Bushwalk Australia

Thinking of doing the SCT in January with just a fly and footprint (no inner tent). What do you think? Driving rain should be OK, but apparently there are mosquitoes and leeches?

jsburns23 wrote:apparently there are mosquitoes and leeches?

In the outside world? Yes these exist.

Leeches, mosquitos & tiger snakes that fancy a dry warm spot outta the rain aside, single skin tents are notoriously bad in most tassie conditions & result in serious condensation issues unless you nail the ventilation & site selection. You’d probably wanna be carrying an light bivvy bag if you’re going to forgo in the inner - by which time you may as well carry the inner.
I’ve used the fly only a fair bit in alpine conditions, but most of the time in tassie a double skin tent just works the best.

Add March flys and little tiny black flying bity things. Many an eve I've retreated to the tent to eat dinner to reduce the insect intake.

Also windblown sand is a bother at a few of the camp sites.

It depends on hard core you are but the practicalities of an inner are great.

Thanks a lot for that very useful info. We're a group of 5 and we thought the question was worth asking. We've dealt with NZ sandflies and weren't sure if the SCT had an equivalent in January. My son once shared a sleeping bag with a snake in WA, so I guess that's the clincher.