Owen McGoogie: Pitch it, part 1

It's no secret, I like to go camping. I like being outside. I could go on and on about it forever. But I won't. At least, not all at once anyway. Yer welcome. Having said that, I've got a few pieces of camping gear, and mayhaps you might be interested in my experience with what I've acquired over the years. Might help you make a decision. So I've decided to finally get around to doing a series of articles on camping gear and techniques. Be forewarned: this is not going to be a review series on the newest and greatest gear on the planet, nor the priciest. This stuff may be old, hard to find, discontinued, and will definitely not be on the tippy top of the price list. Right, off we go.

Let's begin with what many would call the cornerstone of camping gear: the tent. Unless you are into some serious primitive camping, you need a tent. There are a countless number of tents out there to chose from, I'm not going to try to tackle them here. I am going to focus a little bit on backpacking tents, since that is what I have the most recent experience with. Before that, I was using good old Walmart dome tents, which worked just fine. I never had any problems with the ones I used, other than being a little poor in the ventilation department and therefore had a good bit of condensation on the inside in the morning. This is mostly from breathing as we slept, believe it or not. You exhale a good bit of moisture during the night, it turns out. Anyway, the tents were ok. If you want to skip story time and jump straight to the tent review bit, go here.

A couple years back, I decided to change the way I went camping. Up to that point, I was taking everything but the kitchen sink with me on trips, bogging the car down with coolers, tents, air mattresses, gigantic cooking stoves, you name it. It was camping, yes, in a way. But I was relying on being near a grill, picnic table, and bathroom facilities. I was bringing so much gear that I actually wound up using an old 2 man dome tent to store my stuff in while I was in a 3 man dome the ex-wife and I slept in. Yeah. It was just too excessive. I was basically RVing without the effing RV. This was by no means roughing it. It was fun, don't get me wrong, I had a blast with friends and we had all the perks and good food without any of the troubles. But something was lost...we were in the woods, camping, but we weren't really in the woods. I needed to regain that feeling of being out there, away from it all. So I decided to get down to basics, and take up a camping style more like backpacking. This didn't come easily to me, as I had an image in my head associated with words like "hiking" and "backpacking" that were not positive. I always conjured up an image of some moppy-haired douche bag trolloping through Europe on some bogus "soul-searching journey" which, in reality, was a way to blow through the parents' money and see Europe. All this while violently projecting a contrived image about what the douche bag was into, and constantly droning on and on about saving the planet and whales and dolphins and pixies and unicorns and aardvarks. But! It turns out that this picture was just a picture of douche bag backpackers, not actual backpackers, so I'm in luck!

Having said all that rot, I don't refer to myself as a backpacker, or hiker. I just like to camp light now, and my philosophy is now "If it doesn't fit on my back, it doesn't come with me." I now only bring what will fit in or on my pack and person, including my belt. My heaviest current load-out is around 29 pounds, fully furnished minus food. To some, that is super light, to others, I'm toting a rhino around on my back. I've seen some folks who are down to twelve pounds. Yeah. But my budget is limited, etc, so I'm good with where I am. I've really got everything I could need with me in this rig. Moving on...the tents are up next!

Door open, rain fly installed.

My first experience testing a backpacking tent was with the Eureka Solitaire. Also called a "bivy" or "bivouac" tent, this is pretty much as small as you can get without just wrapping your sleeping bag in a tarp with mosquito netting. What caught my attention about this tent was the price and dimensions. It packed up super small and light, but was still pretty affordable. Other brands were a little more, including offerings from Kelty. I'm sure there are plenty more brands out there, but I'm not the Monopoly Man, so I was looking at the cheaper routes. I had no idea exactly how small this tent would be until I started trying to set it up. Whew.

