Symmetrical Octagonal Mid by Tipik Tentes

I think Jerry Adams would know more about the answer to your question, Justin, than I would. Jerry has used polypropylene strips to reinforce the ridge seams. For a very modest weight gain of 2 ounces on a mid, the seams will be stiffened quite a bit, resulting in greater structural rigidity.

From where I sit, It’s hard to see the point of what you’re describing. The amount of seams will increase exponentially, potentially nullifying the weight saved with the lighter fabric.

Your bucket test does look fun. That’s a test of tensile strength, which is usually quite high. For a top quality 30D silnylon, it will be about twice the amount of weight you put in the bucket. ET lists the tensile strength on the warp of their 30D silnylon at 43kg!

SO makes awesome tipis, no doubt much better than the old Kifaru one I have in silnylon. With that and the Ruta Locura one, there’s no excuse even for a shelter junkie like me to try one. Also, they are a bit too big and heavy for solo use.  Experience with SO backpacks leads me to believe that the 30D cordura silnylon fabric they use for their shelters must be awesome. It’s an excellent fabric choice for a 4 season shelter. I have no idea if it is coming out of the same factory in Taiwan that Extrem Textil sources their 30D from. Unfortunately, SO’s webpage devoted to tent fabrics doesn’t provide any details (weight, HH, tear strength, tensile strength, source, etc) on the fabric specs.

Cool to hear you used the old TiGoat tipi, very little info out there about these.

It’s too bad, Chris, that these tipis have disappeared from the market. Josh migrated the TiGoat tipi product page over to Ruta Locura at one point but never carried through on offering them.

Nowadays, jack-of-all-trades, golden mean compromise shelters using two poles are all the rage and for most people most of the time they are the best choice. For serious weather resistance in a lightweight package, however, one pole mids and tipis are a better choice.

I’ve found this blogpost about pyramids from 2015 useful.

https://viajarapie.info/en/2015/04/pyramids/

Vents. Are they necessary in a mid? I don’t think so and I bet you don’t either. Do they help mitigate condensation? Hmmm. Not that much. I think the ones used by MLD and Locus Gear (and Bonfus and Liteway, etc.) on their rectangular mids are basically just ornamental.

The worst condensation I have every experienced was with my Chouinard. Overnight low was 11° F (-12° C). The entire inner was covered in a sheet of ice in the morning. As you said, these vents probably don’t do much, but probably better than none. Thus, one of the issues with a single skin mid.

The great thing about these tall mids, in addition to storm-worthiness, is spacious room and easy ingress and egress. In winter, when nights are long and weather often a challenge, the extra room is great for cooking inside (safety precautions of course). Plus lots of room for companions, who have their own shelters, to visit and socialize — not a big deal for me since I rarely want to hike with others.

I have stated here many times that if I could have only one shelter it would be my silnylon Trailstar. On the other hand, it isn’t my favorite shelter. Ingress and egress is a crawling on hands and knees affair.

And so we have it — there isn’t a perfect shelter. Favorites are personal.

I have about a dozen shelters, an accumulation over 57 years. A few, the early ones, I almost never use except for an occasional “nostalgic” hike. I don’t know why I keep those, but then I have tax returns and cancelled checks dating back to 1971 in the garage. The last new shelter I bought was a Six Moon Designs Deschutes CF, eight years ago. I am excluding the Black Diamond pyramid bought in 2020, as it was intended to be a direct replacement for my Chouinard, which at the time I thought could not resurrected.  Thus, I am not in the market for a new shelter ever, at my age of 72.

However, this new material intrigues me. I’ll wait to see more reports from the field. If it is that superior and lighter, and if a well known manufacturer were to make a standard sized 108” X 108” one, I would be very interested. My go to shelters for most trips the past 10+ years have been Cuben mids. I am done with CF, just too bulky, too fragile (although no failures on my part except one that wore out from lots of use), and too expensive. A silnylon MLD Super Mid (26 oz.) is $385 versus $885 in CF (19 oz.).

Edited to correct the AI spell checker ;-)

I’ve found this blogpost about pyramids from 2015 useful.

https://viajarapie.info/en/2015/04/pyramids/

Thanks, that is a good read. This entire thread has been enjoyable. Thanks, Jon!

I’m with you on those points, Nick.

I think woven nylons and polyesters with very high quality siliconized coatings can be really great, offering all kinds of advantages over DCF.

A belated thank you for the reply Jon.  I will probably add more later after I get home from work.

You’re welcome, Justin.
I sent you a PM about an unrelated matter a few days ago, just some trivia related to another thread. If you would be so kind, please let me know if you got a notification from the system. It seems that PM notifications aren’t necessarily working.

thanks for the mention earlier.

i was heart broken when hatio passed. i had almost found THE one.

i actually lost alot of money as hatio was making me a custom mountain house 4p😪. i still have the 2p 4p anc a 6p.

more recently I’ve gone back to mids mainly with liteway and the pyraomm series.  there’s a new shelter coming very soon called the scout. i asked liteway last year to make me a copy of the sl3 but with a liteway twist. in the pic is the ultra version i was testing last year.

Hi Daniel, great to hear from you!

I followed on Treklite your experiments with the Liteway prototype soon to be released as the Scout. Very exciting, especially the use of Ultra.

Haitao’s premature and unexpected passing away was a great loss to all of us. With a few tweaks, his octagonal mids offer unbeatable strength to weight ratios.

<p style=”text-align: left;”>xavier is a talented man, his octo mid looks superb, but like the 2p a little cramped for me at 6ft.  i have a aston st and orlu4 st both excellent quality 👌</p>

Yes, not suitable for 6ft.

👍 for Xavier’s quality~!

I didn’t see this before

To respond to Justin’s question

I got some 1/2″ polyester grosgrain from amazon.  $11 for 25 yards.  0.1 ounce per yard.  What I bought is currently uavailable.  When you pull on a 2 yard piece (enough for a ridge) with 20 pounds, it stretches 1 inch.  When you get it wet and cold it doesn’t stretch any more.

DCF would probably be lighter but I don’t know of a source.  I tried silpoly – 3 inch wide, fold over to make a 1/2″ wide strip – that worked about the same as the polyester grosgrain.

I sewed it onto the ridges.  6 ridges – 1.2 ounces total.

It seems to add a lot of wind resistance, but I’m still playing with it.  The tent is a lot more rigid.  The diagonals have less of a curve (less catenary curve deflection).  It’s tricky to get the grosgrain to the correct length so it matches the tent fabric.

The other thing is that on a mid, the ridges are on the bias of the fabric.  So it stretches a lot.  It’s worse when it gets cold and wet.  So, the panels get all distorted.  The grosgrain resolves this problem.

Justin is an intermittent follower of BPL so may never see this : )

“So there ya go. There is no perfect tent.” Nick Gatel

Yes. No matter what, there will be trade offs. More: different hikers have different styles and priorities.

In my case, netting and a floor  to keep bugs out  is a priority. So the only option of  the  tent under discussion would be the heaviest version.–that is, including a mesh inner with a floor. But, with an inner, head room is just as constricted in a tipi as it would be in a conventional tent. And then a center pole has  always freaked me out.  So I’d need to use two offset poles.

and now, for me, I’ve entered the realm of ‘too many downsides overwhelming the possible upsides’. So I’ve never tried a tipi style tent.

Others clearly don’t share my priorities. If one is comfortable without a floor and netting, this shelter looks really bombproof.