Easton Mt. Products CTR 65 Nion

Easton Mountain Products is excited to offer the CTR-65 ion as its new backcountry trekking pole for Spring 2011. These super light weight trekking poles weigh little more than a pound.  The CTR-65 ion Backcountry Trekking Pole is an all-carbon construction with two-tier adjustability for the backcountry user looking for durability, versatility and weight-saving.

The CTR-65 ion features an EVA grip with extended gripping area and adjustable strap to optimize comfort and responsiveness. Set the perfect length with the patent-pending Rock-Lock clamp and adjust it on the fly to match changing terrain. All Easton trekking poles include comfort wrist straps and winter and summer baskets for all-terrain venturing in any season.

Easton CTR-65 ion Backcountry Trekking Pole

MSRP $99.00

Features:

• Designed for backcountry touring and skiing
• Two-section carbon upper and alloy lower
• Rock-Lock™ Clamp System
• Extended EVA foam gripping area
• Fully extended length of 140 cm
• Collapsed length of 83 cm
• MSRP $99.00

Easton Mt. Products, CTR 65 Trekking Poles

Backcountry four-season shelter for party of three

By Rick Shandley

Leave it to the Swedish sense of quality and functionality to design Hilleberg Kaitum 3 four-season tent.  With almost 40 years of backcountry tent making knowhow, Hilleberg tents are wilderness shelters built to endure, comfort, and protect. If you’re the kind of person who owns the best gear you can get your hands on. You want enough room for two or three people. And you know there’s going to be at least one trip where the shelter you invest in now will pay for itself keeping you safe for just a few days, or one night, then consider the Kaitum 3.

Like most of the gear we review, this Hilleberg Kaitum 3 went on several pack trips in the backcountry. From the first time we pitched this rectangular tunnel design, the Kaitum 3 proved to be a quick set-up and sturdy weatherproof tent. Three DAC tent pole hoops run through continuous sleeves to create the skeletal framework that is anchored with DAC pegs and guy lines.

DAC V-pegs offer sturdy anchoring. Longer DAC pegs are available for deeper ground penetration. The V-pegs worked fine.

Kaitum 3 is not free standing, but it requires only four DAC, V-shaped, stakes to erect. In all but the mildest conditions, even free-standing tents are pegged out to secure them and prevent them from taking off like a tumble weed in a wind gust during set-up. Any tent that incorporates vestibules must be pegged out, free-standing or not.

Hilleberg’s own Kerlon 1200 nylon tent fabric is used for the Kaitum 3. With a tear strength of 26 lbs., the Kerlon 1200 is coated on both sides with three applications of pure silicon. In addition to being extremely light, waterproof, and strong, Kerlon 1200 is also resistant to UV light. At 1.4-ounces per square yard, a swatch of Kerlon 1200 with a ½-inch scissor cut could not be torn asunder. It would fray slightly, but the slit length would not travel. Conversely, the same sized patch of standard ripstop nylon could be halved with the same human fingers doing the shredding.

Pitching the Kaitum 3 goes like this: peg one end of the tent into the wind with one stake at each side.  Slide the DAC poles through the continuous sleeves, longest pole in the middle, then peg the other end of the rectangle to the ground. Your basic shelter is pitched.  Each pole sleeve has only one open end. The other end is a closed pocket; which leads to efficiency in set-up time and provides a pole capture point that allows the tent pole to take its shape with the tent fabric immediately. We didn’t have to work on both sides of the tent when inserting the tent poles because of the closed ends making set up fairly rapid.

Kaitum 3 on first trip in Sierra's. Note interlinked tent walls and cavernous interior.

This Kaitum 3 is a thing of beauty when it’s fully staked out taught with the Spectra guy lines shoring up a structure that’s ready for serious winds, rain, snow, and freezing weather. When you anticipate heavy snow and high wind conditions, you always have the option of running a second set of DAC poles through the pole sleeves to double-down the structural support.

