Folks – I’m very impressed, and a bit confused, with the sincere and excellent discussion on Trail Forums about tents or, as we like to say these days, “shelter.” So, question: is there anything like a “top 3” among the candidates that one ought to look into for a PCT attempt or other long trail. Top 5? Top 7? Cheers
McIntyre
now when you say shelters, you are opening yourself up to more choices. along with the “classic” double wall tent, you can also add single wall tents, bivies, tarps, tarptents, hammocks, etc.
jerm
Mark Verber has a nice shelter overview:
http://www.verber.com/mark/outdoors/gear/shelter.html
A double-wall tent is probably overkill on a thru-hike. The single-wall tents from Tarptent and Six Moon Designs are quite popular on the PCT.
Pacer
Hi Bruce.
In populariy its tartent first with 6 moons next. Both are good ones and work well on the PCT. There are a few others out there but more pricely…I own 3 tarptents
i keep getting a new one although still use my old ones as well…just did a hike xmas in the grand canyon with a tarptent with no floor!!!
Meadow Ed
meadow ed
thanx all, pacer that’s a great site, lot’s of links. I use a Eureka Gosamer, under 100 dollars, but no head room. I have it down to around 2.10 with stakes and light ground cloth. I need to read up more on a few of these.
coyote
I would have to vote for the sierra design clip flash
tent, have used it for 10 yrs. and is still holding
up very well, at 3.5 lbs you can’t beat it…for endurance
and protection, here in the S. appilat. mtns. a lot or rain
cutty
We love our Bibler Lighthouse. It weighs 3 lbs 3 oz but is big enough for 2 plus all our gear. We carried the smaller Firstlight on the AT in 2003, but it was too small for 2 plus gear and we experienced condensation problems. Remember though that the AT in 2003 was extremely wet.
One feature that we really like about both tents is that we can set them up from the inside (Think rainstorm). When we stop we unroll the tent, throw our backpacks inside, crawl in and put up the poles. The poles are inside the tent and the tent is freestanding. Since we normally hike without hiking poles we save the weight of the poles. Freestanding tents allow us to set up on rock or other durable flat surfaces. That sounds like a hard bed, but we actually preferred the flat, well-drained sites to muddy sites.
Ken
my choice for the pct would be the mountain hardware waypoint one. it is the lightest tent i could find on the market at 2.1lb. extremely well venting and for a single wall tent rarely ever has condensation. enough room for all your gear and even has plenty of room to comfortably get dressed insde if it is raining. i have used the tent for over 5,000 miles in all weather conditions including the pct. it is rock solid in very strong winds. the bottom line is that if you are wanting to tent on the pct look no further. i dont think there is a tent more suited to the pct than this one
if there is any other info you need to know about the pct give me an email and i will be glad to help:cheers
squeaky