Mountain Hardwear SuperMegaUL 2 Tent Review
Bottom Line: An Ultralight, 2 person, 3 season tent that’s perfect for those fast and light missions when saving a bit of extra weight is going to make all the difference. First Impressions and Observations: The SuperMegaUL 2 is a beautiful tent, sexy even! It’s light (minimum weight: 2lb 2oz), sets up easily and accommodates two individuals on mummy sleeping pads with room in the vestibule for packs and boots. To make this tent as light as it is the designers at Mountain Hardwear have clearly gone over every feature in this tent and shaved grams wherever possibly. It’s this precise attention to detail that gives this tent its beauty. The space inside is at a minimum, but this was expected with an ultralight tent. I’ve slept in it with another person and had no issues. I’m used to sleeping in small Winter tents so I am accustomed to tents with an interior space of this size. Some might say it’s cramped, I’d say it’s cozy. If you want more space then be prepared for your back and shoulders to have to haul more weight uphill. Those are the tradeoffs. Some of the features that I appreciated are: The toggles on the fly attachment points: They make connecting the fly to the tent body extremely easy and the design is so simple, light and functional that I don’t know why every tent doesn’t use this method. The pole design: This tent utilizes a pole design that I hadn’t seen before. It allows the tent to be freestanding while also simplifying setup and reducing pitching time. It has two main poles that are permanently joined together via a soft rubber joint that is positioned at the apex of the tent. Reflective points on the tent: The tent utilizes quite a few reflective points so that you can spot it easily with your headlamp and also avoid tripping over the guy lines around the tent. Pros: Weight: If you aren’t familiar with Ultralight tents then picking this one up will shock you. At 2 lb. 2 oz. (0.98 kg) this is the lightest tent I’ve ever owned. My back is going to thank me! Design: It’s incredibly well designed. You can tell that every inch of this tent has been discussed and altered to have only the essential features included. I also find the aerodynamic profile of this tent appealing to the eye. Vestibule: Not only does the vestibule aid in ventilation it adds extra space outside for storing my pack and boots. Cons: Durability: The materials used in this tent are ultralight which means they need to be managed more than heavier,...
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...
“Déjame Vivir” Review
“Déjame Vivir” or, translated into english “Let me live” is the second installment in the “Summits of my life” series about Kilian Jornet. Kilian has been a household name in Ultrarunning in Europe for a while now but I only found out about him last year when I started seeing trailers for the first installment of his “Summits of my life” series, called “A fine line” bubbling to the top of my news feed. It instantly grabbed my attention because here was a guy, wearing basic running clothes, bouncing along precipitous ridge crests with ease without any of the modern accoutrements that mountain goers use, such as crampons, ice axes, helmets, etc. There was something mesmerizing about the purity of an individual, unencumbered, moving swiftly over technical terrain that drew me in and made me take note of this person. “Déjame Vivir” covers Kilians exploits in 2013, centering mostly on his goal to break the speed record on the Matterhorn. Were the first installment “A fine line” introduced Kilian and explained his upbringing and motivations, this second installment does an excellent job of filling out the details about what keeps him driven now and how he lives day to day. What the viewer learns is that Kilian is not a man driven by ego or competition or fame but by a childlike curiosity to simply explore. To simply be in the mountains and see what can be accomplished with the human body. We are introduced to his circle of friends, his girlfriend, the equally talented Emelie Forsberg and close friend, the 22 year old, Mathéo Jacquemoud, who has the face of a 12 year old but the Ski Mountaineering skills of a veteran. Mathéo also has a hilarious Grandmother who downplays his skyrunning as “going for a walk with friends”. Throughout the documentary we are given a brief overview of the history of Skyrunning in Europe, Kilians interest in it and the exploits of one Bruno Brunod, the athlete who originally set the speed record on the Matterhorn. Kilian admired Brunos achievements from a young age and wishes to repeat them himself. The culmination of Kilians year of racing, skyrunning and training on the Matterhorn is his attempt to beat Brunos record in the last act. The footage is simply amazing and Kilians POV video from running along the knife edge ridge towards the summit is dizzying. I don’t believe I blinked once while watching Kilian descend from the summit in an almost free fall along the fixed ropes on the route. The documentary left me wanting more and inspired me to push myself further and expect more from...
Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XTherm Review
Bottom Line: Super light, super packable, very comfortable, air mattress. Might need to be babied on uneven or sharp ground to avoid puncturing it and it does make a crinkling noise when you move around on it but overall it’s an amazing piece of gear. Highly recommended. We use ours 12 months a year. How I chose it: Before buying this pad I had been using a Big Agnes Insulated Air Core, the largest one they sold. It weighs ~0.9kg and took the better part of 10 minutes to blow up, usually leaving my lips feeling like rubber but it was really comfortable. I slept like a log. I still use it now for car camping. But, there came a time when I wanted to climb higher in the mountains and do it faster and to make that endeavour easier I started to research ways to reduce my pack weight. The Big Agnes was also too large to fit in the tent I wished to buy, The Sierra Designs Convert II. I needed a pad with a mummy shaped design that took up as little space when inflated as possible. After some research I decided upon the Neo Air XTherm. Some friends I knew were already using it and it came highly recommended online. Relaxing and warm on top of snow. Inflated and in use in an MSR 3P Tent Directly on snow in a snow pit Observations since using it: I’ve used this pad exclusively since purchasing it for every backpacking trip that I’ve been on. It’s incredibly light and packs down really small. In regards to comfort, which is subjective, I’ve found it to be reasonably comfortable. It inflates quickly. It is recommended in Winter to not inflate these pads by breathing into them as the water vapor from your breath will condense back to a liquid when it cools and remain in the pad. Therm-a-Rest supplies a stuff sack with this pad that has a valve attached to it so that you can inflate the pad by opening and closing the stuff sack and rolling the air from it into the pad this way. I’ve never used this method of inflation. I find it slow and laborious compared to just blowing into it. I’ve been using the pad through all 4 seasons for the last 2 years and, so far, I’ve noticed no water staying inside it. Pros: Light: The regular size, which I bought, weighs 430g’s/15oz’s. For a pad that inflates to 6cm/2.5” thick which can be used through the depths of Winter on top of snow and ice this weight is simply amazing. Packable:...
Sierra Designs Convert 2 Tent Review
Bottom Line: A spacious yet lightweight 2 person, 4 season tent. Burly fabric, vents well. I’d recommend it. There are some design elements that I don’t personally like, but can live with. Modular in design. If drawing an analogy with a blade it would be more of a multi-tool than a simple full tang knife. How I chose it: What I was looking for was a single walled tent, burly enough to be used in a snowstorm on an exposed ridge crest but also capable of being used through the shoulder seasons and sometimes in the summer. Liveable, but not so large that creating a platform for it would take a long time. I also wanted it to be light, <5lbs at least. After doing some extensive research into 4 Season tents (This spreadsheet of tents proved invaluable although it isn’t exhaustive so I’d still do some additional research), I settled on a shortlist of 3 tents. Black Diamond: Eldorado Mountain Hardwear: Direkt 2 Sierra Designs Convert 2-Person Tent The Eldorado is a bomber tent, and was a serious contender. But, it’s expensive, it doesn’t come with a vestibule (you have to buy it separately) and, even though it has more total real estate inside compared to the Convert II it didn’t have the extra space where I wanted it. The Convert II has 2 inches of extra headroom over the Eldorado and it’s 3 inches wider, which reduces the possibility of touching the sides which will get wet from condensation in a single wall tent. The Direkt II is the Ueli Steck tent, so it had that going for it. I quickly decided against it though. It’s amazingly light, with a packed weight of 2 lb. 15 oz, but I wouldn’t consider it a true 4 season tent. It’s a pure high Alpine Mountaineering tent, or Winter tent. There is no mesh on the entrance so I don’t know how liveable it would be during the shoulder seasons or bug seasons. It’s also small. It was designed with Ueli in mind and he’s a small guy, but I just couldn’t imagine squeezing two average sized people into it. It is 4 inches shorter than the Convert II and a whopping 9 inches narrower, ouch! Dimension Comparison Length (in)Width (in)Height (in) Convert 2855445 Bibler Eldorado 875143 Direkt 2814545 Using the top vents to look out Showing the size of the entrance Fully set up with guy lines Interior with all vents open Room enough for two with some wiggle room Here are some reasons why I decided upon the Convert II. It had the right mix of light weight...
