Reviews - April 2009

Weighing in at 3.25Kg this is a seriously light weight 3 season, 3 person tent. We've actually used it for four, though two of these four were aged 3 months and 2 years! Still, there was plenty of room in there for us all.

The first time I put it up I was a little confused by the unique pole and clip system - I always like to try putting up a tent for the first time without any instructions. It took me about 10 minutes. The second time it took about 3. The clips work nicely and make it feel more like building a tent than pitching one. That said I will be surprised if they are still working as well in 10 years time. It's a classic inner then outer system. The inner hangs from the clipped together poles, and the outer then fits over that and is clipped to the inner via 4 small plastic buckles each with its own tensioning strap. All pretty quick, but would still be impossible to keep the inner dry if pitching in wet weather.

Aside from the ease of pitching / building, the incredibly light weight (and packed volume), I like the colour, the doors, pockets and tensioning straps. The two-tone green and grey make it virtually invisible in the UK which is great for wild camping! It's perhaps a sign of the times that tents are less lurid and conspicuous. The doors zip nicely and are easy to roll up and stow with a clever little toggle system that I haven't seen before. There are plenty of pockets & hanging loops inside (though I like to see just a few hanging hooks as well as loops). However two of the pockets left me undecided. They are billed as 'Inside/Outside' pockets and can indeed be accessed from both inside and outside. That's pretty cool. However, they are made of mosquito grade mesh so also act as permanent vents. I opted to sleep with my head next to one of them and had a fairly cool flow of air over my face all night. On a warm summer's night this might be pleasant, but it was just a little chilly for my liking. The plus side to this design was minimal condensation on the tent inner in the morning. Definitely a 3-season feature though. My only other grip is the porch size. The floor space of the main tent body is such that the porches are only really suitable for gear storage. Not a bad compromise given its light weight though. Oh, I was also disappointed in the number of pegs supplied. There are only enough for the main anchor points, with no extras for the supplied (though short) guy ropes. That said, the pegs are also very light weight.

All in all I'm very happy with this tent, but don't expect it to last my lifetime!

Here's the official TNF blurb:

There’s room for three in this remarkably lightweight new tent from The North Face that utilises a unique pole construction to create ample volume with roomy vestibules, while keeping the weight low enough for fast-and-light backpacking trips.

The revolutionary interior volume is riddled with thoughtful livability features, like inside/outside pockets, overhead storage pockets, and a high-low venting system.

* Three-season camping and backing tent from The North Face
* DAC Featherlight™ NSL poles
* Ultralight Twist-Clip canopy pitch system
* Ingenious Jake’s Foot fabric tensioner at tent floor corners
* Easy-to-use Ball Cap clips on brow pole ends
* Comprehensive colour-coded pitch system includes poles, canopy, and fly
* Two large vestibules matched with two large D doors
* Exclusive Inside/Outside pockets
* Fully taped bathtub floor
* High-low venting system harnesses convection and crossflow
* Convenient overhead pockets stow headlamps and fragile items
* Abundant gear loops
 

Retails at £380

Reviewed by Matt Heason on behalf of planetFear

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Travel back in time just a couple of years and ask any self respecting photographer what they thought of the cometh of the digital revolution. You’d usually hear a resounding denial that it would happen in their lifetime. Ask them again now and there tends to be a shuffling of feet and an embarrassed pause. Either that or an evangelical approach to the whole affair. Alastair Lee lies somewhere in the middle…