A total of 18 DAC V-stakes come with the Kaitum, and we found it to be little extra effort to have both vestibules in action and both vertical doors at each end available. The vent system is located high-up on the vestibule crowns and found to be totally functional regardless of the time of year or weather conditions.

On one trip in the Gila National Forest in New Mexico, our Kaitum 3 housed three medium-sized adults on a long-mile overnighter that got down into the low 30’s. All three reported they had ample room to sleep soundly through the night without feeling packed together.  Two backpacks where housed in the rear vestibule, (facing the wind), and the third pack occupied the forward vestibule. During the night and early morning, the guy sleeping in the middle spot would enter and exit through the vestibule housing two packs. The two guys sleeping next to the tent walls would enter and exit through the vestibule housing the single pack.

The Kaitum 3 ventilation system did not allow condensation to build up inside the tent even with three souls sleeping in overnight temperatures that dropped down to freezing levels. With both vestibules fully-pitched, both entries fully zipped up, and ventilation hoods at both ends open, the airflow through the tent was more than adequate. The snow-panel ventilation hoods on each vestibule can be adjusted from inside the tent. Zippered, full no-see-up mesh panels on the inner-tent doors and full zipper-adjustable fabric panels allow you to tailor ventilation requirements in warm, cool, and cold weather.

Snow-proof ventilation hoods mounted high up, and adjustable from inside tent.

In mild weather, where bugs are more a threat than rain or snow, you can use the Kaitum 3 inner tent by itself and pitches with the use of six additional pole holders. We did not take the opportunity to use the Kaitum 3 in this configuration, as all of our overnight stays where in late fall and at upper elevations where weather fronts could move in overnight and without advanced warning.

Packed trail weight for the full Kaitum 3 with inner/outer tent walls, stakes, and guy lines is 6 lbs. 13 ounces. On the high-country trips we used the Kaitum 3 for the weight vs. comfort was an acceptable tradeoff. For a person who hikes solo, or your tent requirements involve four or more people, there are smaller and larger tent options in the Hilleberg line-up of four-season tents to consider.  As for the Kaitum 3 we tested, even when just two people are to occupy the Kaitum 3, the floor plan, tunnel design and headroom make it a shelter that justified its place on the pack.

KAITUM 3 Interior

Your reward is when you slip inside the Kaitum 3. The late afternoon, high country winds can kick up all they want. Mountain shadows will bring on the dark before you’re tired bones are ready. But once you’re on the interior, you’ll find yourself in a very cool backcountry Townhouse. No kidding. There is more available room in this tunnel design than you’d think possible. It’s because of this tunnel shape that the double tent walls rise up vertically and carry the vertical rise into a gentle arch towards the top of the tent. You get 42 vertical inches in the center of the tent and 42 square feet to move around in.

Kaitum 3 with front vestibule opened up and ready for moving in as evening winds pick up.

Storage pockets are situated at four positions inside the tent for easy access even in low-light or utter darkness. These storage pockets are integrated into the inner tent wall and above the bath-tub shaped tent floor. With the bath-tub floor running the full diameter of the tent, ground water, melting snow, or muddy conditions shield the interior from intrusion.

It is this sense of having more than enough room inside the tent which all but eliminates the potential cloud of claustrophobia a person could feel when hunkered down for a couple days of serious wet or icy weather. For tall and large-bodied people, the ability to move around without bumping your head on A-framed tent walls and having enough room to sit up and play a game of cards or read a book are immediately notable.

Large vestibules at each end offer 14 square feet of storage area, enough to store your gear and allow plenty of room for entries and exits.  You can pitch the Kaitum 3 with one fully closed vestibule into the wind, and leave the opposite end of the tent completely open to the down-valley view. Leaving one end open, with the vestibules rolled back out of the way opened up to the cavernous interior and allowed us to hang out in the tent and sit for a while just sipping morning coffee and think about the day ahead.