For starters, the Solitaire is not a freestanding tent. This means that you must stake the tent out, including all the support lines and tie-downs, stake the corners, the whole shebang. Otherwise, it just sags and flops over and blows away. The body is shaped by two half-circle poles, the one at the front slightly bigger than the rear. The body tapers as you move to the foot, sort of like the lines of a mummy style sleeping bag. The footprint is around 8 foot by 3 foot, which is fairly comfortable for sleeping and even stowing some gear inside, except for the design layout of the tent, which means that anything large like your pack stowed inside has to be above your head when you get in the tent, and has to come in after you do. You have to see the photos of the tent to really understand. There is just not much room at all to store anything. I am not one of the people that can willingly leave my pack and boots outside the tent, especially overnight, no matter what kind of cover or fly or vestibule I have them under. My part of the country has creepy crawly baddies that will get in your shit if you leave it out. I also like to, depending on the area and season keep a carbine in the tent with me in case I come across coyotes, hogs or other vermin which may prove to be a threat. Keeping even a small lever action carbine like mine in this tent would be almost impossible. I understand that it is a minimalist backpacker tent, and those folks will likely only have a pack with them to store as gear goes, I just can't handle the lack of room. The tent takes about 20 minutes to completely set up. The poles are super tight to get arced right, and the whole tent has to be fiddled with once assembled to get it tight and not slack. I also caught myself, in broad daylight, tripping over the support lines several times. Now imagine the hell it would be in the dark.

There is also no headroom in this model. None. You can not sit up, kneel, or stand in this guy. You can prop up on your elbows a bit. You have to crawl in, feet first, through the front end of the tent, unless you leave the rain fly off and enter through the top. During hot months this would be awesome, especially since during that season most folks will stay out of the tent as long as they can. It's great for stargazing, or getting tons of ventilation, as the whole roof of the main body is made of mesh. Unfortunately, if it happens to rain or you get a large amount of dew in your area, you will get soaked with the fly off. I can't see that this tent would provide you a huge amount of protection from the elements, but it should keep most of the rain off you, and a bit of the cold. It is rated as a 3 season tent, however, and I'd agree with that. Barring rain or strong winds, this tent should provide ample shelter in Spring, Summer, and Fall. If you are hardcore, you can probably drag it out in the winter, unless you get snow in your neck of the woods. Personally, due to the space and design limitations, I'd only consider using a tent of this design in Spring, maybe in Summer, with the fly rolled up and the mesh exposed. First time I got soaked by dew though, and it'd be hello "EBay used tent listings."

Door flap open to show pack stored in the doorway.

I'll be honest here: I did not give this tent a full test. I only used it for one night, in the fall, before I gave up on it. It was not overly uncomfortable to sleep in, but having to get in and out of it, plus the limited space to move if you suddenly remembered you needed to check for something or look in your pack was just too much of a pain in the ass. Getting up in the middle of the night, having to move my boots and pack outside the tent in the dark just to take a piss was frustrating. Trying to take out and store my contact lenses when I went to bed, while in the tent was a nightmare. Not surprisingly, I decided this was not the best tent for me, and decided to move on to something with a little more room once set up. I'll cover that in part 2. Having said that, I would still like to give this tent a shot in the warmer months of fall and maybe spring, to try it with the rain fly off and take advantage of the mesh. Not only would that provide a better experience with nature, in my opinion, but provide a hell of a view! It is actually a very well made little durable tent, packs up small and light at around 4x17.5 inches roughly, and has great features for the light backpacker. It was also priced a great deal cheaper than many comparable bivvy backpacking tents, which is what caught my eye in the first place. I'd say, if you know what you are getting into (no pun intended) with this tent, you are getting huge value for the money. Again, provided you are completely aware of the product and its limitations. I can't stress that enough. I wouldn't necessarily try to dissuade you from using this one, but I would highly recommend downloading the user manual first, going over every bit of marketing info you can, watch vids on YouTube, and even see if you can borrow one before you commit to owning it, just because of the kinks. This is definitely a tent with compromises. If you can make those without any pain, then you'll love the little thing. More pics below.

-Owen