Looks like a beautiful little hike!
I got my 3F Gear Lanshan 2 UL tent in the mail last week. (This tent has to ordered from China via AliExpress, and takes 2-3 weeks for delivery.) It’s a 40 oz, 2 person, double-wall, silnylon backpacking tent with double door and vestibule that requires trekking poles for supports. Seems like a great little tent, considering that it weights not much more than a 1L water bottle, and it packs down to the size of a loaf of bread. I don’t have a yard, so had to make a trek to a local park to practice setting it up. My first attempt was a dismal failure: I didn’t understand how the line-locks work or how to rig the tent properly, didn’t set the stakes well enough, and didn’t my poles right. But after a bunch of fiddling with it and watching some Youtube videos, I got it dialed in:
Suggested modifications to the tent as packaged:
- Change out the included stakes (aluminum 4-prong tent pegs) for shepherd hook titanium stakes. The included stakes are robust and fairly lightweight, but are hard to insert in tough ground and pull out easily.
- The straps sewn onto the interior of the tent that clip onto the mesh inner structure are sewn all the way through the tent and guy straps on the exterior. These should be painted with silicon tent sealer to prevent leaks through the threads.
- There’s a footprint available for the tent (as well as a separately sold 4 season inner.) The tent’s bathtub is thicker than the silnylon walls, but is still fairly thin, and a footprint would help protect it from sharp debris if you don’t carefully clear the campsite.
There’s a couple of good Youtube videos (first, second) that show how to set the tent up, but there are still a couple of gotchas:
- There are two sets of additional lines included with the tent. The set for your side-wall guy pulls are the lines with line locks on them, not the ones with S-hooks. To attach these, thread the end of the line through the guy points and then tie an overhand knot as a stopper. Open up a loop below the line locker and put your stake through there, then pull the line locker up to apply tension and lock it off.
- You need sharp tips on your trekking poles. I have tip protectors on mine usually, but had to remove them to pitch this tent. Make sure you put the tip of your pole through the elastic loops in the center of the bathtub floor on each side.
- The guy lines at the top center of the vestibule opening run from the top of the tent to a stake and then to the vestibule door. There should be a loop tied in the line to put the stake through, but if there’s not (one of my lines had no loop), just tie an overhand knot on a bight and stick the stake through the loop. Then bring the end of the line with the hook on the end and attach it to the loop at the bottom of one of your vestibule doors. (I’d choose the left door.) Tension the line with the line lockers at the top and at the vestibule door.
Anyway, I haven’t trail-tested the tent yet, but for $100, it seems like a great lightweight option. Since it’s double-walled, condensation shouldn’t be a huge problem. There’s a 4 season interior available if you want/need it. And all of the watertightness tests I’ve seen/read have been, uh, watertight. It’s got two vestibules for inclement weather cooking and storage. And a door on both sides of the tent. You could fit two people inside, but it would be pretty intimate. (It’s slightly longer and wider than a twin-sized bed.) For reference, my Marmot 2P tent is about 25% bigger (about the size of a full bed), but weighs and costs about twice as much.