Overall Impressions

On our first trip with the Kaitum 3, we noticed that the workmanship, hardware, and the dense multi-pass stitching of the Kaitum 3 appeared to be flawless. Every stress point was bolstered gusseted heavy nylon webbed fabrics. Because the Spectra guy lines were positioned at critical support points on the tent, they attached at two points, and they were easily adjustable, the stability of the shelter was impressive.

Set-up in backcountry meadow near Devil's Garden, Gila National Forest, NM.

Set-up is very straight forward and gets quicker and more efficient each time you pitch it. One person can pitch the Kaitum smoothly and with confidence. Once pitched, the Kaitum 3 is second to none in the roominess the tunnel design creates. At night, the Kaitum can be seen in the headlamp or flashlight beam on reflective strips at either end of the tent, but larger illumination panels would be easier to see from a distance. You’ll have no idea, until it happens to you, how much you rely on those illumination panels to find your way back to the tent on a black-on-black night in the wilderness.

Take down and pack out of the Kaitum is just as smooth and trouble free as pitching the tent. The materials, including the tent floor, Kerlon tent fabrics, the stakes and pole system, all packed down quickly and rolled up tight. Both tent walls and guy line system, all pack into the center of the collapsed tent. The fabrics are so pliable you can prevent any bulky spots just by smoothing and quickly adjusting as you roll up. The snow-proof vents at each vestibule do have a wire-like bracing structure to keep them open and rigid; these flatten out and blend with the roll-up.

For a tall, gangly, person stooping or crawling to get in or out of the Kaitum with either or both vestibules fully erected can be a challenge. But that’s a trade off for the full protection this shelter creates. Ease of entry and exit is a subjective decision each one of us makes in our research of a tent purchase weighed against the protection, strength, comfort, and the environments you’ll use the tent for.

Although our backpack trips were not in heavy winter conditions or wicked ugly thunderstorms, we did get overnight freezes and very stiff mountain winds in the evenings. And compared to other four-season tents we’ve owned or experienced, the Kaitum is a top-end shelter. The Hilleberg Kaitum 3 is a seriously well built, comfortable tent that is good for many years of use in all weather conditions.  At a MSRP of $775, this tent is a long-term investment that just might beat expectations.

Features:

• High strength to low weight
• Unmatched weight to space
• High reliability with “worst-case scenario” construction
• High usability: easy to pitch and pack out
• Original Hilleberg design
• Linked inner and outer tents for simultaneous pitching
• Durability for years of use
• IS0-9001 Certified

Kaitum 3 Specifications

Minimum weight:       5.15 lbs (2.7 kg)

Packed weight:           6.13 lbs. (3.1 kg)

Inner Height:               42 inches (105 cm)

Interior tent area:       42 square ft. (3.9 square meters)

Vestibule area:            14 square ft. x 2 (1.3 meters x 2)

9mm DAC Poles:          Three

DAC tent stakes:          18 V-shaped

Min. stakes to pitch:   Four

Product of:                    Sweden

Color Options:              Red or Green

First off, the NeoAir is compact. It rolls up small and fits into the Cordura stuff sack tight enough to share the same space with your sleeping bag in backpacks that offer sleeping bag compartments such as the Lowe/Alpine Cerro Torre TFX series packs, the Kelty Trekker, and several other high-end backpacks. Secondly, the NeoAir weighs less than one pound at 14-ounces, and because of its small pack size, you don’t have to lash it down to the outside of your pack.

If small pack size and light weight where all the NeoAir had going for it, that’s reason enough to give it serious consideration. The NeoAir mattress we tested was only available to us in regular size measuring 20 inches wide and 72 inches long.

Compact and light, the NeoAir is shown next to a Sierra Designs Arrow Rock 30 down bag; also very compact.

Although we wanted a longer version for our test (to fit the person testing it), we were informed by the folks at Cascade Designs the manufacturing machines were running at full capacity just to keep up with the demand forecasts for NeoAir. And that’s good news for any outdoor gear manufacturer in this, or any, economic circumstance. No worries with us, we were happy one was available to review.

