Ash and Canvas: Gers in Camp

Quite a few of the camp members got together during the last year and built gers (popularly called yurts) for this year's Pennsic. They bought air-dried ash from a saw mill, and built rather impressive tents. Anne and I have had a ger for the last five or six years, and they are extremely comfortable camping – even when it rains (or pours) steadily for six days, like it did last year.

One good thing about gers is how they resist wind. Because they are domed at the top, and all the force of the roof's weight is transfered down to the walls, when a strong wind comes it pushes the entire structure tighter to the ground, using the same aerodynamics that lift an airplane (only in reverse). I'm always glad of this when heavy thunderstorms come through. It wouldn't survive a tornado, of course, but as long as the materials hold, I'm fairly confident that the tent won't fail in linear winds.

Another plus is the fact that they have holes at the peak of the roof that can be uncovered in good weather. This lets air circulate as though the entire tent were a chimney. With the smoke hole open and the tent walls slightly raised, the air flow keeps the tent almost the same temperature as the outside.

Gers have walls that support rafters pegged into a roof ring. There are no internal supports, so a 16' diameter tent like the one Anne and I use, is entirely usable space with five or six foot tall walls at the outside and rafters that rise to a peak of 8 or 9 feet. The walls are a lattice of cross-bound staves that are arranged like those expandable baby gates: the lattice opens out to form a wall of diamond openings (see below). The latice is very flexible and can rollup fairly tightly.

The red column above is the wall (called the khana) of a 16' diameter tent with 5' walls. Like all of the new gers, they stained the wood of the khana, rafters, and roof rings to match and attached the staves of the khana with aluminum aircraft rivets.

The pile of red wood above is all the rafters for the same ger. These fit into a roof ring at the top and sit on a wire at the bottom. In some designs the rafters are notched and sit on the x of the lattice walls

Above is the wall and door of another tent, being assembled. This is the same size tent as the red one. In this case, the walls are held fast by the door frame and by the wire that encircles the top of the wall. In traditional gers, there are belly bands that encircle the lattice of the khana and prevent the circle from expanding during use.

Here is the roof ring that supports the top end of the rafters. It is leaning against the outside of another of the new gers.

Above the roof is being put on the ger. In these a ladder is used, but in many constructions the ring can be raised from the ground. In fact, traditional Mongolian gers have two poles that lash onto the roof ring and allow the rafters to be assembled by one or two people without the use of a ladder.

Several of the new gers had quite impressive wooden doors on them. Unfortunately, I neglected to take pictures of them. Adding a wooden door to our tent is a project I've had in mind for some time now. Perhaps I'll make one for next year. For now, we're comfortable with a canvas door panel.