South Coast track with fast-pitch?

[jsburns23]

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?

[ILUVSWTAS]

apparently there are mosquitoes and leeches?

In the outside world? Yes these exist.

[Osik]

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.

[wander]

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.

Last edited by wander on Mon 14 Dec, 2020 6:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

[jsburns23]

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.