If you think the advice in this infographic is nutty, heretical, or (to be charitable) merely inadvisable; so did I until I tried it. I first read about this in Cliff Jacobson’s book Camping’s Top Secrets. Jacobson is an author, wilderness guide, Distinguished Eagle Scout, and a regular contributor to Scouting Magazine.

When I interviewed Cliff on Scoutmaster Podcast 54 he mentioned that many people react negatively to this particular advice, they insist he’s wrong. He writes about this in this blog post for Piragis Northwoods Company:

Old ideas die hard, and when it comes to camping, the hardest to die is that you should place a plastic groundcloth UNDER the floor of your tent. This is dead wrong, and akin to pitching the tent on a slab of concrete. Rainwater will flow between the impervious groundsheet and floor, pool there, and be pressure wicked by body weight into the sleeping compartment. Then, you’ll really have a sponge party!

My five Cannondale Aroostook tents (no longer manufactured) have been used in commercial outfitting on rugged Canadian canoe trips for 35 years. Trips have lasted from one to four weeks. That’s more than two years of continuous service for each tent. We have always used an interior groundcloth in these tents. Damage? Only one tent got a hole in the floor. I might add that the interior waterproof coatings on these tents was long gone when I sold them at a garage sale a few years ago. After 35 years of heavy use only one tent had a hole in the floor!

The idea that the groundcloth goes under the tent got started in the 1950’s when few tents had floors. You set a poncho or separate tarp inside the tent then placed your sleeping bag on top. …

If you’ve ever pitched a floor-less tent you know it isn’t easy. Since there’s no floor to establish the shape, the tent usually goes up cockeyed. Getting it straight means pulling stakes, moving them around, looking at the tent then setting the stakes again. When I was a Boy Scout in the 1950’s, we took great pride in “getting it right” the first time around. But we were Boy Scouts and it was no big deal. But casual campers didn’t have the patience for this sort of thing. And that’s why manufacturers first put floors in tents—to make them easier to pitch, not to keep out water. Any water that gets inside a floored tent stays inside, and that’s why you need an interior groundcloth to keep that water away from you.

With this, I rest my case!

Cliff Jacobson

www.cliff-jacobson.com