New eVENT tent from Exped

[Jon Solomon]

While most everybody else is forced to withdraw eVENT tents from the market, Swiss company Exped has just released their new 2-person Polaris tent made from eVENT. The North American websites merely say that it is a 3-layer PTFE fabric, but if you go to the Exped website, you would see that it is in fact eVENT.

The design is novel, and patent pending. It is self-standing. Three poles: two at each end and one running across the top forming an integrated vestibule of silnylon at the head and a vent cover at the rear. In addition to the rear vent and the front door, it has two tunnel vents on each side, so it looks incredibly well-ventilated. Lots of guy out point, notably on the sides, where there is a lot of fabric between the poles (although there is an optional middle pole for extreme conditions available). The poles go in Exped’s flat sleeves, rather than inside the tent. There are several weights given for the tent depending on which website you look at. Looks like it must weigh around 5.5 lbs.

It’s not the absolute lightest tent, but if that’s what you’re looking for you probably don’t need eVENT anyway. For a bad weather tent, it looks like it has a lot of design advantages: excellent ventilation, built-in vestibule, plenty of space, incredibly easy set up, and considerable strength. Check it out! Altrec and Mountain Gear are selling them on line…slighlt lower price (given the vestibule) than a comparable set up from ID or Bibler might be.

[kai dozier]

sorry, I’m out of loop on this one. Why are most event tents withdrawn from market? Thanks.

[Josh Hattan]

From the ID website:

Note: Due to a change in licencing agreement, MK tents are no longer available in eVENT fabric for consumer use.

[kai dozier]

Thanks for the responses, and mention of the other thread, which I found. I now get it :)

[Jon Solomon]

On the other hand, Paul, if the fabric were actually authentic eVENT, the European manufacturer offering tents to the US market certainly could not say so directly.

So the question then is, besides the Gore and BHA (eVENT) formulations of PTFE, are there any others? My understanding of TegralTex and ToddTex is that they are essentially Gore (they use the same thin layer of PU), to which they add a layer of polyester fuzz (Nexus) and then get around the Gore name. But maybe there are other PTFE formulas around…

I bet that one of the folks at BPL would know the answer to that question. I certainly don’t, but would love to know.

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