HotBox

Bomber Shelter, Minimal Footprint

bomber bivy tent

I've had my Hotbox out for a few nights in the winter alpine and it holds up to the hype. I've only used in cold weather, but I've had no condensation. The vents at either end can get through a decent amount of air with a breeze if you need it, but either way the tent is impressively dry and warm. There is a weight penalty over the lightest single-wall, but it's somehow lighter than some popular single-wall choices. The Web Truss + internal guy lines make this thing wicked strong. Adding a couple guylines midway up the windward sides of the tent makes it bombproof. I slept soundly through a storm that shredded three other tents, and the "poles first"/"poles last" setup/teardown techniques proved useful in the gale. For build quality: the materials, stitching, and design details make my $350 big brand backpacking tent feel cheap. The side pods are interesting. The portholes eat up stuff like ski boot shells and packs: a massive improvement over trying to fit two + gear inside a typical bivy tent. A downside is that, with the extra fabric on the fly, I find myself wanting to stake or bury the sides in order to keep them tight and quiet in any wind. I wanted to try cooking in them in inclement weather, but I found they aren't big enough to safely use my stove without it being knocked over by wind hammering the fly. That said, I certainly prefer having them to not for the added space. The guylines are the standard style that come on every tent I've ever bought (although higher quality, of course). I hate when guylines freeze to buried snow stakes and you can't slide them to adjust anymore, so I'd love to see Slingfin swap out the loop-style tensioner for something like a lineloc that adjusts without sliding over the stake and can be quickly clipped to different guyout points without (un)tying knots. Maybe the team knows something I don't about guylines, though? Would buy again, and I'm writing this in September because I was staring at my tent in the gear closet waiting for winter so I can take it back out.

Great Tent

I bought this tent to replace a single walled alpine tent that had unreliable carbon fibre poles. There were two features I was really keen on: better condensation management and gear storage. For a minimal weight penalty the extra space from the Hotbox is fantastic. The height, interior layout and external storage are exactly what I was looking for. As for the condensation, I don’t think the double wall design is a panacea. I’ve used the tent in a variety of winter conditions now from -15C up to 4C and I did find lots of frozen condensation on the inner wall at colder temps. With the smaller size it means you’ll be getting wet in the morning as you rub against the walls. With that being said the tent dries out quickly and it’s obviously dependent on other factors besides temps. The coast mountains where I use this tend to be moist and cold vs. drier colder climates like the Rockies. A few things I’d suggest for the tent to make it perfect: 1. Some sort of external half zip on the storage sections would be nice to easily load gear into the external storage and then access it internally. Right now I have to bring snowy gear in through the inside and through the side hole or undo the staked out side panel and push the gear underneath. 2. A very small extended front entry where one could keep boots. It would be quite ergonomic to load the gear through the outside and then get in the tent take off boots and leave them in the “mini front” vestibule. This is all in the name of not bringing snowy gear covered boots and gear through the tent to the side vestibules 3. I find the small porthole and mesh screen on the front door to be not quite enough ventilation for the environment I’m in. Otherwise this is a great tent and I use it for virtually any trip 3 days or less