Hi All!

In my BOB I have a GoLite Cave 2 Shelter (It's rally kinda like a tarp). It packs down to a pretty small size. I am looking for a tarp to go along with the Cave for possible use as ground cloth etc.

Should it be made out of the same lightweight material?

I have been looking at Oware tarps a little bit but I am not sure what i need. I DO need another tarp to supplement the Lair in my BOB right??

For a ground cloth it's tough to beat plastic. A sheet of plastic 2 mil thick is very lightweight. You could carry a small roll of the stuff in your BOB and use it for multiple purposes. 4 mil plastic is very durable but much heavier. Another possibility is a sheet of Tyvek building wrap.

In addition to making an excellent ground cloth, a plastic sheet and some cord can be rigged in an unlimited number of configurations. In fact, the designer of your GoLite Cave, Ray Jardine, used plastic sheeting to make tarps long before he began using nylon.

I've used 2 mil plastic sheeting for a ground cloth on multi-week backpacking trips and it lasts just fine. Just remember to keep it from protruding outside of the tarp's footprint or it will make a great rain collector/bathtub.

Thanks for the help!!!

So you figure just get a GoLite tarp??

The silicone nylon is very light and stronger than the plastic
but is slippery as a ground sheet, tyvek isn't so slippery but
isn't as waterproof.

So there are some trade-offs with each one.

A full length closed cell pad with no seperate ground sheet has worked for me. I put boots
and rocks around the perimeter to keep from rolling off.

Some folks like bivy sacks in stead of just a ground cloth to
get bug and wind protection too.

I have spent several weeks at a time out backpacking with a sil nylon tarp and a basic plastic sheet for a ground cloth.

2mil will last long enough for most situations.

On a two week hike in the fjords of British Columbia, we made camp one night after transitioning a 7,300 foot peak. We opted for a granite table instead of sleeping in the snow, as we were still above the trees. Big mistake. A storm blew in on us that night, and we had only our tent flys up, not that it would've mattered much. We had enough standing water on that table flowing around and through our site that we all got soaked through our down bags, making sleep a real challenge. I ended up with two of our party laying on top of me most of the night to keep them from getting soaked through, the idea being that one of us was going to have to suffer anyways, and since I was the biggest... even if we'd have put up the tents, the amount of water would'v permeated them enough it wouldn't have made much difference in the end.

We should've kept hiking another hour or so to get to the trees, even if it meant hiking after nightfall. It was raining down below just as bad, but at least there it was draining away or perking off.

I was cold all the next day, and slept like a rock the next night.

I'd recommend plastic sheet or even tyvek for the groundcloth over silnylon for a couple of reasons. For one, the waterproofing on silnylon isn't that durable. It's fine for keeping rain off, but lay it on top of standing water any pressure on it from kneeling or sitting will cause it to soak through. Plus your groundcloth will get beat up, no reason to spend $50+ for a piece of silnylon when a sheet of free plastic will do.