Nemo Kunai 2P Mountaineering Tent Review
Bottom Line: A versatile, innovative and aesthethic tent that is light weight while still holding onto all the features you’d expect in a true 2-person, 4 season tent that will see you through the heat of Summer into the depths of a snowy Winter. First Impressions and Observations: As soon as I held the Nemo Kunai 2P tent in my hands my first thought was: “Yes! A tent that finally comes in a truly usable stuff sack”. I’m not going to lie, the stuff sacks that come with most tents usual disappoint me. Most times they are nothing more than a basic sack with a draw string to close them at the top. Nemo has provided, as standard, with the Kunai 2P tent a stuff sack that is not only waterproof, but allows for airspace to be compressed out and it has a glow in the dark map of popular constellations on the inside! Tent manufacturers take note, this is how you impress a camper before they’ve even had a chance to actually look at the tent. The Kunai 2P tent and pole set Awesome compression stuff sack “Recharge with your headlamp”. Neat! Pitching the Kunai 2P Mountaineering tent is extremely straightforward also. It has two main poles that cross over the main tent body and then an additional brow pole to increase head room at the tent door and provide extra height to the vestibule. The main tent body pitched The front brow pole on the tent Swivel Hub on the Kunai 2P Tent Fully sealed up inside this tent gets warm fast! I can see how the double walled design will make this an amazing tent in Winter. But what about Summer? The venting system to make this a true 4-Season tent, and not just a Winter Tent, is quite remarkable and innovative. Venting on the entrance door Looking down the end of the tent Struts that hold a part of the door open Door vent with strut from the inside Vents have been installed at both ends of the tent, but more than that, struts have been installed into the fly to allow for the vents to be held open, increasing airflow. Awesome! Inside the tent there are pockets where you’d need them. A pocket on each side of the tent down low for a phone or wallet and overhead pockets for a headlamp. If you turn your headlamp on and place it in the overhead pocket it diffuses light around the tent. Side stash pocket Top pocket in the Kunai 2P Tent Space is at a premium inside the tent, but this is understandable as it’s meant as a...
The Copilot: How civilized!
We have had more than a few hikes/scrambles around Southwest B.C. that have made us earn our right to be there. They consisted of either an approach on miles of logging road that is so graciously referred to as a “slog”, a heinous bushwack or alder thrash that scratches and slaps at any exposed skin or sometimes if we were really lucky we have had to ford some sort of raging ice-cold water to further our progress. But we have slowly become accustomed to the ways of the wild in B.C. and you could say we have developed a special fondness for them. The scenic ride to the top Looking at our objective The views just don’t get old However, since the arrival of the Sea to Sky Gondola a certain civility and european feel has been brought to one of our local mountain areas: Sky Pilot. The trail has been tamed. We no longer have to endure miles of approach on logging road or thrashing through alder to arrive at our destination. No, now we have a scenic 10 minute ride up in a cable car, a cafe at the top should we need one more caffeine boost before we set off and a well-groomed trail that leads us straight to the alpine. If you didn’t know any better you might actually think you were in a little European town in the Alps. Going up… and up Copilot This August, however,our sights were set on a lesser named bump in the area, The Copilot. Next to Sky Pilot it looks much less intimidating, as it doesn’t quite take up as much of the skyline as it’s better known, better half. But, seeing as we had already scrambled Sky Pilot a few years earlier (If you want to see how our first trip went in this area, pre-gondola, take a look at our successful attempt to climb Sky Pilot in 2011.), we set our sights on this smaller objective and what turned out to be a mini alpine adventure, only minutes from our home. Climb on Summit Selfie Lounging up top More views Despite it’s smaller stature this is still a stiff scramble and should only be attempted by those with the experience,gear and skill to do so. The climb itself is short, approx 90m up the Northeast gully. It’s an obvious line that is filled with loose rock halfway up, so wear a helmet. There were no issues scrambling this section and we made a note of the rappel stations, good sturdy trees, on the way up. We brought the necessary equipment to rappel the route as...
