3 Reasons You Shouldn't Backpack With a Tarp Anymore—and One Big Reason You Should

Tarps are no longer the go-to shelters of most ultralighters. Should they still have a place in your kit? That depends.

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Tarp camping in Colorado (Photo: Patrick Lienen / Moment via Getty)

I struggle to remember the last time I slept beneath an honest-to-goodness tarp. Over the past few years, I’ve shared floorless pyramids with my partners, cowboy-camped, and slept in every style and size of ultralight tent I can think of. But when it comes time to bed down, pitching a tarp is generally not something I feel any urge to do anymore.

I would guess the lion’s share of backpackers nowadays feel the same way. Tarps are still certainly the lightest shelters around: A small DCF flat tarp will set you back 8 or 9 ounces, and as few as 5.5 for a truly gossamer variant like the ZPacks Hexamid; compared to a minimum of 12 to 14 ounces for an ultralight tent, the weight savings are noticeable. But while tarps still have their partisans, the majority of ultralighters go for more substantial shelters, whether freestanding models like the Durston X-Dome 1+ or staked-out trekking pole tents like the ZPacks Plex Solo. They offer better protection, are easier to set up, and—thanks to modern materials—the weight penalty for them is smaller than ever. Where tarps used to be a lightweight backpacker’s only real option for shelter, today it’s easy to cut your baseweight to well below 10 pounds without ever learning to pitch one.

Does that mean backpacking tarps are dead? I don’t think so, but the points in their favor are fewer and fewer. Here are three good reasons most backpackers aren’t springing for a new one in 2025.

They’re no longer much cheaper than ultralight tents.

Tarps’ low price has historically been part of their appeal, as anyone who’s ever tried to sleep under a crinkling swatch of Tyvek will attest. At their cheapest, tarps are still the least expensive backpacking shelter you’ll find. Borah’s 5.9 x 9-foot silpoly tarp, for example, starts at just $68. But thanks in part to the proliferation of small ultralight gear manufacturers in both the U.S. and China, the difference is minor at best. Consider 3F UL Gear’s Lanshan Pro 1, which retails for $179, weighs about 1.8 pounds all in, and packs down to the size of a water bottle. Even Durston’s popular X-Mid 1 costs just $269; that’s cheaper than some of the lighter DCF tarps on the market, like the $379 Hexamid. Whether you’re looking to spend a lot or a little, you can find both worthwhile enclosed shelters and tarps at price points of your choice.

They still don’t have a floor.

As innovative designs and space-age materials have cut their weight, ultralight tents have become more and more full-featured. Your average lightweight tent now features at least one vestibule big enough to sneak your pack under, while the asymmetrical pitch on Durston’s X-Mid line have moved the trekking poles out of the way of the doors, obviating the need to worm your way in and out. In contrast, while today’s models have become lighter, easier to pitch, and arguably more ergonomic than the flat rectangles of yesteryear, tarps otherwise mostly suck at the things they sucked at 20 years ago. Mosquitoes buzz in under the edge. Pick the wrong site and the wrong day, and rainwater will too. (Yes, I know you could add on an inner net and a separate bathtub floor. But at that point, you’ve mostly constructed a tent out of parts anyway.)

You have other options for cutting weight.

Over the past 15 years, there’s not a category of backpacking gear that hasn’t gotten better, cheaper, lighter, or a combination of the three. Hikers today can load up internal-frame packs that weigh in at roughly the same as the frameless packs of yesteryear, sleep under ultra-compressible down quilts that are nearly as user-friendly as a bag, and grab a water bottle that does double-duty as a cookpot. Yes, your shelter is still one of the places where you can cut the most weight in a single go. But the total weight savings from other categories add up to the point that, unless you’re trying to go as minimalist as humanly possible, trading the ease of a tent for a tarp is hardly a necessary sacrifice.

So is a tarp the right choice for the vast majority of lightweight backpackers in 2025? Almost certainly not. As Backpacker’s ultralight columnist Nathan Pipenberg argued in 2024, the era of light-at-any-cost gear is mostly over, with today’s most popular products trading a little bit of weight to up their durability and comfort instead. If you’re part of the 95 percent of backpackers who aren’t gunning for FKTs, pushing their mileage as far as it will go, or just nursing an attachment to open-air sleeping, it’s probable that trading your shelter for a tarp isn’t for you. But if you are part of that 5 percent? Every gram counts.