Mountain Hardwear Shifter 3 Tent Review
Bottom Line: A medium weight 3-season, 3-person tent for the budget conscious backpacker that needs a tent that is as good for car-camping at the lake, camping out during a music festival or used as a multi-day backpacking tent. All the bells and whistles are included as standard, including the footprint to protect the base of the tent and a mesh gear loft inside the tent. First Impressions and Observations: This tent weighs in at 6lb 9oz (2.96kg) but that weight is likely going to be lower depending on your needs. It comes with some extra pegs, a mesh gear loft and a tent footprint which, if you wanted to go light, could be left at home without reducing the functionality of the tent. Without these the tent would be <5lb 9oz, which, when you consider splitting the weight between 3 people would come in just under 2lbs each. Not bad for a reasonably priced tent that doesn’t scrimp on space or features! When I first pitched it I could tell that Mountain Hardwear did a lot of work to utilize the vestibule space. This tent has 2 vestibules and depending on how you “shift” (see, this is were the name Shifter comes from) the fly over the main tent body you can have either a wide open vestibule with a mesh door or a more private vestibule and a solid canopy door. I feel this incorporation of a 50/50 mix of mesh and solid canopy will also allow this tent to be used in early Spring and late Fall when the temperatures are lower. I’d definitely have no issue using it in sub-zero temperatures but then I’m crazy like that. The only concern I’d have is if this tent would hold up in strong winds as it only utilizes two crossed poles. There are extra guy line points so if strong winds were expected they could be used to add increased stability. One of my only gripes with this tent is the added shoulder vestibule. This allows for greatly increased storage space in one of the vestibules but, the shouldered area of the vestibule has two small poles inserted into it that can’t be removed, they are sewn into the fly. I’m not a tent roller, I like to stuff my tent into a stuff sack and compress it. I’ve done this with all my tents and I find it is a quicker, more space efficient way of carrying my tent. With these poles inserted into the fly I can’t compress the fly in a stuff sack. I worked around this by just stuffing everything but the section...
Canadian Wilderness Adventures: Canoe Tour
< Part 1: ATV Tour with Canadian Wilderness Adventures After getting back to Whistler and cleaning the dust off ourselves from ATV’ing we met up with our guide Gavin to go Canoe the River of Golden Dreams. We joined a group of others that were stoked to have this experience also. Truth be told we’ve been meaning to do this river for quite a while after first hearing about it years ago. We’ve just never had the equipment or knowledge to go for it. In late Summer, when the water level is pretty low, it’s common for a lot of people to just float this river in inflatable dingys and inner tubes. Even though we’d be tackling it earlier in the year I expected a similar experience. Will Lightning strike the lake? We started this adventure by getting geared up on the shores of Alta Lake. After a quick tutorial we hopped into the canoes and paddled out. Once out on the water Gavin got us to run through some drills practicing some paddling techniques to turn and control our canoe. The weather also looked to be changing for the worst so Gavin made us aware that if thunder and lightning did start we’d be ending our tour early. The prospect of being caught out in a thunderstorm definitely added to the adventurous feel of this trip. We paddled in a tight knit group, chatting amongst ourselves and getting to know each other. At the far end of the lake we began our journey down into and along the River of Golden Dreams. The Best Thing To Do in Whistler! It’s exceptionally picturesque. I now understand why this outing is considered the #1 thing to do in Whistler by locals and tourists alike. We floated by lilies, under bridges, through narrow sections were we could see grass growing along the bottom of the river through the crystal clear water. After a section of paddling along a narrow stream we entered 21-Mile Creek, a wider, faster flowing river. The flow rate was surprising at first as I wasn’t expecting it. During the Spring and early Summer snow melt the river level is higher and flowing quicker. We began to move quicker and the paddling drills we had practiced earlier at Alta Lake came into use. Not only did we need to avoid low hanging trees, sand bars and sharp bends in the river but there was also loads of people floating in the river in small, cheap, inflatable dingys. It was exciting and our guides did an excellent job of instructing us as to how to handle the upcoming challenges and...