4 Years, 4 Summits
Four years ago today, April 14th, 2014, myself and Spring finished our journey from Ireland to Canada and set foot in our new home in Squamish. Spring was returning to her home country after living away in Ireland for 6 years and I was moving somewhere completely new and foreign. The trip to Canada was not enjoyable. We ended up on a 9 hour flight in the middle seats of the middle isle of coach on the plane, wedged between an individual on our left who drank himself into a stupor within the first 45 minutes of the flight and an older, spindly lady on our right who packed the area around her seat with bags and clothes and then fell asleep in a ball on top of them. To add to this, in the seats in front of us were two mothers with newborns. They fully reclined their seats into our laps in the first minutes of the flight and they stayed that way for the duration. The crying and teething stopped us from being able to sleep through any of this. When we finally, wearily arrived at Vancouver airport, made our way through immigration services and went to pick up our rental car they told us that we could not have it. Spring had a driving license and I did not. But the credit cards we had were all in my name. The rental car company insisted that they’d only allow us to take the car if we provided a credit card in the drivers name. Without options, we got a taxi to the nearest Hotel and decided to figure this all out in the morning after sleeping off the day. The next morning, my first morning at my new home, I opened the curtains and the day was glorious. Blue skies and sunshine. We turned on the TV and switched to the news. Our jaws instantly dropped. Breaking news was coming in of the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, an Icelandic volcano, and European airspace was shut down. Had our flight been a day later we’d likely have been stuck in Ireland now. This delay may have also impacted my chances of getting my permanent residency in Canada. The permanent residency application insists that I be in Canada within 12 months of taking the medical exam that it requires. That 12 month deadline was on April 15th, my first day in Canada. The qualms we’d had with the previous days flight and being refused our rental car washed away. We were at least here, our 3 meager suitcases of clothes had arrived with us and we were fine....
The Runners High
“What the hell was that?” Breathless, I sat beside Spring as we got into the car. Spring spoke but there was a dull ringing in my ears that muted her voice. Eventually I heard her say “something got into you eh? You just took off, how long were you waiting for me at the end?”. We drove home and pulled into our driveway. Spring got out, she noticed that I wasn’t following and asked “Are you coming?”. I responded “In a few minutes”. I needed to understand what had happened. Where my mind had gone. Before distractions dulled this experience and reduced it to something imagined at a later point in the day. Like a dream, precisely like a dream to be exact, I needed to not let this memory fade into the ether now that I had regained composure, regained consciousness. I looked at the running app on my phone. I had run the fastest split time for that distance in my life, at least 25% faster than when I had ran the same trail and distance a few days prior. I rejoined Spring in our apartment; “I think that was it” I said, “I think that was a runners high”. This experience happened some months ago. In the period between then and now I have battled with whether I should write about it or not. I’ve written drafts of this post and then scrapped them. I’m skeptical by nature. I spend my leisure time in the mountains and take calculated risks. The key point is that these activities require me to be calculated, to evaluate the hard evidence, to mitigate dangers and to move safely through the terrain. There’s no room there for flights of fancy or the unquantifiable. I like the raw honesty of the wild and the trust I can put in those experiences. Rock is hard, Ice is cold and the Mountains are eternally indifferent. I’ve heard of climbers refer to being in “the zone” but it always sounded foolish to me. Nobody plans a trip and says “ok, when we get to the base of this climb we’ll enter The Zone and then climb effortlessly to the summit”. It sounds farcical. The sporadic nature of accounts about this heightened state of awareness naturally leads one to be skeptical. Yet I couldn’t deny my own experience. That state I was in while running was not normal consciousness, it was not a normal level of awareness. It was different. I’d read about the purported “runners high” before. It always seemed like marketing fluff to sell more race tickets or running shoes. Or just another way...
