New Tarptent Aeon Li

The magnets are to keep the vestibule doors open like on the Notch Li it looks to have the same type of  door closure system, you can see at approximately 2 min. in on THIS VIDEO .

Thanks… appears to be velcro. Not a fan. I’d pay a weight penalty for a zipper.

It’s a very nice design overall however…

Bradmacmt,

Pack in photo was an MSR pack mounted on (what I believe was) a Jan Sport frame by MSR.

I’m pretty sure there’s clips at the base of the door/vestibule to hold it shut. Then the velcro is part way up to keep the overlapping flaps from flapping

I’m pretty sure there’s clips at the base of the door/vestibule to hold it shut. Then the velcro is part way up to keep the overlapping flaps from flapping

That’s correct. Same closure mechanism as on the Notch Li but the crossover flap on the Aeon Li is a bit wider.

Brad

The pole height should be around 120cm.

I think TT will have the 47″ version available for non trekking pole users .

(119 g/4.2 oz )

Wonderful things, magnetic catches.
Of course, they can render your compass totally useless…

Cheers

I believe that Esbit can make your pasta taste really bad , if you store them together.

The pole height should be around 120cm. I think TT will have the 47″ version available for non trekking pole users . (119 g/4.2 oz )

Thanks!

I like this Aeon and might have to own one… what a nicely thought-out tarp.

I think the velcro/bottom hook closure will be fine on the Aeon, as it’s not an especially deep vestibule, and it sits up fairly high off the ground. Those two factors together make leaning over and unfastening it a fairly simple matter. Going by the photos however, I think I wouldn’t be especially happy with this system on the Moment Li.

Bradmacmt,

Pack in photo was an MSR pack mounted on (what I believe was) a Jan Sport frame by MSR.

Very cool. I noticed your home made “mesh” backpanel too…

For a single pole, it’s also worth considering an adjustable pole like those from Ruta Locura:
http://www.rutalocura.com/tent_pole_450.html

If you get one with 8″ of adjustment, then you are fully prepared even if the ground under where the pole goes is dipped or raised by a few inches. A fixed pole can work, but an adjustable one is sweet. Then again, if you’re going with a 16oz shelter then the weight increase of a 0.75oz adjuster might be viewed as substantial.

For a single pole, it’s also worth considering an adjustable pole like those from Ruta Locura:
http://www.rutalocura.com/tent_pole_450.html

Funny, I was just on their site pricing the 49″ model :)

If you get one with 8″ of adjustment, then you are fully prepared even if the ground under where the pole goes is dipped or raised by a few inches. A fixed pole can work, but an adjustable one is sweet. Then again, if you’re going with a 16oz shelter then the weight increase of a 0.75oz adjuster might be viewed as substantial.

I’d “splurge” and get the adjuster… I’m not an UL backpacker, I’m a “Lightweight” backpacker. 3/4 oz won’t kill me. Blasphemy I know. Having come up in the 70’s, all my gear is so light I feel like a kid in a candy shop… and to really frustrate everyone I’d definitely cut a piece of 3 oz Tyvek to go under it :)

Responding to Doug

That one pic of Ole laying down (granted, Ole is 7 foot tall), put him on a sleeping pad and under a quilt and his head and foot end would both be touching the sidewalls. At least that’s what it looks like to me.”

and Dan Durston

“In that second picture, the 7 footer looks pretty close to the ends. So if they were on a 2.5″ thick pad and in a sleeping bag/quilt, it appears they’d be touching the ends, as others have commented”

I’ve been pondering this as my next shelter and have considered these comments.  The following is just me thinking out loud as a potential customer as to the pros/cons of the Aeon and not arguing either of those observations.

I’m not 7′ but am 6’3″ so I’ll have more breathing room than the 7′ model in the picture.  One of my biggest gripes of mids is my face being so close to the wall. sometimes within a couple inches.  I zoomed in on that second picture Franco posted and it actually seems to me that even at 7′ tall, he has plenty of room.  I *believe* he’s laying on a prolite, and if so, that’s a 1″ pad.  If you zoom in on that picture, it looks like he has at least 7-10″ from his eyebrows to the DCF, and this is completely stretched out.

