Cheap Tents: Philosophy, Review, and Raw Emotion
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Full write-up with more pics here:
http://maxthecyclist.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/home-away-from-home/I loved my Big Agnes Fly Creek 1 Platinum dearly. It was home for a while! It's a beautiful tent and I never had a problem with it. But… I met a girl! The only flaw was the "1" next to the name…
So, I decided to diversify my holdings. I traded the Fly Creek 1 Platinum for a Fly Creek 3 (thanks, Mike!) and the lady and I tested it out, and she liked the idea of the tent but didn't particularly covet the Fly Creek. I, on the other hand, found the Fly Creek 3 to be absolutely monstrous in size, way too big for my solo ambitions.
I sold the Fly Creek 3 (thanks, Kim!) and bought a Borah Gear Snowyside full e-Vent Bivy and loved it, and I used the remaining $100 to get…
A cheap tent. Stoic Templum 2.1.
The tent is heavier than most tents, but not by that much, actually. A Big Agnes Copper Spur UL2 has 29 square feet, and the Stoic Templum has 30 square feet, so it's just as roomy as the competition. The Copper Spur's weight is 3lb 2oz, and the Templum comes in at 4.75oz with stakes, tent body, tent poles, and tent fly.
Overall, I was impressed with the quality. I would be hard-pressed to do better than $96. I know it's on sale, but Backcountry sales on Stoic gear are so regular and predictable, I just wait for sales. They'll come.
You can see some reinforcing fabric sticking out here. Not 100% clean. However, all the seams are doubled and feel perfect in the stitching and strength. There's also an extra webbing loop there, which I can (and will) cut out carefully. I can't, for the life of me, figure out what it's intended for.
The hook to hold the tent poles in place feels kind of flimsy. It also feels like a solid ounce. Tsk, tsk.
I took a pair of wire cutters and sliced right through the hook and removed it, leaving the webbing loop intact. The tent came with two silnylon tying straps for when it was rolled up; one of those makes a fine tie for the poles. A nice little bow on top!
Low-quality zipper pulls will be replaced.
It took one minute to set up. very easy. The tent fly is white, so stealth camping is going to be difficult to impossible, but that's ok! For my intended purpose, white is actually perfect; we'll stay cool and comfortable on lazy summer mornings. It's entirely livable!
So, without the extras like the footprint, loft, and stuff sacks, we're looking at a tent that is competitive with everything under the $300 cap, and *close* to the Big Agnes flagship in the same design (two door, two vestibule rectangular).
Philosophy:
I know cost is a poor metric of measurement in quality or function, and I don't want to purport that the Templum is somehow "better." It's not. However, it does make me wonder at the marketing that goes into free-standing tents as a modifier of price. Other than a slightly heavier weight set of poles, this tent can be considered nearly identical to a more expensive tent. Manufacturing lighter poles doesn't seem unreasonably more complicated, so what I'm paying for is the DAC logo.
So, that's why I'm kind of in two camps at the moment (no pun intended):
Option 1: Buy Cottage Gear. This is going to be minimalist, lightweight, custom fit to purpose, and the price will be un-inflated. Plus, you get to support American and Canadian businesses.
Option 2: Slash price by going with the lowest-common-denominator tent I'm comfortable with, and sacrifice some quality but maintain function. The Templum is functionally the same for me as a Big Agnes.
I used to have an Option 3. Option 3 was to go with the highest quality shelter manufactured by the big-box companies as a combination of quality and light weight, but after seeing this tent come so close for a fraction of the price, I no longer think that's a good idea. I pay a lot for something that still can't match the weight and packability of a cottage product, and I pay through the nose for the brand.
Reminds me of the (infamous?) Sierra Designs Cuben UFO. All marketing, all hype, no value.
I'm finally coming to my senses on cottage gear, and now it's hard to look elsewhere…
"But…I met a girl!"
Hehe, that has a way of changing priorities, don't it?