Canadian Wilderness Adventures: ATV Tour
Recently myself and Spring had the opportunity to go on a day of adventures with “Canadian Wilderness Adventures” out of Whistler, BC. It was scheduled to be a jam packed day with ATV’ing on rugged trails in the Callaghan Valley in the morning followed by Canoeing the River of Golden Dreams in the afternoon. When asked if I had previous ATV experience I replied “yes”, but that experience was gained about 8 years ago in a field somewhere in Alberta. I was pretty overweight back then, not athletic in anyway and I basically just drove around in circles for an hour. Learning to properly handle a Quad has been on the To Do list for a while. In the future if we travel to more remote locations ATV’s might be the only way to get around. Plus, it’s serious fun! We have a secret! It’s also been a secret shame of ours that we don’t really know how to Canoe well. Canoeing is quintessentially Canadian and having now lived in Canada for 5 years myself and Spring should really know how to do it already. Spring grew up in Canada, in Alberta, so her shame runs deep, haha! We arrived in Whistler bright and early to begin our day. I was curiously nervous. I knew I’d be with a guide but I guess I always feel nervous right before I do something I’ve never done before. It’s always a guessing game to see how I will react when challenged with something new. We checked in at the Canadian Wilderness Adventures desk at the Carleton Lodge, signed our waivers and quickly headed out with Lewy, our ATV guide for the day to do the “Wild Wild West ATV Tour“. It was a quick drive to the Callaghan Valley and Lewy did an excellent job of getting us geared up and instructed to control our Quads. Let the Adventure Begin! Before we knew it our goggles were down and we were ripping along a rough gravel road. Our ATV adventure had begun! On the gravel road we had some time to get used to how the ATV’s handled. They rolled over potholes with ease and accelerated quickly, cornering well. Lewy told us to remember our past experience with Mountain Biking which really helped. The key was to always keep looking ahead and into the turns where I wanted to go, not where I wanted to avoid. Things started to get steep and technical. Eventually we started getting on to more technical trail, which got rougher and steeper. Making the conscious effort to keep my eyes up scanning ahead helped me to...
Hat Mountain Photo Essay
Hat Mountain is a small peak in the North Shore Mountains near Vancouver that is not as popular due to being dwarfed by it’s neighbour summits of Brunswick Mountain and Mount Hanover but also because it is not heavily featured in hiking guidebooks for the area. I’ve found that mountains that are well documented and detailed in guidebooks will almost always grow in popularity. The description for Hat Mountain on the popular mountain database bivouac.com reads: “A minor bump located on the NW shoulder of Mt. Brunswick.”. Wow, I wonder why hardly anyone goes there! These lesser mountains have always interested me, I guess because I like a good underdog story and none of the “minor” or “insignificant” summits I’ve visited have disappointed me yet. They’ve always been highly enjoyable to climb and offered amazing views out towards the other summits nearby that would be considered “significant”. Check out my photo essay below to see what you can expect to encounter if you climb Hat Mountain. Directions: If you’d like to visit this mountain for yourself you can find instructions at this link: Clubtread: Hat Mountain We followed the 3rd option, ascending the mountain via the Hat Pass Trail. We highly recommend it....
Sky Pilot Race Recap
From reading some of our past posts you may have realized that the Sky Pilot is one of our favorite mountains around Squamish. It’s a spectacular alpine area where backcountry adventure is around every corner. So when we heard that the Coast Mountain Trail Series was bringing a trail race to this area, we knew we had to run it! The inaugural race was scheduled for September 21, which could mean beautiful fall weather or torrential rain; it could go either way here on the west coast. With the race being set in such a rugged area there was a lot of trail building happening weeks before the race. Everyone involved in creating this race wanted to make it a unique mountain running experience. The excitement was building when there was talk of roped sections, boulder fields and ridge running. However,days before the race, the endless summer sunshine we had been experiencing changed to the autumnal rains, which meant all of the fresh new trail became streams of mud. The steep trails were now too wet to run and it would be too risky to send all of the runners out onto this terrain. But if I have learnt anything about the Coast Mountain Trail Series races, it’s that they do not disappoint, and with literally hours before the start of the race, a change of route was put in place. They were going to make sure everyone got the mountain running experience they promised! This was some of the rugged mountain trail. Mt. Habrich from the summit point of the race. Checking out the view from the summit. We showed up to the starting line, on a sunny blue bird day at the top of the Sea to Sky Gondola, not totally sure of the new route and curious where exactly it was going to take us. Leigh and I were running this one together and decided to run it as a fun run. No need to race, just enjoy the new course, take a few photos along the way and revel in the scenery. As usual the starting area was buzzing with the energy of runners antsy to start, one of my favorite parts of racing. Just feeding off of that energy can carry you for miles! And we needed that energy to carry us. This course was unforgiving in its ascent. Starting on the tame and gentle uphill Sky Pilot ridge trail, we would eventually be taken straight up to a ridge that connected to Mt. Habrich. Running or rather power hiking up steep, loose, duff covered forest trail, straight onto a boulder field. Crossing the...
