carry sack with the open ends of the folds/rolls towards the opening of the bag, so air can get into every part of the tent even when packed.
(Maybe this would be better explained in a video on that YouTube channel I recently started…)
As a side note, I find routine tent drying a lot more fuss with double-skin designs which have the inner tent clipped into the rainfly by default.
And again: this is just what I’ve ended up doing after almost two decades of touring, six tents, and a lot of wet-weather camping.
But I’m sure there’ll be someone out there on the internet waiting to tell me I’ve been doing it all wrong.
Long-Term Tent Care For Cycle Tourers
Last but not least, don’t forget to store the tent dry when it isn’t being used!
It’s easy to forget this when you’ve just got home after a long trip and all you want to do is decompress.
Some people store their tents unpacked, but that takes up a lot of space and is arguably overkill.
Personally, I just make sure everything is bone dry, pack the tent as described above, leave the carry-sack open for airflow, then store it in a dry and airy environment (top of the wardrobe or under the bed: yes; damp basement or garden shed: no).
Well, that was a longer answer than I was expecting it to be. But at least I’ve now brain-dumped everything I know on the subject of camping gear moisture management when cycle touring.
Hope this helps!
This is part of my “No Stupid Questions” series, in which readers write in with questions about cycle touring or bikepacking and I attempt to answer them. Check out more recent posts in the series or ask one of your own.
Something to add?