A bit over twenty years ago I broke down and got my first ever tent. No more sleeping with the bugs on canoe trips, where yer always next to water and mosquitoes.
I went to a "mountain shop" and looked at all the complicated domes. Then I spied a neat little A frame that reminded me of the canvas tents I'd used as a boy scout in the 1970s. It was also the cheapest tent there, so I bought it.
That was a Eureka Timberline 2. Heavy as heck ( about 6-1/2 pounds! ) but dang near a four season tent and roomy enough to sleep three, which I've done a time or two in it.
I still used tarps and ponchos backpacking…Until I met a girl!
My wife quite liked that tent, so I simply sucked it up and carried it. It certainly was a bullet proof shelter and never gave any troubles with condensation. In nasty weather my wife would sit up inside while I sat in the entrance and cooked hot meals over my stove. It was a great home away from home and that tent has many fond memories stored in it.
It was the only tent I owned and used fer twenty years. Can't say how many nights I slept in it but it was a heck of allot!
We liked it so much that when it finally wore out we got another just like it. It was still about 100 bucks.
Old and new –
I still sometimes like tarps for solo use and found a used Rainshadow 2 here at Backpackinglight, and that has become our backpacking tent, but the Timberline still gets used for car and canoe camping.
Many of my friends use Eureka or Alps Mountaineering tents and nothing else. To them, 100 bucks is definitely the upper range of what they can afford.
Dropping 300 bucks on a tent is unthinkable to 'em. They use Kelty packs, bulky synthetic bags, ordinary clothing from home and cheap tents.300 bucks is probably more coin then they got sunk in their entire kit.
Of course they ain't UL backpackers, but they still get out there anyway, and that's the main thing. And I ain't a snob, I'll still hang with the "heavy" crowd! :)
It ain't got nuttin' to do with philosophy, it's got to do with how deep yer pockets are, and how much of a priority it is in yer life.
I quite like the looks of that Stoic tent and reckon you can get many a years use out of it.
By the by, what was it that yer gal didn't like about the BA?
Here is a 13ounce sts mosquito net, double. $50
Then you could get a silnylon or cuben tarp. A 8×10 borah tarp is $65 and 13.5ounces.
Lots of pitching options, if you did a half pyramid you could add a small tarp to the open side heavy rain. Way lighter and your pack weight will let you and your partner feel more nimble on your feet and hiking might be more fun. It's a bit of a compromise because it's not like a house/ car camping tent and not freestanding. It's also less than 2 pounds. Good luck I don't intend to say you are doing something wrong, but this is bpl.com and heavy things are generally frowned upon. I would be looking for a change asap if it were me and I wanted to do any multi day hikes where weight and pack space play a big role on comfort.
They also have the nano version which is 60 percent lighter.
Sts net 4.85oz
Borah tarp 13.5oz18.3oz total!
Keep in mind you can switch tarps down the road if you have money for an upgrade.
I just bought a brown duomid for a girl and I. Brown is going to make shade and be cool in the tropics of Hawaii compared to the cuben hexamid solo I sold.
That sts nano net tent would fit niceley under one of these.
Yes, I used them on the JMT in 2012. As I mentioned, they did soak through in a sustained thunderstorm, but after spraying the one person tent as mentioned in my previous post, it has been waterproof through my tests in a recent storm system with a pretty strong, driving rain that passed through here. Now that I know it works, I'll spray the two person tent.
Here is the 1 person in the Yosemite backpackers campground. I'm 6' 3", 200 lbs and there's plenty of length, but I can't sit upright in it. BTW…People always say how heavy the pack looks in this pic (and rightly so…), but its my son's and its actually about 11 pounds total in this pic. Just thought I'd head that comment off now….lol.
Both tents at Bear Creek. The 2 person actually has a nice vestibule on the front, but its not staked out in this picture. I used two trekking poles on the one person as an A-Frame in the front for easier entry, but you don't need to.
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