Thread: small packing tent vs bivvy

Well, I'm revisiting this thread again after the most unsuccessful "hunting" outing I have had yet yesterday.

I went out yesterday afternoon up Opawe road. Still snow all over the show which was exciting. Anyway, I decided to just go a little bit into the bush and then turn left (North). My goal was to reach the ridge before the Opawe stream and stay the night to hunt some slips and shit. This turned out to be a big case of ambitious map dreams however as I spent the day getting myself, and then my pack tangled in supplejack. We (my pack and I) are pretty big and bulky the both of us, and as my first pure bush bashing mission I made the mistake of having tent poles stick up out of it too which did not help my situation. After a few hours of tolerating it, I realised I wouldn't reach my target destination and so had a look around for somewhere to pitch my tent. No places were found. At this time I decided to walk down the ridge to the farm border and try walk along the fence line and find somewhere on the next ridge along, a bit closer to my original goal.

By this point I was pretty broken, and the site of pretty steep shit down into the next stream and up out of it along the fence line was enough to send me home defeated; walking out along the fence line like a little bitch. To be fair to myself I've been pretty sick this week with a bit of a dodgy pie earlier in the week giving me a stomach bug then into a pretty hectic man flu which has had me feeling dizzy for the last few days so I shouldn't have gone but oh well. When I got back to my car it was straight to Ashurst for a 1.5L chug of sweet sweet coca cola and then off to pizza hut for some Pepperoni. I'm normally a pretty keen man and generally pretty hard to break but that day I had had a fucken gutsful. If myrtle rust can get rid of all the supplejack I will be well impressed.

Morales of my story:

- I need to harden up, and probably leave earlier in the day so there's time to get where I'm going as bush bashing is pretty slow.
- I'm probably going to try just getting a bivvy bag and tarp so I can camp anywhere. I will probably get a proper sleeping bag that doesn't take up literally half of the space in my pack too.
- Whittakers berry and biscuit chocolate goes good.
- Bush is way less open, way more cunty, and contains way more supplejack, when wearing a large pack.

If you have read till here, I have a question for those of you that sleep/have slept in bivvy bags. Can you get away with a less warm sleeping bag if sleeping in a bivvy sack? I'm looking at just getting a standard big waterproof sack army style bivvy bag sort of thing, and possibly a sleeping bag like this Pathfinder Water Repellent Mummy Down Sleeping Bag v2 - Orange/Grey. I'm a pohara uni student so want something that can be used year round.

Cheers
Tom