Alastair has long been on the scene as one of the UK’s foremost climber-photographers. His company Posing Productions has churned out the likes of Eyes Up, Forgotten Landscapes, a guidebook to climbing in New Zealand as well as a host of calendars, postcards and prints, oh and some fairly popular films to boot! There’s no doubt about it, Alastair is both a talented photographer and a resourceful publicist. Embracing the digital age like few others he has recently invested in a couple of hefty bits of equipment: a £7,000 Hassleblad virtual drum scanner and a large format £2,500 Epson Printer (Stylus 4800 – variable dot size, eight Ultrachrome inks and lightfast for over 100 years). He doesn’t however use a digital camera (yet!), preferring a £6,500 Roundshot Super 220 VR, with variable exposure whilst the shot is being captured all on medium format film, slides are about 6 X 18cm. In a nutshell digital and even 35mm photography isn’t at the stage where it can be blown up to the sizes Alastair is printing without some loss of quality. Sure you can go down to Jessops or Click with your 6Mp snaps and they will print some massive posters for you, but get up close and you’ll immediately see the blockiness.

Alastair sent planetFear a couple of prints to review, samples from his gallery. We have the following two 37” by 17” (image size 30” by 11”) prints:

What do we think? They’re pretty damned good that’s what we think. They are vibrant. The colour depth is great. There’s no hint of any graininess or pixelation. The paper is a heavy satin finish number. They arrived rolled in tissue paper in a sturdy cardboard tube immune to any poor post office handling. At £20 we think they are a bargain worthy of a decent frame.

Check out the gallery for a range of Mountain and Limited Prints all taken by the man himself.

Watch out for Alastair’s coffee table style book of Lake District Landscapes later this year.

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The Merrell Stride is a stylish jacket that is suitable for the outdoors and around town. When I have been out climbing and walking it has been warm and comfortable; it feels really soft and inviting as you put it on. The jacket has a close cut which allows it to fit under a shell jacket very easily, but Merrell haven’t compromised on manoeuvrability, and I have not felt restricted when out biking or climbing. It is very light so easy to carry, although bulkier than some of the more technical fleece jackets. The only issue that has stopped me from wearing the jacket for sport is that I have been saving it for smart-casual occasions as it looks so good. There has been a slight problem with pilling on the elbows, after a considerable amount of wear.

Reviewed by Sophie Heason on behalf of planetFear

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This is the tent I’ve been looking for for a couple of years now. We’d previously been managing with a very inferior version of the same sort of tunnel style family tent. Two years of sporadic use had and it had seen better days. Weekends away camping with friends had given me a pretty good idea of what I didn’t want: a behemoth of a tent that fills half your boot and requires three people and an hour of precious away-time to erect. I wanted something that will fit comfortably into our luggage when travelling abroad, something that’s big enough to accommodate a family of 4 in multiple compartments, and something that can be erected quickly by just one person.

The equinox 450 fulfils all these criteria with whistles and bells! It’s just 6.7kg, has a large sleeping compartment which will easily sleep two adults, a travel cot (also light weight) and a couple of bags, there’s a modest sized porch which will allow cooking inside if necessary, and then there’s a small kiddies compartment which will accommodate our two young boys. Although I'm 6 foot 5 I can almost stand up inside and my wife manages just fine.

The blurb says that it takes 15 minutes to pitch. I don’t think it even took me that long the first time I put it up. After a few pitchings it’s more like a 5 minute job now to put the four poles together and thread into their colour coded sleeves. My one gripe is that it comes with only the barest number of pegs necessary to pitch – you need extras if you want to use any of the included guy ropes. That said, the pegs provided are good quality and very light weight which is a plus. I really liked the fact that the inner remains attached to the outer so that you can pitch it in one go, keeping the inner dry if raining (a pet hate of mine, especially in 'mountain' tents which this clearly is).

Inside the tent are a series of straps which you can clip together and tension if the weather dictates. They effectively give each of the three poles a whole load of additional rigidity. They get in the way a little, but are easy enough to negotiate once you get used to them, and you can easily stow them when the weather is calm. There are even stow pockets to keep them tidy! Talking of pockets there are plenty of these dotted about inside the tent, including a series of vertical pouches for keeping bits and pieces in if you are staying put for more than a night, and also a pair of generous pockets to stow the inner zipped-doors in when open instead of the normal faffy toggle affairs. There are a series of windows close to each of the two inner poles. These windows aren’t actually openable to the outside world, but they do let in light and there is a flap of material for each one that can be velcro’d into place to effectively ‘close’ the windows.