Dan Durston again:

“I was surprised to see that TT didn’t add a little extra material on the end as a pull tab as the BPL review suggested (and as I’ve sketched below). As is, it looks harder to release with mitts.”

I’ve no experience with magnetic closures but as a shopper, I’m thinking that I would attach and double over some tape if it ever became an issue for me.

A final thought for those who haven’t looked at their volume numbers

The packed Aeon is spec’d to be 14″x4″.  A popular UL pack, the Burn, is spec’d to be 10″ wide by 6″ deep.  Check my math but that’s only 11.66″ diagonally, but in theory, if we were to imagine these dimensions as two dimensional planes (10″x6″ burn vs 14″x4″ Aeon), some of the depth of the pack could be reallocated to the width, to accommodate the 14″ long packed shelter?

I may be wrong but it makes enough sense in my mind to pin together a 14X4″ bundle of fabric, stuff it with some chopsticks and newspaper, just to see how it would/wouldn’t work.

To be continued…

“The packed Aeon is spec’d to be 14″x4″.  A popular UL pack, the Burn, is spec’d to be 10″ wide by 6″ deep.  Check my math but that’s only 11.66″ diagonally, but in theory, if we were to imagine these dimensions as two dimensional planes (10″x6″ burn vs 14″x4″ Aeon), some of the depth of the pack could be reallocated to the width, to accommodate the 14″ long packed shelter?”
I believe you are proposing having the tent packed at the 3D hypotenuse of your pack, so angling from the back left corner at the bottom to the front right corner at the top. Even if it would fit like that, that would really make it awkward to pack anything else. I’m pretty sure you’d want to pack this on top of the Burn.

“One of my biggest gripes of mids is my face being so close to the wall. sometimes within a couple inches.  I zoomed in on that second picture Franco posted and it actually seems to me that even at 7′ tall, he has plenty of room.  I *believe* he’s laying on a prolite, and if so, that’s a 1″ pad.  If you zoom in on that picture, it looks like he has at least 7-10″ from his eyebrows to the DCF, and this is completely stretched out.”
Certainly single pole mids commonly lack headroom, which is why some additional structure can really improve the liveability if the weight/complexity is worth it.

There is a Prolite in some other photos but it doesn’t look like there is one here. You can see what appears to be his socks right on the bottom:

As it pertains to headroom, one thing to consider is the transition from laying down to sitting up. If we take the photo of Ole laying down, estimate his height above the pivot at his hips and see what the path of the top of his head would be if he did sit up with perfect posture, we get this:

Obviously no one is going to sit up with posture that good, but on the flip side, he’s not on a 2.5″ thick pad either. Certainly this type of analysis is problematic to do from photos, but it does look like he would have a fair chance of hitting his head when in the process of sitting up/laying down so more of a hunched technique would be needed.

Taking it a step further in geekyness (since this is BPL) we can overlay the photos to get this:

Anyways, I’m missing the point a bit here by focusing on an extreme scenario rather than normal use. I’m not convinced it fits 7 footers well, but it’s clearly got good length and height and that’s really what matters.

“I may be wrong but it makes enough sense in my mind to pin together a 14X4″ bundle of fabric, stuff it with some chopsticks and newspaper, just to see how it would/wouldn’t work”

Ha Ha -I already did this, I rolled up enough newspapers to very closely resemble a Duplex packed, and then ordered both the pack and the Duplex! Worked a charm.

Also I am not a fan of magnets. Please search “rokslide Notch wind” on YT.

They don’t work, I believe he says, on one side of his Notch (the wind is awfully loud in the clip).

“Please search “rokslide Notch wind” on YT…. They don’t work, I believe he says.”
I did this. He doesn’t say the magnets don’t work. He says it didn’t work to open the door (e.g. roll it up) one handed in the wind (because he’s holding a video camera), so he’s just using the door on the lee side since he could roll it up one handed. He also says the magnets might not hold on the windy side, but he didn’t try them.

