Popped for a Eureka Spitfire 1 (manufacturer link; street price is about $20 lower), and it's pretty nice for a dinky little one man hiking tent. The Apex 2XT I've had since 2001 is nice... but it weighs in at 6.44 pounds. The Spitfire as it came weighed in at 3.30 pounds, but replacing the heavy stainless steel stakes with MSR Mini-Groundhog aluminum stakes dropped it down to an even 3.00 pounds. That's a 3.44 pound net drop!
First a few pictures:
The inner tent, no fly. Lotsa nice mesh.
With fly buttoned up, snug and weather-tight.
Side door, with fly door opened up.
Small vestibule, but it'll hold a pair of shoes or boots just fine. Size 10 shown for reference.
And the vestibule on the non-door side will just hold a pack. Might get a little damp from brushing the fly, so put a rain cover over it. Still... pretty good!
The rain fly can easily be put on backward, so the nylon attachment straps are color-coded to help keep things straight – gold on one end, black on the other. Nice touch!
On the whole this tent is a major win, but there are a couple of dings worth mentioning. First off, the fly takes some adjusting to get it tight and smooth. You can see in the third picture, the fly's kind of floppy over the flat ridge of the tent. Will have to watch for pooling, dripping, etc. on that. The other problem was the small zipper that allows the roof vent to be opened from inside, its teeth had jumped track when I first unboxed things. A quick zip back and forth and it sealed back up fine, but I think I'll skip using it if I can. Just open up the vent flap when setting up and leave it there.
The main thing to emphasize with this tent is how good it is for how little it costs. While prices will vary, the bottom line is that it comes in between one half and one fifth(!) the cost of comparable backpacking tents. I'm sure it's not the same quality as a Big Agnes... but if it holds up as well as my two other Eureka tents have, I can expect to get decades of good service out of it.
Back to last week's initial weigh-in that showed a 22.2 pound base weight, ditching the bear keg in favor of a hang bag and a length of 50 pound test spider wire, then swapping out the tent gets the base weight down to 16.4 pounds. While not quite the "ultralight" ideal of sub-10 pounds, this is comfortably within the bounds of "lightweight." Call it a success, and call it a day.
Still have to get a clear day to set up and apply seam sealer, and still have to cut out a polypro footprint. Those can wait for a nice Saturday morning.
ps, Saturday 9/16: Set up tent to apply seam sealer and cut footprint. The fly comes already nicely tape-sealed! No further work needed on it, so that was easy. I did seal the two pointy guy-out ends because they're not completely covered by the fly, but the rest was ready to go. If I had it to do over, I wouldn't bother. Trimmed out the "Do Not Use Fire In This Tent" warning tags and cut the polypro footprint to the exact shape needed. Now just let it dry and it's ready.
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