Once you’re ready to deploy the NeoAir at the campsite, you merely roll it out, open the air-valve and inflate the mattress. The air valve worked fine, and the time it takes for the mattress to inflate didn’t take long at all. If you want more firmness, increase the air volume. At higher elevations, such as anything above the 7,000 foot level, you might consider taking your time adding air to the mattress.

Therm-A-Rest NeoAir mattress and Sierra Designs Arrow Rock 30 down sleeping bag with retainer straps to keep pad beneath you.

On one trip, above 11,000 feet elevation, the task of blowing full, repetitive, breaths to get a firm mattress was enough to get a bit dizzy. But that’s a human function, and everybody has different levels of acclimation and physical response to altitude. To dial-in the right firmness, we’d get the NeoAir fairly full of air, lay down on it, then let air out until it reached that sweet spot with enough give to feel cushioned, and enough firmness to keep the body off the tent floor.

When you set up camp, just roll out the NeoAir, open the air valve, and inflate.

The ability of the NeoAir to quickly inflate is impressive. However, if you plan on any extended trips where freezing conditions will be the norm, then keep in mind that the moisture in your breath will tend to collect within the mattress and freeze, scrubbing away some of that ever so highly valued light weight. In really cold weather, it’s a good idea to transport the mattress in your pack where it is close to your body heat.

Essentially the NeoAir is considered a three season sleeping pad. It is uninsulated, but uses patent-pending reflective barrier to minimize heat loss. Because this reflective barrier reduces heat loss and permits warmth to return to your body, it registers an insulation rating of R-2.5 out of a maximum R-8. This insulation value can be increased to 3.8 by using a Therm-A-Rest Z-Lite mattress underneath the NeoAir.

Like the weather in general, changes in outside temperature and barometric pressure will affect the inflation of the mattress. When you’re base camping or leaving the mattress inflated during a hot day it’s a good idea to partially deflate your mattress so your NeoAir doesn’t fall victim to expanding warm air and become over-inflated. On every trip we used this mattress it was inflated at night and deflated the next morning for another day on the trail. To its credit, the NeoAir took no extra time or thought packing it up for each day. The Cordura stuff sack is sized just right, even allowing you to goof up on a couple roll-ups and still be able to get the mattress into the stuff sack. Let the air out, fold into thirds lengthwise, roll it up, and slip it into the stuff sack. Nothing more, nothing less; you are done with it.

Really...check out how small the NeoAir packs out to. It literally fits in the pocket along with the sleeping bag, and then some.

The small size of the rolled up and packed NeoAir makes it easy transport in your backpack with or without a designated sleeping bag compartment. It’s just as convenient to pack the NeoAir in your main backpack compartment along with your stove, cooking kit, clothes, and food.

Because the NeoAir is constructed of super-light materials, human carelessness or an undetected sharp object may occasionally result in a puncture. Stuff happens. The good news is that a Therm-A-Rest Fast and Light Series repair kit makes any patchwork relatively trouble free. We did not experience any failures, punctures, or lack of comfort in our nights in the field with this sleeping bad. The perceived characteristics of a very-light and compact sleeping pad capable of provided good support and comfort over quite a few nights in tents consistently held true for the NeoAir.

We’ve heard some concern’s from people who thought the NeoAir is too narrow. Certainly this may be a valid criticism in a subjective context. Again, each person is different. Yet, we were using a Sierra Designs Arrow Rock 30 down sleeping bag with mattress retainer straps on the bottom of the sleeping bag. The NeoAir fits perfectly with a sleeping bag using retainer straps. We did not experience rolling off the mattress, and found the mattress itself provided plenty of support and comfort. Sure it would be great to have a few more inches of width and length, but that also means a tradeoff in weight and compactness. At retail, the Therm-A-Rest NeoAir is available in long, medium, and short lengths with the price ranging from $120 to $170 depending on the length you choose.

