Tent platform
A tent platform is a level and mostly elevated, artificial surface for one or more tents . Typically, it is a wooden construction in the humpbacked area, which should allow the hiker to spend the night comfortably in a tent. Often it is also supposed to prevent the end of the tent from trampling the surrounding vegetation . In some countries, especially in America, tent platforms are often found on hiking trails, but also on many campsites. There are brick, floating, roofed or transportable tent platforms.
Mountaineers sometimes build a tent platform for their base camp from materials available there such as rubble or snow, or from boards they have brought with them.
Off-road vehicles often have large platforms on their roofs, which are actually intended for the transport of equipment or for wildlife viewing, but tents are often set up on these as well. The elevated location offers protection from predators in the wild that sleep there.
A special form is the car roof tent, a mostly foldable platform with a tent, which, mounted on the roof of an ordinary car, temporarily transforms it into a mobile home . A ladder must be carried for entry.
Tent platforms are often found in large tents in the commercial as well as in the military sector, in festival and event tents. Sometimes large crowds move here, which the natural soil would not be able to withstand for long if unprotected. The artificial floor should enable people in the tent to stay comfortably or work efficiently, and to escape in an emergency. Here you usually have wooden or plastic modules that are laid over the natural subsurface and that are often equipped with more or less complex leveling feet .
literature
- USDA Forest Service: Accessibility Guidebook for Outdoor Recreation and Trails
- Boys' Life, June 1967, page 34
