Still Making Up My Mind – Akto or Scarp??

Hi EJ

Sorry about delay – we’ve been out walking …

(No, the ledge Sue was trying didn’t go any further. We had to swim.)

My summer tent is single-skin silnylon, but it has full insect proofing. (This is Australia …) It is entirely my own design and manufacture. 1.26 kg complete with 3 carbon-fibre poles.

It has generous room for 2 people, 2.2 m long bucket groundsheet, wide enough for two rectangular 3/4 length therm-a-Rests, headroom to sit up in for a lot of the inner space. Two vestibules, – packs go in rear one, I cook in front one.
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This was taken the night before last as we were coming out of a rather tough trip – this river bank was just impossible to pass.

In winter I use a similar double skin silnylon tent, also of my own design and manufacture. 1.86 kg complete with 4 CF poles. See ‘When Things go Wrong’ for more info.
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Here it is pitched in the Snowy Valley after the first night. It was the next night when things got … difficult.

I don’t use a Stephensons tent in the winter as I don’t think they have enough poles for our conditions.

Cheers

Roger, is your winter tent 2 layers of silnylon like the Stephensons? What do you use for poles? I like both tents.

Unfortunately I did not get to use my Scarp 2 as much as I had thought I would. But I did use it in Yosemite on a wild evening that saw hail, grauple snow and then torrential rain. I did not see any leaking or misting from the storm. We did have a lot of condensation the next morning but that was to be expected with all the moisture and two warm bodies in the tent.

I am not saying that the Scarp is better than the Atko as I have never used an Atko, just sharing some data points.

That red tent looks like an interesting rig, is it completely double-skinned? I would think that it would do fairly well in moderate snowfall, but, I am a bit leery of silnylon in really heavy and wet snow, especially in over-night situations.

It also seems to me, that a lot of this depends on your location as backpack camping in densely populated Europe, where rescue and "retreat" to Ye Olde Inne, are a fact of life, is a bit different than being several thousand feet up in the Rockies or Coast Range, where the ambient temp. has dropped 45* in two hours and it is snowing so heavily that 2+ft. builds up in a few hours.

"Horses for courses" and all that.

Hi Walter

The fly is standard silnylon. The inner tent is a similar fabric but no silicone coating, just a good DWR treatment. Carrington N1050, 32 gsm finished.

Poles are carbon fibre, 2-D wrap (not pultruded!).

Yeah, we like them too!

Cheers

Hi Dewey

Yes, the orange tent has a FULL double skin. Subscribe to BPL and you can read all about our adventures with it on that trip.

Having four poles it is quite resistant to snowfall, although NO tent will handle 6′ of wet snow in one night without some assistance – like waking up and knocking the snow off.

Since both tents have taken raging storms and torrential downpours, I think your concerns may be just a little exaggerated.

We don’t have ‘Ye Olde Inne’ available in Australia: we don’t even have many trails at all. Off-trail walking and tent camping in highly variable weather (sun followed by hail or snow) is the norm for all walkers here.

In Europe, up in the mountains – retreat is rarely an option either during the night. But we have never worried about that either.

Akto or Scarp? Either, in fairly mild conditions.

Cheers

One sentence from Roger's referenced article about his trip and including the red tent:

"Then the wind, which had mostly been idling along between 60 and 80 kilometers per hour, with occasional gusts upwards, started to pick up and then to sit continuously over 100 kilometers per hour."

Tent and occupants fared well despite the weather. I reckon his tent design'll do pretty well in just about any conditions, without requiring a retreat to, well, anywhere. YMMV.

Roger, there's something about the name of that fabric that I like: "Carrington N1050, 32 gsm finished.".
–Walter Carrington

Roger, it's inspiring and have been great reads over the years about your tents, but I must say it's awfully frustrating to continually read about how great your tents are but never to be able to try one out. I'd love to try and make one, but long ago when I contacted you about patterns (before you were on BPL) you wrote back and said the patterns were not available. And your tents are not available commercially, either. Hmm. So what is an unrequited BPL'er to do?

Who has used Roger's designs but….Roger?

Ryan J. has.

And, what was the commentary?

I haven’t really seen him say a lot about it but you can see it in his most recent 24 video.

24-Nine Months Till Summer

Well, it is a nice looking tent and I admire anyone who designs and builds their own gear to suit their personal needs. I would love to try one in BC winter conditions, but, since they are not commercially available, that is not likely to happen.

I have never seen 6' of snow fall over night and I was born, raised and worked in the mountains of BC, where heavy snowfalls are commonplace. I have experienced nearly 4' from one afternoon until about 08:00 the next morning and that is a LOT of heavy, wet snow. I was at roughly 7500 ft. elevation, some 12 miles from the highway on snowshoes and alone, just winter camping and getting away from college for a few days…..loved it as I am nuts about snow, cold and mountains.

