Why starting a fire in the rain wouldn't have saved me..

That’s my plan this year, though with a different tent. If you can pitch the fly independently, I don’t see any downside (other than the fact that it might be more closed off than you’d want for a glassing tarp). I’m certainly no expert here, but it seems useful to me to be able to enclose everything for an emergency shelter or unplanned night out.

This is the one I’ll be carrying this year.

Edit to add: I paid $110 for the 2 person double wall variant. The $170 price is absurd - just so they can mark it down to $100 and claim it’s a 40% discount.
 

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Between the Colorado hiker thread, and the fire in the rain thread, I think this is a good time to talk about what happened to me(45) and my Dad (70) this year on a hunt, and what I learned from it.
I'll try to keep it very short and concise.
...
Thanks for sharing.

I agree completely. This is a pretty common scenario.
In general, your first survival need is shelter. Fire is somewhere way down the line.

You did the right thing and you both lived to tell the story.
 
So you think 10x10 is ideal emergency tarp sizing?

Really looking hard into an emergency shelter, also looking at some poncho options?


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I have a 12x12 for camp. And I carry a 10x10 with me most of the time. It is prerigged for the center ridgeline configuration that the original poster used. It is a critical piece of survival gear.

Here is a good company in northern Minnesota that hand makes very durable versions of these tarps;
 
First line of shelter starts with clothing. Rain gear/poncho, hooded puffy, watchcap and etc.
If you have a tarp you can keep a fire going under it and if you have rain gear you can collect wood without getting soaked. A roaring fire is warmer than 'the rewarming drill'. JMO-YMMV.
Something to consider.
JMO... i disagree. Scrambling around trying to find, carry, and process firewood sounds miserable. And then it takes a very large amount of wood to get "a roaring fire". And then it just warms the front of you.

Consider if both guys had fallen in a creek. Neither guy would have been strong enough to start that kind of fire and keep it going.

Building a shelter, jumping in sleeping bags, and injesting hot food/liquids is way more efficient.

And even your scenario would not have worked without a shelter. Shelter is almost always your top survival priority.
 
The top survival priority is keeping dry. If your wet than it is getting dry/warm.
If you fall in the creek and everything you have is soaked how is your wet down clothes or wet down sleeping bag going to rewarm you? You may not even have those things with you....
Different situations require different solutions.
 
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