very nice photos tony! and heres my review to contribute to your work.
SUMMARY: A HIGHLY RECOMMENDED TENT!
Positive: ultralight. Handled 60km winds
Negative: Fiddly set up in the dark. cooking inside during rain required some serious caution.
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DETAILED REVIEW:The plan was to head out for 5 days doing some pretty hardcore bushwacking so i guess the route better not be disclosed here? Originally planned to take my MLD trailstar for a test. Realised after 100m into the track that the bush was quite thick, so i went back to the car and replaced it with the hexamid. I was worried i wouldnt be able to find enough of a clearing to set up the trailstar which has a massive footprint. Scrub was very thick and we only covered about 6km in 9 hours. My HMG windrider pack had no issues, but prickly plants kept going through my trailshoes. should have taken boots.
- bushwacking through scrub above head height and no tracks. My mate here has it easy after I'm forming a path for him.
1st night: easy conditions, nothing to write about.
2nd night: we arrived at camp in the dark at 9pm. sky was clear. wind meter read a mild 2kph breeze. temp: 20C humidity: 68. elevation ~ 1600m
There was quite alot space so the trailstar would have been fine here. ive set up the hexamid a few times previously and found it straight forward but in the dark, it was simply a pain in the butt. This was because the guy lines should run in a straight line from the angle it comes off the tent but this was very difficult to judge in the dark without a decent headlamp. (I swear the next time, the RXP comes with me!). I like to use strong stakes when going into the unknown, but forgot to replace the groundhog stakes from the trailstar, so I used 2 gram tent pegs from my last trip.
Needless to say, the tent was abit lopsided but i didnt care. just wanted dinner and crash.
This night turned out to be one of the hottest nights ever recorded in sydney. However it was another story in the snowies. the temp started to drop rapidly to 8C overnight (inside the tent) and showers started comming in. i got out to tighten everything down and was cursing myself for not using proper stakes. There wasnt any rocks around to secure the stakes. The lineloks I added made adjustment easy. Around 3am, rain started to hammer down pretty hard. I just checked online and it turned out we had 70 mm of rain within 4 hours. Probally nothing for you tough tassie folks, but my wind meter at 5am registered 58kph winds. To me, that is significant as I anticipated a warm, calm, docile weather pattern.
RAINI know cuben is totally waterproof, but i kept an eye on the seams which i sealed. not 1 drop came through all night. I did not use the optional door and found the door netting did get wet, but mostly just ran down to the ground. Rain was getting blown into the back of the tent but had it changed direction, i surely would have gotten very wet without the optional door. Here, I was very glad i had the cuben groundsheet due to the bathtub walls. I added zpack's shock cord to the sides and ends to ensure water would not leak in. the weight of these cordlocks is very light and negligible. Alot of rain splatter did hit the outer walls of my groundsheet so i would have definitely gotten very wet had i used a simple flat polycro or tyvek groundsheet instead. I could feel water running under me but the cuben floor kept me totally dry.
CONCLUSION: Tent handles showers easily, but rain does get in. Problem mitigated with cuben bathtub floor and light bivy.
WINDI wasnt scared of the tent material failing, but the wet ground made me very nervous about the 2gram stakes! the ground water started to form a slight stream all around me and even under me so the ground became really moist. To my satisfaction, the tent pegs held in the crazy wind and rain. Heres a photo of the wind against the side of the hexamid, and my friend's tent half flattened in the background. Another friend's hubba hubba looked like it was on the verge of being flattened too, but i think it wasnt staked down tightly.
CONCLUSION: the hexamid can easily handle winds over 60kph with good stakes in moist soil
CONDENSATIONOn the 2 nights i used the tent, there was some wind and I only experienced minimal condensation with humidity hovering around 60-80%. I forgot to check dew point on my meter. It was Nothing you could see but if you ran your fingers along the tent roof you could feel your fingers get damp. This is about the same as any other breathable tent. This only occured within the vicinity of where my head was. Keep in mind with the copious netting all around, there was a slight breeze inside the tent at all times so it is not a tent for winter.
In the morning there was a continuous shower but I had to cook my meal. It was 12C which isnt usually that bad, but after getting used to Sydney's longest heatwave on record I found it pretty cold and looking forward to a warm breakfast. My stove didnt tolerate working in the rain, so i had to bring the caldera into the tent and cook. unlike other stoves where the bottom stays cool, the caldera stove tends to heat the floor up to very high temperature and the largish cone gets equally hot. I was very afraid of melting the cuben or netting floor even after placing the whole thing onto my little pocket towel and hat. Boy did i wish i had a proper vestibule. It turned out ok, but I still wouldnt be comfortable doing this day after day.
CONCLUSION: cooking in a hexamid during rainy weather sucksI would love to test this tent further by pushing to the boundaries of 80kph winds, more rain, and abit of snow loading. It doesnt have a top vent so obviously you would suffocate if the snow gets above a foot high. But for 95% of the summer camping i do, the hexamid is going to be my main summer tent for a very long time yet.
Its drawback of lacking a cooking vestibule is only a small price to pay for its 270g weight which includes stuff sack, guy lines and 8 pegs. the cuben floor adds abit more but it is still the lightest bug proof tent that i know of.
On the third night I used a friend's tent in calm conditions and then our trip got cut short after he stepped onto a snake while bush bashing. The snake bit him at the calf through this Outdoor research expedition croc gaiters and pants. Funny because he was walking behind me in my footsteps, but i only saw the snake slither away after it had bitten him.
He's asked me not to put any details up but all i can say is that he's fine.