Stuff sack is made from Cordura fabric; containing the little sleeper until needed.

Overall Assessment:

On a trip to REI to pick up some gas canisters, it was inevitable to take a few laps of the store and check things out. Knowing the NeoAir was on the table for a review, we strolled over to the section where all the sleeping pads lurk, hanging full size or rolled up and vacuum packed.  When a REI store associate came along to see if any help was needed, we just asked if they had any of the new NeoAir mattresses we might take a look at. He pointed to the bottom bin of one of the display racks, and there sitting all by itself was one unit of the new NeoAir looking small and bright yellow. When asked how much it costs, he went over to the computer and looked it up. “That’s about $149,” he said. “And I guarantee you it won’t be there after this weekend. It’s a great little sleeping pad and I’m interested in getting one for myself.”

Well, after using the NeoAir and sleeping on it enough to know whether it will do the job in comfort, it’s a sure bet that good things do come in small packages. Usually, there’s not a ton to say about a sleeping pad. But the NeoAir is a transformative little cushion that serves its purpose while taking up minimal space in your pack. We liked it a lot.

By Rick Shandley

Cascade Designs

4000 1^st St. Ave. South

Seattle, WA 98134

1-206-505-9500

www.thermarest.com

• THERM-A-REST NeoAir
• Cordura – Fast and Light Stuff Sack – regular size.
• Part of Fast and Light Series
• Regular size as tested: 20×72 inches
• 2.5 inches thick (or 6.3 cm)
• Warmth Rating: R-2.5 out of R-8.0 maximum rating
• Recommended: Three Season sleeping pad
• Weight: 14oz (410 grams)
• Innovative materials create an ultralight, ultra-compact mattress.
• Warmth: Three times warmer than other uninsulated air mattresses due to patent-pending thermal (yellow) barrier.
• Superior stability and comfort using patent-pending Triangular Core Matrix.
• Made in U.S.A.

Big Tahoma is equal to the harshest punishment, with its fully adjustable suspension system. Simply, it is a expedition-quality, ultralight, high capacity (70 liters), backpack with a low profile.
The Big Tahoma pack’s suspension system uses adjustable hip belt and shoulder harness system for a customized fit.  The molded frame-sheet, with its twin V-shaped aluminum stays, offers the best combination of light weight, durability and stable support. Furthermore, the framesheet can be removed for the ultimate minimalist pack.

First Ascent’s Big Tahoma is the backpack Whittaker Mountaineering’s Guide Team wears on Mt. Rainier and all their other 2-3 day climbs.

Here’s what guide’s Peter Whittaker and Ed Viesturs says about the Big Tahoma:

“The Big Tahoma holds everything I need on a climb, from Rainier to Everest. You will not find any features on this pack that do not provide a needed function.” Peter Whittaker
“Guiding 70,000 clients up Rainier since 1968, you get a pretty good idea about the ideal pack. This is it.” Ed Viesturs

By the way, both Peter Whittaker and Ed Viesturs are on Mt. Everest right now (May 12, 2009) waiting for good weather and the chance to lead their respective teams to the summit of the highest mountain on earth (29,035.3 feet elevation).

Big Tahoma features:

• ULTRA-LIGHT 2-3 DAY PACK
• REMOVABLE HIP BELT
• FLOATING LID
• “V” STAY SYSTEM
• REINFORCED 1000D CORDURA NYLON CRAMPON PANEL
• REMOVABLE CRAMPON STRAPS
• SIDE ZIP OPENING TO ACCESS MAIN COMPARTMENT
• 210D NYLON N66 DOUBLE RIPSTOP
• 1000D NYLON CORDURA & DIMENSION-POLYANT
•  # WX20 SAILCLOTH
• CARGO CAPACITY: 70-LITERS
• WEIGHT: 3.84 lbs

Price point: $249.00

You can research and purchase most all your high-altitude and mountaineering gear at: www.whittakermountaineering.com