One thing which may put some off is the fact that the inner porch area does not include a ground sheet of any description. However you can purchase, for an additional £40 or so, a footprint groundsheet which covers the entire footprint of the tent, giving you a groundsheet in the porch and protecting the groundsheets under the sleeping areas. Add another half kilo or so onto your overall weight for this handy bit of kit. There are a few additional benefits to getting one of these footprints: if you lay it out on the ground before pitching the tent it is possible to see very clearly where the tent will go - important if you don't have much flat ground to choose from. It keeps the tent clean whilst you are putting it up if erecting on muddy ground, and likewise, allows you to put it away clean, keeping the muddy footprint in a separate (provided) bag.

Strangely the tent comes with two differnt types of peg, a standard type with a shepherd's crook type top, and a second which resembles fome sort of Nija throwing weapon! The latter are incredibly sharp from all angles and not at all suitable for camping where anybody might tread on them!

In rain and wind it has so far stood up very well indeed, the torsion straps keeping the tent rigid in high winds, and with no sign of any leakage so far. One very happy camper :-)

Retails at around £240-280 - very good value for money.
6.7kg
Pack size 50cm by 26cm
Pitching time 15m (was able to pitch it much quicker than this!).

Reviewed by Matt Heason on behalf of planetFear
 

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So, a women-specific sleeping bag….“What is the deal with that?” Surely a sleeping bag is a sleeping bag, maybe the shape could be more specific and I have always been a bit annoyed that there is an extra foot or so of bag below my feet in my previous sleeping bags, so shorter would be good, but I wasn’t sure there was anything else they could change.

Anyway, just as I did with my first ‘proper’ sleeping bag when I was about 12, the first thing I had to do when I got this sleeping bag was to put it through its paces:

Test 1 - Relaxing in the Lounge

When I got my first sleeping bag, it was for Christmas and I was so excited that I needed to try it out straightaway! This was despite the fact I was in a lounge with an open fire going full blast so I was nearly cooked alive!
Well, on a couple of weekends away in a bunkhouse, I used the sleeping bag to keep warm whilst sitting around in the evening. The result - absolutely fantastic, the sleeping bag has a ‘jacket baffle’ which allows you to keep your arms out so you can read a book, drink a drink or even type a review!

Score 10/10 – toasty feet, shoulders and neck, what more can you ask for?

Test 2 - Sliding Down the Stairs

I am sure this wasn’t quite as terrifying when you were a child! Well, I sat at the top of the stairs and thought “that looks really steep and the stone floor at the bottom doesn’t look too inviting”. Anyway, I let go and started sliding – ABORT, ABORT, I had to grab on to the banister to stop myself. That really isn’t what sleeping bags are designed for, or maybe I really am getting old (see above).

Score – N/A because I am a chicken but the gorgeous silky outer would probably have helped me set a new record.

Back to the technical review…..

For a women’s specific design, they have done the things that I was expecting them to do – wider hips and narrower shoulders and because women do seem to always have cold feet, an extra layer of insulation around the feet. They say in the technical details that some extra space has been added around the elbow area for ease of movement too but I didn’t really notice.

The bag is marketed on its Ultralight and soft filling but although is is very soft and toasty warm, it is not as light as other 3 season models on the market. It is very compressible though, with the bag squashing to half its original size and it would fit in a small overnight bag leaving enough space for your change of clothes.

The bag is also easy to clean, machine washable at 60°C, which is a real bonus compared to a down sleeping bag.

Price wise, this three season version retails at about £120 which is definitely at the luxury end of the market with other high quality 3 season synthetic makes retailing at about £80-90 and possibly weighing less but I would definitely not rule this one out – especially now I have tried it, the jacket baffle is a real winning feature in my book.

Reviewed by Rachel Hodges on behalf of planetFear

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