That fabric flaps an awful lot in that light wind. That would worry me.

Cheers

> That fabric flaps an awful lot in that light wind. That would worry me.

Me too. It’s not a great pitch and you can see that in the fabric rippling and asymmetry. Dyneema in also inherently noisier than silnylon especially when not fully tensioned.

…it does look like he would have a fair chance of hitting his head when in the process of sitting up/laying down so more of a hunched technique would be needed.

As someone who’s been doing it his whole life, I’d say it’s more of a scoot-sit maneuver, occasionally with with a little hunching too.  This is where the double-wallness of something like a Notch is handy.  My Rainbow is long and high enough to sit up without much risk of touching the ceiling; the lighter Notch is much smaller inside and I almost always swipe the ceiling on the way up; but it doesn’t matter because it’s the inner tent.  Darn trade-offs.

For a window into my little corner of the bp world…

I currently use a Nemo Hornet 1P with a 4 oz Tyvek Footprint. I swapped out the factory stuff sacks to Tarptent sacks, swapped out two of the six Nemo pegs to MSR mini-groundhogs, and got the all-up weight to 33 oz’s exactly. It’s shockingly solid in wind, and I’ve yet to get any real condensation in it, something most 1P tents are prone to. It’s a great little tent.

I don’t use trekking poles so the Aeon will give me a weight penalty.

Here’s how it breaks down for me:

Aeon – 17.5 oz’s
Adjustable Carbon Pole from Ruta Locura – 4 oz’s
Tyvek Footprint – 4.0 oz’s

Total – 25.5 oz’s (1 lb 9.5 oz’s).

That’s 7.5 oz’s less than my Nemo Hornet 1P with Tyvek (2 lb’s 1 oz).

For a thru hike it would be worth the switch. For my normal day to day summer backpacking, there’s no real benefit given what this beauty will cost!

Still, 7.5 oz’s is not nothing…

For those of you that have been using Tarptent shelters for a while now maybe you can offer your opinions. I currently own 2 ZPacks shelters, the Solplex and the Triplex.  The Triplex is used for family backpacking but the Solplex I have been using for 2 years while backpacking.  It is a good tent and has met my goals a place to sleep and keeps me dry.

I was turned onto the Tarptent shelters a couple months ago when looking at the Notch Li, it was double wall and seemed to have a lot more room and bigger vestibule than the Zpacks Solplex.  My biggest problem with the Zpacks Solplex was the footbox of my sleeping bag always seemed a little damp the next morning, i.e. it was a pretty confining space.  I have never had any major condensation issues (but I also did not smack the top of the tent every morning).

So now the Aeon comes up and again I have to make a decision.  Is the 3 oz Aeon savings over a Notch Li double wall worth the savings since the Aeon is single wall?

For any of you that have used the Solplex and switched to Tarptent, do you feel the Tarptent Notch Li and possibly the Aeon, will have more room?  I am not very good with dimensions and guessing space.

Thanks!

I have a 1st generation Solplex. I’ve been thinking about an MLD SolomidXL, Zpacks Plexamid and now the Aeon as a replacement. I mostly use it in the SIerra in fall. I prefer a small tarp and/or bivy in the Summer. My main complaint has always been rubbing my the foot of my bag against the wall or having my head nearly touching.

Why don’t tent manufactures show photos with someone 6′-ish in a 20F bag w/ a 2.5″ pad?!  A 7ft’er is cool and all, but….

Why don’t tent manufactures show photos with someone 6′-ish in a 20F bag w/ a 2.5″ pad?!

Great question. I eventually made some graphic mockups to compare different shelter fits a few years ago while researching different tarp options. Below are two examples with the Notch, Deschutes CF and Altaplex. The mockups assume a 3 inch sleep pad, 5’9″ ft person, taut pitch and certain pitch elevations above the ground:

Lester – I think you mean ‘taut’ pitch?

Cheers

Roger,

Who in the world are you correcting?

Lester. See edited reply above.

Cheers