Slingfin Portal 2 – Anyone with experience with on trails?

I would like to share my experience with the SlingFin Portal. I contacted SlingFin about ordering a Portal for an upcoming hike of the JMT in July. Tim let me know the 2020 models were due for delivery before my departure date and assured me they would keep me advised of any delay and refund my money if it wouldn’t arrive before I departed. Tim kept me updated and the Portal arrived a few days before I left. I didn’t get a chance to really test the Portal before the trip but it seemed like such a nicely crafted product that I decided to just go for it. I have no regrets!

My Portal was easy and quick to set up and super livable. It kept me dry through several Sierra storms and survived winds that destroyed other tents. The only problem I experienced was a slightly bent pole section that occurred while trying to set up the tent during a terrific wind event below Forester Pass. I had just inserted and tensioned the first pole set when a monster gust flattened the tent. I was sure something had broken but discovered only a bit of a bend that I reinforced with the supplied mending sleeve. My hiking partner’s tent suffered a completely snapped pole during this event. The Portal functioned flawlessly for the 25 remaining nights of the trip!

When I got home I contacted SlingFin and they immediately sent me a new pole section at no charge even though it was not a warranty issue. I should mention I experienced none of the seam sealing issues. I had zero leaks through several juicy storms. SlingFin is a great company and the Portal is an excellent tent!

Yay!  Thanks for sharing that.  Excited to get my pre-ordered one.  Not due until December, not much of a winter hiker, but may try. The reviews help immensely.

Caveat Emptor: I haven’t used this tent. I admire the engagement and commitment of the designers and the innovations they bring to the design.

It looks like it offers amazing wind protection. But aren’t things being exaggerated?

I mean, can 10D silnylon offer protection that is “bomber”? Can it be said to be “built to last” (Cleverhiker) or “durable” (Sectionhiker)? Inner-first pitch doesn’t help make the case, either. Yup, I know that it can be set up fly first, but apparently this adds to the fiddle factor, not what you want in the middle of a howling storm.

And it obviously ain’t made for snow environments, period.

As fabrics push the envelope of strength/weight performance, I wonder if we’re not seeing a phenomenon that is like grade inflation in which words and evaluations no longer have the same meaning that they used to?

I wouldn’t want to test it in a heavy Pyreneen hail storm, esp. after a couple seasons of use.

Since I penned my last comment about my SlingFin Portal experience on the JMT in the Sierras I’ve had it out for 10 nights in my desert southwest country. On a November 4 night Grand Canyon trip we lucked into the first significant winter storm of the season. We experienced light snow, raging hail, all night rain and wind gusts into the high 40mph range. The Portal didn’t flinch, period.  The “bomber” hyperbole works for me. The Portal has close to 40 nights of use and honestly looks no worse for wear!

The company doesn’t market the tent as a 4 season snow tent. The acknowledge it’s not built for heavy snow but they did build it to be a tent that would survive the far edge of the shoulder season when you could get light snow accumulation. Also the features like the internal guy lines and the ability to add trekking poles as bracing are incredibly functional in strong wind conditions. The set up fly and footprint first is not any more fiddly than other tents I have owned. Yes, the Portal is constructed of lighters fabrics like all 2 person tents on the 3lb range and does require reasonably carefully use but it’s definitely as strong or stronger that the other tents in its class. I’m not sponsored by SlingFin and I paid full price for mine but I am now a big fan. The company earned my respect by selling me a “bomber” tent that does exactly what they say it will do.

Well, you did call it “hyperbole,” so that says something.

When we had a discussion about fabrics, not about particular products or designs, there was a general consensus that 20D is the lowest you could go with a margin of safety for really dicey conditions.

I’m going to bet that’s why Ron Bell, one of the pioneers of lightweight bomber designs, hasn’t adopted 10D and below fabrics in his products.

After posting (but no longer within the 15 minute edit period), I realized that I should have posted this in a separate thread so that it wouldn’t be focused on a particular manufacturer/product. Maybe it’s more of a beef with the reviewers.

@solodogs

Thank you so much for your experience and insights. My portal 2 will be here Friday and I feel great about the purchase and putting it into my arsenal next to my Nemo Kunai 2P.

Jon, it may be that requirements for strength are different for frames vs monopole tents, as the fabric spans are much shorter in the former.

Josh,

I think it depends what the parameters of strength are. My understanding is:
For puncture resistance against large hail stones, a bit more flexibility might be a plus. Structures with built-in flex often do better at avoiding catastrophic failure in gale force winds than static ones — but that’s not a fabric issue.
For resistance against fabric tear from wind shear force, the shorter fabric span wins.

BTW, I wonder who was the first manufacturer to include trekking poles in an independently pole-supported design?  Wilderness Equipment (Australia) incorporated trekking poles into their dome designs such as the Space Winter long before Slingfin. I wonder if they weren’t the first?

Paul S above says the Slingfin attachment of the fly to the poles is “way more bomber. ”  That is actually an understatement.  The Portal and the 4 season Crossbow are designed so that the guylines are physically attached to the poles with a O ring and toggle. Most 3 season tents have the guylines attached to just the fly.

I also do not understand why some reviewers refer to the Portal as 4 season. As SlingFin Tim notes above, the inner tent is completely mesh.

You can say it is highly wind resistant 3 season tent, and, if necessary, could withstand some snow load.

I have used the kickstand vents in my SlingFin Crossbow.  While I am not thrilled about the possibility of losing the little kickstands, the venting of the two doors door offered protection from foggy, windy weather and ventilation. I will have to wait for a real snowy weather.  There is also an amazing amount of space between the inner tent and the outer rainfly at the apex of the Portal and the Crossbow tents which I assume promotes ventilation.

