New tent!
Quechua Quick Hiker 3 Fresh & BlackAfter baking at the York Rally, I bought this for the
WHPVA World Championships, which was due to be similarly scorchio. I don't do well in the heat, and faced with the prospect of several hours of world championship
rushing about over the course of a weekend, anything that would enhance the quality/quantity of sleep, or provide a bit of shade would be worth it. As I was travelling by car, I considered buying one of the cheaper pop-up fresh & black tents, but I knew I'd only regret that later.
Anyway, instant review, based on a long weekend in increasingly hot and sunny, but not particularly windy conditions:
Firstly and foremost the Fresh & Black stuff actually works. The outer successfully reflects an impressive amount of the sun's heat, so it doesn't turn into a sauna within an hour of dawn. Indeed, even at noon the temperature was closer to the meteorological temperature than the 40C that you'd usually expect inside a closed tent. The inner is a
BLACK that any goth would be proud of, and the combined effect is such that in the midday sun it's useful to have a torch when rummaging about inside the tent. At night, no wandering torchlight penetrates. I woke up at bladder o'clock and took some time to grope around for my torch, as I could see literally nothing with dark-adapted eyes. TBH, I found this level of darkness quite annoying, particularly when moving from bright sunlight into the tent to get things, but if you're someone who finds it difficult to sleep when there's light, it could be well worth it. (This photo doesn't do it justice, obviously.)
In addition to the unconventional materials, the tent is extremely well ventilated, with generous amount of mesh and porous fabric on the inner, as well as a couple of ventilation flaps at low level. The flysheet comes all the way to the ground (with a pair of additional openable vents top and bottom), and would appear to do as good a job keeping Weather out as it does with sunlight. There was a moderate dew overnight, but not enough to cause any drips. It doesn't *look* like they're going to land on your face.
The overall construction is the classic free-standing dome arrangement, with an additional cross-piece to add extra width at the top. This makes it quite spacious inside, with plenty of headroom. 3 adults is, as usual, optimistic, but two would be reasonably comfortable. I was able to fit barakta's Exped Airmat 12LXW in with ease, which is unusual in small tents.
They've provided a generous assortment of pockets for storing stuff and loops for dangling things from, and included a little string with a guy-rope adjuster between two of them so that I always knew where my towel was. There are symmetrical small porches either side, which you can just about squeeze a folded Brompton into. My usual concern with this sort of outer door arrangement is that you get dripped on as soon as you open it, but the wet-weather performance remains untested.
Pitching is outer-first (or both together), as all good tents should be. The inner is equipped with attachment points for the poles, so that it can be pitched without the fly, which is a nice touch, but something I'm unlikely to ever use.
Weight wise, it's just under 4kg, but it's quite a generously proportioned tent compared to say the Vango Banshee 300. The lengthy aluminium poles are split into quite short sections, for pannier/backpack friendliness (though I suspect the weight of all the joints adds up). Pegs are reasonably decent round alloy ones. The supplied bag is generous enough that you can fit it back in without too much drama, even if you don't bother with careful folding.
Pending a test of the wet-weather performance, my main complaint is that the groundsheet of the inner seems quite flimsy. Pitching on the mess of hacked-back brambles and thistle that passes for Betteshanger's overflow car park meant that I was prickled as soon as I crawled in to inflate the mat. (Fortunately I was able to re-purpose the tarp that lines the car boot as a surprisingly well-fitted footprint, and both I and the mat remained unpunctured.)
In summary: Worthwhile if you know it's going to be silly hot, seems like good value. While it does combine the useful features of European and Leftpondian tent design, it's unlikely to be the best choice for cold weather.