The Featherstone Spine 2P Trekking Pole Tent is an inexpensive ultralight single-wall tent for 2 those who requires two trekking poles to arrange. Weighing 2 lbs 11.5 oz, it’s comparatively cheap ($179.99), however has many options discovered on rather more costly ultralight tents together with peak vents, nook struts, line loc tensioners, TPU waterproof door zippers, and twin vestibule hooks. It’s made with PU-coated silnylon, so it’s seam-taped and comes full with 15 tent stakes.
Specs at a Look
- Kind: Single Wall, Trekking Pole Tent
- Sleeping Capability: 2 Particular person
- Doorways/Vestibules: 2/2
- Inside Pockets: 2
- Seam Taped: Sure (some touch-up advisable)
- Head width: 50 in / 127 cm
- Foot width: 43 inches / 109 cm
- Size: 84 in / 215 cm
- Peak: 47 in / 120 cm
- Minimal variety of stakes to pitch: 6; Really useful: 8 or 9.
- Materials: 20D Silnylon with 2000mm PU coating
- Mfg. Path Weight: 2 lbs 11.5 oz / 1233g
- Precise Path Weight: 2 lbs 7.7 oz / 1124.5g
- Footprint Included: No
The Featherstone Spine 2P tent is a two-person single-wall tent with two doorways and two vestibules. Setup requires two trekking poles that slot into bolstered sleeves (deal with up) within the two peaks and grommets (ideas down) alongside the edges of the tub ground.
The setup is directional with a definite head finish and foot finish: the inside is cut up 60/40 (foot/head) by size to maximise headroom moderately than being cut up 50/50. The inside is sort of livable because of this. The inside ground is tapered to save lots of weight and 50″ on the head finish, narrowing to 43″ on the foot finish, so that you’ll need to use tapered mummy sleeping pads when you favor extensive ones with 25″ widths.
The Spine 2P requires a minimal of 6 stakes to pitch – 4 within the corners and a couple of on the vestibule doorways. Every nook has one guyline which is hooked up to the tent in two locations (to assist create extra peak) with a metallic ring within the center which you stake out. These nook guylines even have lineloc tensioners to simply pressure the ground and fly.
The 2 vestibule doorways have waterproof zippers and peak vents lined with noseeum mesh. The vestibule zippers don’t have rain gutters, nevertheless, so you possibly can count on to get moist when you open them within the rain. The underside of the vestibule doorways have twin hook closures, first popularized by Zpacks, that allow you to use one stake to carry each doorways closed when zippered collectively, each doorways closed however unzipped, or one of many doorways closed and the opposite tied again.
The foot finish of the tent is augmented with PE struts within the corners that assist increase the ceiling greater and create elevated quantity over the toes. Tarptent was the primary producer to make use of such struts for this function, however you now see increasingly more tent producers starting to undertake this method, together with Zpacks and REI. It’s notably helpful on pyramid-shaped tents or tents with steep sloping ceilings.
The top finish of the tub ground is sewn to the ceiling with noseeum mesh for added air flow whereas the fly creates an awning over the mesh to forestall rain from getting into. However the seam the place the mesh attaches to the fly needs to be seam-sealed (hyperlink to directions), a design oversight, on condition that the remainder of the tent is seam-taped and doesn’t require seam-sealing. A tube of seam-sealer is included with the tent for this function. This can be a quite simple course of however needs to be achieved earlier than use.
The edges of the tent are all mesh with giant pockets at their base alongside the top finish so that you don’t crush private objects. When tenting, I’d advocate sleeping with the aspect vestibules rolled again, fully or partially, to maximise airflow by the tent and scale back inside condensation. All single-wall tents expertise inside condensation: it’s not a property of the tent per se, however of the temperature differential that happens between the within of the tent and the outside. Airflow is one of the best ways to mitigate condensation as a result of it equalizes the inner and exterior temperatures of the ceiling and partitions.
When pitching the tent, there are some things you’ll need to be careful for.
- The material panel over the foot finish tends to droop, however there’s a guy-out level on it. I’d advocate staking it out with a tree department or trekking pole to take care of the tent’s inside quantity. This isn’t important, nevertheless it makes for a a lot neater and tauter pitch.
- There are extra guyout loops on high of the peaks which might be good to make use of in windy circumstances and supply a safer pitch. If you happen to use them, you possibly can fully roll again each vestibule doorways for added air flow.
- You may as well lengthen your trekking poles greater than the 47″ peak peak for extra airflow, though doing do will care the height vents to break down. That is no nice loss nevertheless as a result of they don’t have kickstand props inside anyway and are marginally efficient as is.
Comparable UL tents underneath $300
Equipment
The Spine comes with a compression sack so it’s simple to pack. Whereas the tent comes with metal shepherds hook tent stakes, I’d advocate upgrading them with one thing lighter weight with better-holding energy like MSR mini-ground hogs or Paria UL Needle stakes which have flanged or sq. shafts as a substitute of spherical ones. Further guylines with tensioners are additionally included, however the tent doesn’t include a footprint, since extra folks use a lighter-weight substitute like plastic window wrap when a footprint is named for.
Advice
The Featherstone Spine 2P is an inexpensive ultralight trekking pole tent that’s a reasonably good worth for the cash. It has a number of options that you simply’ll discover on extra inexpensive non-Dyneema ultralight tents underneath $300 and it’s fairly light-weight at 2 lbs 11.5 oz (though our tent weighed about 4 oz much less). Remember that the Spine is a single-wall tent that will likely be susceptible to inside condensation except you retain the doorways extensive open for elevated airflow. That’s the nature of all single-wall tents. If you happen to don’t need to sleep with the vestibule doorways extensive open, I’d advocate getting a double-wall tent as a substitute.
The closest competitor to the Spine 2P is the single-wall 3FUL Lanshan 2 Professional, which is barely costlier. Whereas each are made abroad, as is the case with most ultralight tents, I just like the Featherstone tent as a result of they’ve US-based administration and customer support, so you may have somebody to name when you run into issues. That stated, the Lanshan 2 Professional has monitor file and is an effective purchase as properly.
On a remaining be aware, I’m blissful to see that an growing variety of firms are producing extra inexpensive ultralight tents than the rather more costly fashions at the moment obtainable. Ultralight backpacking was by no means meant to be an elitist pursuit and the supply of lower-cost, good-quality gear will definitely profit those that need to strive it.
Disclosure: Featherstone donated a tent for this evaluate.
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