The Humble mosquito head net.. and all it’s uses

One of the fascinating aspects of the Ultralight community is finding a million uses for everything in your pack. Instead of bringing a pair of trekking poles and a camera tripod, ultralighters use their trekking poles as a tripod (see here for my own MYOG tripod). Why bring tent poles when you can use trekking poles, rain gear that doubles as ground sheet and so on and so forth. The possibilities are endless when you start getting creative.

While this could be a practice in nerdiness it’s also pretty damn fun to figure out new uses for everything. I tend to think this is being the ultimate bad-ass! Think about, who doesn’t want to be McGyver and figure out a thousands uses for things?

Anyway, this brings me to the humble Mosquito net. Just a tiny little black net that most of us bring with us on our outings. Ultralighters as well as Heavy-miserables.. we all have bug nets. Through the years after reading many different books and trial and error I have some pretty fun uses for the head net.

So what can this 50 gram bug net offer in way of multiple usage? I use mine as a mosquito net of course (though admittedly I rarely ever need one.. me and mosquitos have an agreement with each other), but even as a coffee when I want to have ground coffee with me, a cheap and easy stuff sack – usually for my my clothes so I can see what’s in it, some people use them as water filters for getting out the bigger chunks of debris before drinking. Also works great as a tea filter as seen in the pic below.

This is how I use my head net the most.. as a coffee or tea filter. Don’t worry about the netting getting wet as it doesn’t retain water. Just rinse and shake and your good to go

When I don’t feel like bringing a bug net to sleep under, when sleeping under the stars or tarp, I sleep with my bug net on. I’m sure other people can get even more creative than me, but so far, these are the uses I’ve found for the mosquito head net. Admittedly you probably don’t want to use chemically treated head nets.

When I don’t feel like bringing a proper tent or bug net, I find sleeping like this is perfectly fine.

Enjoy!