“While I am not thrilled about the possibility of losing the little kickstands, …”

There are several ways to deal with this.  One is to sew a cloth covering that the carbon or other strip will fit into, and sew one end of it to the canopy just below the vent, with some velcro to keep the other end of the  tiny strut in one place when not in use.  A cruder way is to make a hole in the strip and afix it to the canopy with cord; but it might create some mischief if free to move about.

Wondering how Dan Durston dealt with this on the vents on his Xmid tents.  The possibility of losing the kickstands also leaves me wondering about how much thought went into the  Slingfin.

One of the attractive things about the Portal is the use of sil/silnylon for the fly. All the competing tents on the market are using sil/PU or sil/PE-coated nylons. While it seems that PE coatings do not result in as drastic of tear-strength compromise as PU coatings do/did, I think silicone coatings are still the only type that actually makes a woven fabric stronger. 

Slingfin can then use a very light 10d nylon that is probably (quite a bit) stronger than competitors’ 15d sil/PU or sil/PE fly fabrics. And their 10d sil/silnylon must be far stronger than the 7d sil/PU fabric used for something like the Nemo Hornet Elite.

The other advantage of going sil/sil is that Slingfin don’t have to put ” WARNING: Cancer and reproductive harm” on their product page. (I’m not sure how they are getting around the flame retardant standard, but I’m happy they are. It’s about time that all the other tent makers follow suit.

The downside of sil/sil nylon is that it sags a bit more than sil/PU nylon. The fix there would be to switch to sil/silpoly. They might have to go to 15d polyester to get tear and tensile strength equivalent to 10d nylon, but sag would be eliminated. But maybe sag is not a big issue with this design. It better not be, as it is not an easy thing to tighten a fly in the middle of the night with a dome, whereas with a mid one can just raise the the pole(s) a smidge.

I agree that the 10D sil/sil nylon is potentially very attractive and cutting edge.

It brings to mind the 10D sil/sil nylon that was used for a brief time in 2015 by Hilleberg under the trade name of Kerlon 600 supposedly sourced from a Korean manufacturer (perhaps Dominico Textiles). The specs were really impressive:

Weight: 26 g/m2
Tear Strength: min. 6 kg (ISO 13937-4)
Hydrostatic Head: 1500 mm/15 kPa (ISO 811)

Unfortunately, the silicone coating on that fabric was not up to green eco standards and Hilleberg conscientiously abandoned it after one year. The coating that replaced that earlier formula created a fabric that was too slippery to sew in a factory setting and Hilleberg finally gave up altogether using 10D silnylon for its its outer tents.

There’s no sil/silpoly at 15D or even 20D that I know of today that comes close to those specs.

If I could have one wish, it would be for something similar to Kerlon 600 with the same blend of strength and very low weight while adhering to environmental standards. If it could be made with a polyester base fabric, that would be a dream, much better in just about every respect than DCF.

In my many nights in many conditions spent in my Portal I experienced no sag issues with the fly. I remember one trip with two other BA tents next to my Portal. After a wet night I noticed how different the tents looked when I emerged. The BAs booth looked limp and soggy but the portal was still tightly pitched. The BAs were dry inside and I’m not disparaging them in any way, they just sagged more.

John S, very interesting. Do you have any idea why the Portal fabric resists sagging?

Jon, that’s interesting. I still don’t understand what the environmental cost of silicone coating is. I remember reading that the US company Westmark shut down their silnylon production due to environmental regulations, and that silnylon production then went entirely overseas. But I’ve never been able to figure out what is nasty about it. Solvents clearly are, but it seems that PDMS + a curing agent are all that’s required, and I don’t think either are noxious.

Anyway, it’s interesting that it seems to take more nasty stuff to coat a thin fabric.

In general, I think it’s one of the advantages of tents with pole structures, and so enjoying short spans of unsupported fabric, that they can be built with thinner, lighter woven fabrics. I think the consensus is that a pyramid shelter of 10d silnylon would suffer unacceptable panel deformation in winds.

Consensus? Hilleberg’s Kerlon 600 has 2/3 the tear strength of the Taiwanese 20D silnylon currently sold by Extremtextil. Tear strength though probably isn’t the key metric here if we’re talking about panel deflection. That 20D fabric from ET is very elastic, not a great quality for avoiding deformation. Hilleberg’s other Kerlon fabrics are less so, leading me to suspect that the original 10D Kerlon 600 was similarly robust. Note, too, that Kerlon 600 also clocked in at only 2/3 of the weight of that 20D sold by ET.

If somebody out there has access to a 10D nylon with double or triple silicone coatings on both sides and characteristics similar to Kerlon 600, I’d be thrilled and grateful to challenge the consensus.

Haha, so would I be.

Haha, here’s to dreaming.

I don’t know what the difference between the Portal and BAs fabrics are. I don’t spend much time pondering the technical aspects of my gear. I’m much more of a “does it do what it’s supposed to” kind of guy. I’ve never owned a BA tent so I can’t comment on them but the Portal definitely does what it’s supposed to do very well. I’ve been through a bunch of gear over the years and if something doesn’t work out I just sell it and move on. I’m tent rich, with the Portal and I also have a Tarptent Double Rainbow Li. They fill different needs in our adventures and they are both permanent in our gear closet. The Portal is a super quality tent and SlingFin is a great company that stands behind their gear!