X-Mid 1

Cords get shredded in buckles; groundcloth doesn’t naturally interface with rest of tent.

Practiced pitching the tent in my backyard and immediately noticed that when tightening the corners and guylines, the cords’ reflective threads get shredded up when pulling through the buckles that hold the tension. Makes the cord take on a bumpy textured surface which makes it harder to pull through the buckles on repeat pitches. I also ordered a ground cloth with my tent and, with the most recent version of the tent, there are no D-rings at the corners of the tent inner body to clip the groundcloth to. I ended up clipping to the shock cords at each of the four corners but it didn’t feel like the shock cords were intended for this purpose. Also since the groundcloth takes on the shape of the inner, not the full fly, there’s no way to attach the groundcloth on all four corners of the fly anytime you want to pitch fly+groundcloth-only (two corners can reach the fly but the other two corners on the opposite diagonal do not). Should be easy enough to use a bit of my own cord to tie the two long-diagonal corners of the ground cloth to the fly base but it would be nice if there was a built in solution. Otherwise, I’m a fan of the tent and am looking forward to taking it into Yosemite next month.

Did not work for me

I realized after setting up in my yard that trekking pole tents are not for me. I also am on the eastern seaboard where having such a large footprint just doesn’t suit the terrain. I would have liked to return it after trying it out once in the yard, but I’m concerned that I will lose up to 20% if I can’t pack it back perfectly enough, so I’m going to try to sell locally. I have heard such amazing and wonderful things about this tent, and I think it suits many many people well! I’m going to be looking for a freestanding tent.

Best UL Tent Fly Only

I used this tent 4 nights in the Dolomites and it was awesome. I use the fly only setup with a tyvek ground sheet. That works absolutely great and I had a night at 2200m in the high Dolomites with a thunderstorm and heavy rain and it held up extremely well. I used big Agnes, Lanshan and decathlon tents before, but this strikes the balance between weight and size. One small adjustment: in my Bikepacking bag the stretchy rope that connects the Carbon Pole tore. I think a little sturdier stretchy rope might be the better choice as I had other tent poles in my bag for countless days where the rope didn’t break. Great tent all in all