Tarptent Moment. 1st trip.

Tarptent Moment pitched in Peebles, Scotland, UK.

The first outing for my new Tarptent Moment from Henry Shires in the USA, was a 3 nighter in the Scottish Borders.

The first night was a flat pitch on a camp site, second night was a wild high pitch in the hills and the 3rd night was wild low pitch at the side of a loch.

Pitching the moment is a pleasure. It’s one piece construction means that there is no faffing about clipping up the inner or throwing on the outer when it’s a poor weather day.

It’s just a matter of locating the single hoop pole, pegging out one end, walking to the other end, tensioning the tent and pegging out the 2nd peg.

If its raining hard, you can get inside at this time and leave final adjustments until the rain has eased. But saying that, the final adjustments come down to 4 pull cords to set the positions of the fixed end A poles.

All in all about a minute.

The tent is supplied with 2 x125mm pegs. In my opinion these are too short, i replaced them with the 200mm pegs i received with my Scarp 2 tent. 

With the ground in Scotland or anywhere else wild for that matter, being of unpredictable firmness,  i think the 200mm pegs cover all possibilities.

On the hoop pole sleeve there are also 2 extra guy rope loops but no rope or pegs are supplied for this. Again i have added 2 guy ropes and 2 extra 200mm pegs.

On the first night we had a light breeze and for an hour or more it rained fairly heavily during the night. No problems encountered with seam leakage. The tent has masses of ventilation, from the ends which both fully open to the complete surround of the bathtub groundsheet to the mesh side walls of the inner and the 2 vents on the top of the flysheet.

In the morning there was some condensation on the inner face of the fly as expected. I purchased the additional roof liner and it will be staying fixed as part of the tent. 

The 2nd night was a flat calm night and pitching the tent on some very uneven tussock grass i was glad i changed the peg length for longer ones.

 The skies were very clear and the temperatures dropped quite considerably from what we had walked in during the day.  I thought there might be a frost but the temperature held just above freezing.

My sleeping bag is rated at -3 ℃, but i was cold, not from the ground but from the air temperature. 

With having so much venting it’s difficult to get the temperature in the inner warmed up. I closed the end vents hoping this would help but i didn’t notice any change.

I ended up putting on my light down jacket and spare socks to get warm. This worked and i dropped off to sleep.

In the morning i noticed that the roof vents were closed. I had also noticed this the previous night but put it down to the heavy rain.  Obviously it’s not the rain or the wind that closed them. They just don’t stay open too well even with the inner clips joined as the instructions show.

Coming home i made my answer to this problem.

I made 2 x Z shaped supports which attach to the existing velcro on the flysheet and keep the vents in the open position. The ones shown here are slightly wider than the ones i ended up with. These are 25mm wide and i ended up with 12mm wide. Extra weight 3gr. 

They can be removed for packing up the tent and they also fit my Scarp 2.
Amendment added August 2011
Having made the first supports and proved that the design worked, i went and made a second pair.

The upright is 50mm long and 12 mm wide with a top and bottom attaching leg 20 mm long.
I used self adhesive velcro attached to the legs which holds it upright in the vent.
End of amendment.

There was plenty of condensation on the inside but again the additional roof had kept the dripping from getting on the down sleeping bag. 

There was also the odd condensation run off onto the mesh surrounding the groundsheet but it wasn’t detrimental.

The others had commented on it being a cold night too and there was plenty of condensation being wiped off the other tents. So i can’t say that the Moment is any worse for only having a single wall.

One thing that was noticeable on this rough ground was that the A frames at the ends of the tent wouldn’t stay wide, ie at there maximum width, and tensioning them to make the fly taught only made the situation worse. 

I am going to take with me 4 very light titanium stakes to see if this solves the issue next time. (or i might think up something completely different).

The 3rd night was a similar sort of night to the 2nd, although it didn’t get quite as cold. Probably because we were lower down, but the issues were basically the same.

The previous 2 nights i had also become frustrated with the inner mesh door opening.

It’s just completely wrong. 

The shape of the inner doorway is an Isosceles triangle. The base being longer than the 2 sides. 

The opening of the mesh doorway starts at the apex, falls vertical from this point and then goes to one lower corner. (As above photo.) The trouble is that it only utilises half of the maximum head height opening space.

When you have gear in the porch area or you are cooking/eating and sat facing the opening, half of the opening you want and need is covered by the mesh.

Unless you are left handed this is a real issue. It’s hard to reach into the porch and to move your body in and out of the doorway you need to be a bit of a contortionist.

The annoying thing is that cheaper similar shaped tents such as the Coleman Libra (below in green ) and the Jamet Granite  4000 (below in red.) have got it right.

I am going to find out if i can get the mesh door modified as i think it should be.

The size and shape of the bathtub groundsheet is excellent and i applied quite a bit of silicon to the surface to stop sliding around. This worked a treat.

I also purchased with the tent a groundsheet protector made from Tyvec. Having used it on one of the nights i can honestly say it will not be seeing daylight again. 

It’s noisy, not particularly lightweight and a bit of a disappointment all in all. 

Laura, who’s blog is here, was camping with the Hubba, that had a very nice groundsheet protector and i will be investigating these footprints to see if i can utilise one of them in the future.

The tent also has a separate crossing pole for use in snow or high wind situations. I took it on this trip but never used it.

All in the tent weights just under 1kilo with the extra’s and is an ideal one man tent even though it’s not perfect in my opinion. 

Hope this review helps.