Dealing with Slope Concerns for Rain & Drainage When Camping

Video Transcript

" Hi, this is Bruce Lessels from Zoar Outdoor on behalf of expertvillage.com, talking about choosing and setting up a campsite. The other way that slope plays in deciding your campsite is that it affects the drainage of your campsite to a great extent. If it rains in the middle of the night the last thing you want is a river running through your tent and if you have a steep slope above your tent and the water draining towards your tent it could be a problem. So in a case like this we have a little bit of a high spot behind the tent and that’s going to keep the tent protected from water that might run off in the middle of the night. This lowest spot over here, of course is where most of the water is running down towards this brook and that’s a good sign and leads it up, this higher spot that we have the tent sited on it’s going to be generally pretty dry and not so good to a lot of flooding or a lot of water running in toward the tents. So another way to tell where the water runs when its not running is to look on the ground and see places where the grass might be flatten down or where the trees, the twigs and the leaves might be spread aside by water in the past and those will tell you where water has run in the past and you should avoid those areas. You should also avoid really low areas that are very wet and have dips because of course those are going to get the wettest when it rains and you may be doing some damage to some wetland plants there too as well. So try to choose a nice higher spot and a spot that’s well drained and it’s not going to cause you problems at night."