In lighter tents, I agree, the Akto is not the choice I would make, but, a Hilleberg definitely is and mine is the Soulo as it DOES handle snow and wind like a bombshelter. I certainly WOULD be very interested in buying one of the red tents if they ever become available…..hint, hint….. :)

Here in Japan the deepest snowfall in the world occurs in the mountains on the Japan Sea side of the islands. Most winters in those mountains see an average of 8 meters (meters!, not feet) of snow a year. One winter in 1959, in the village where a friend of mine lives, saw a snowfall of 17 meters! I’m not sure about 6′ in one night, but it’s possible.

Now, this is extreme, of course. Most places in the world you would never have to worry about snow like that!

Hi all

Well, I have been trying to get commercial production of my tents going, but the world moves very slowly. Sigh.

If you visit my web site and read about my tents you will see that I do mention that several people have built copies. They contacted me and asked for the plans. However, before giving a copy of the plans and instructions to anyone I ask two questions.

* I want a commitment that the plans will ONLY be used to make a tent for personal use, and that NO commercial production will be attempted. This is an honour-based thing.

* I also ask whether the person has access to the machining facilities needed to make the tent poles, and especially the bends. These really need a lathe and a good miniature tube bender as they are made to a fairly tight tolerance. No point in doing all the sewing if you can't make the poles! No, the bends cannot be bought from anyone.

Cheers
Roger@backpackinglight.com

I like the pix of the snowbanks, as this is how the higher roads near my hometown and in much of BC look every winter.

However, I am looking at Grouse Mtn. from where I sit in Vancouver, B.C. and it gets about TEN meters of snow in winter, this is not an especially huge amount here in B.C.

Near my home in the West Kootenays and in the East Kootenays and northwestern B.C., north of Stewart, B.C., the recorded snowfalls per annum range from NINE to TWENTYFIVE meters and Mt. Baker, just south of us, in the USA has received as much as 1140 inches in one winter…nearly 100 feet, or, about 29 meters. It SNOWS in B.C. and it sticks around almost all year.

I have spent 4-6 week periods living in mountain tents and 3+ month solo stints in the Kootenays and north of Stewart, living in tiny flown-in prefab huts, so, I have some sense of what snow is all about…and I love it!

My earlier comments concerning Roger's Red Tent, were about the material, NOT, his design, which I like very much. Silnylon is great stuff, I have a lot of it and one item is a Kifaru 8-man Tipi, but, based on what I have seen and experienced friends have told me, the Hilleberg Kerlon is a stronger material and that is a major concern in wet snow while it is not as crucial in dry snow and sub-zero cold.

I hope you DO bring those to market as the red one is as close to "perfect" for most of what I now do in winter camping among medium size trees such as Red Cedars as I could hope to find. I think that this would sell very well here in North America to serious winter camping people and I also hope you can come here and test one in the Rockies and maybe the Yukon.

Chris – thanks for that link.

Hi Dewey

OK, strength of fabric. The red tent took 100+ kph winds for a lot of the night, despite losing a number of guy ropes (details in the article). OK, the design helped, but the point is that the silnylon fabric showed no sign of coming close to giving away. Trust me, I was watching!

A stronger material such as Kerlon might have some value when you are marketing a commercial tent to novice users who may not give the tent the same care and love as an experienced user. This happens. Even Backpacker mag tests packs by towing them behind an SUV, and boots by putting them in a concrete mixer. (Creative, yes, but useful?)

Wet snow is a problem, I agree with you. I question whether any moderately light tent is really able to withstand many feet of this in one night. When this happens I think one has to be willing to sit up and knock the snow off many times in the night. Yeah, very hard to sustain at 3 am. I imagine you would know all about this too.

Cheers

Yup, have done the old boot to the tent roof boogie many times and with North Face VE whatevers that were supposed to be able to withstand being totally buried….not real eager to find out!

I agree, I think that any tent has it's functional parameters and if one exceeds those, well, you can be in deep do-do.

Still, you make a nice rig and I would be quite confident in most BC winter situations inside one. I would prefer it to most of the commercial stuff now available and, again, hope that you CAN bring it to market, should you wish to.

Very informative discussion, enjoyed learning about your tents.

I've read about about "hijacking" a thread. I think this is a good example of that. If the discussion switches to another topic could I suggest that it be continued on a separate thread. Does that make sense? This is just my opinion and I hope it doesn't tick anyone off…..too much!

You will find on BPL that many discussions are like sitting around a campfire. Casual but with a wealth of information. I am not sure how off topic it went. The discussion about silnylon and tent structure should be imperative to your decision making process.

It's all there – now make a decision. ;)

Good, helpful simile. I guess I could just bring it back to my topic and continue from there. Thanks.

If you don't want a thread to move off topic you should probably post in it more. When the OP doesn't post it gives everybody else the leeway to steer it where they want.

"Good, helpful simile. I guess I could just bring it back to my topic and continue from there. Thanks."

The original topic was – which one should I buy? You then get several posts (from me included – I like the Akto better) on both sides. What more do you want? There are specific diferences to both. Choose the one that appeals to you most.

Or go sulk some more.