Sierra Designs Excessive Aspect 1 Tent Evaluation

The Sierra Designs Excessive Aspect Tent is a single-person, double-wall tent that’s an enormous step up in consolation from a bivy sack. Along with its low weight, one of many greatest strengths of this tent is its flexibility. The interior tent can be utilized as a standalone insect shelter in dry climate whereas the rain fly could be configured in a lot of other ways to reinforce air flow, views, or storm safety. As well as, the Excessive Aspect 1 options brief tent poles that may collapse right down to 12.5″ in size, making them straightforward to pack for bikepacking journeys when you’ve restricted cupboard space or backpacking journeys with smaller capability ultralight backpacks.

Specs at a Look

• Development: Double Wall Tent
• Sort: Semi-Freestanding
• Capability: 1 individual
• Doorways/Vestibules: 1/1
• Claimed Minimal Weight: 2 lbs 2 oz
• Precise Minimal Weight: 2 lbs 4.7 oz (consists of 2 poles)
• Standalone Interior Tent Weights  (interior + 2 poles: 14.3 oz + 7.9 oz)
• Rain Fly Tent Weight: 14.5 oz.
• Most Pole Section Size: 12.5″ (not 12″ as claimed)
• Ground: 30D Nylon Ripstop, Silicone/1200mm PeU, FR CPAI84
• Fly: 20D Nylon Ripstop, Silicone/1200mm PeU, FR CPAI84
• Exterior Dimensions: 88 x 34 (head) x 26″ (foot) / 224 x 86 (head) x 66cm (foot)
• Inside Dimensions: 88 x 28 (head) x 26″ (foot)
• Inside Peak top: 32″
• Go to for Full Specs

Interior Tent

The Excessive Aspect 1’s Interior Tent is supported by two hoop-style poles that slot into holders alongside the edges of the ground and 4 tent stakes positioned on the corners. In case you needed, you would actually simply use the interior tent as an insect shelter on clear nights in arid climates when dew or precipitation shouldn’t be a priority.

The interior tent has high-sided bathtub flooring that present wonderful breeze and moisture safety in rain or “swampy” situations, whereas the hoops improve the amount of the inside house, sufficient you can sit up on the head-end to vary your clothes.

The width and the size of the interior tent are additionally outsized (88 (lengthy) x 28 (head) x 26″ (foot) so you should utilize it with a 25″ vast sleeping pad. Moreover, you’ll be able to retailer gear alongside the edges of your sleeping pad or behind your head should you don’t need to retailer it exterior or beneath the vestibule. There’s additionally one inside mesh pocket close to the head-end on the door aspect that’s giant sufficient for glasses and a cellphone.

Rain Fly

The Excessive Aspect has a big aspect vestibule that may be rolled again to offer a lot of air flow in clear climate or zipped closed to offer extra safety or privateness. Even when closed, there’s loads of air flow and airflow beneath the underside of the vestibule to inhibit inside condensation.

The Excessive Aspect is so named as a result of the pole construction shouldn’t be a wonderfully symmetrical loop, however barely greater on the door aspect to make entry and exit simpler whereas serving to to shed water on the decrease aspect.

Maybe extra important is the truth that this tent has a aspect entrance which is much simpler to enter and exit than comparable shelters that solely have entrance entrances and are far more troublesome to get out and in of (for instance, a SlingFin SplitWing Bundle)  All of those shelters are lengthy and slim, which makes them good choices for solo journeys when tenting house is tight, however having a aspect entrance just like the Excessive Aspect is so significantly better.

Moreover, after I pack a backpack, I normally have to stay my tent poles in a aspect pocket and safe them utilizing aspect compression straps or jam them down the within of my pack between the sidewall and the plastic bag I take advantage of to line my pack. However the longest section of the Excessive Aspect pole set is 12.5″ which is brief sufficient that I can lay them horizontally inside my pack, stacked in between all of my different backpacking gear. It’s good to have the ability to do that, despite the fact that it’s not fairly earth-shattering.

Nevertheless, that comfort is offset a bit by the variety of tent stakes required to pitch the Excessive Aspect, which is available in at 11 to 13 tent stakes. That’s lots of stakes, however the flexibility they supply outweighs the effort of carrying and utilizing so many. For instance, should you had been to switch the Excessive Aspect rain fly with a flat tarp, you’d most likely want to hold and use the identical variety of stakes should you needed the identical degree of flexibility and completely different porching choices obtainable. Not less than that’s how I rationalize it.

Advice

The Sierra Designs Excessive Aspect Tent is a pleasant tent for solo backpacking and bikepacking, with brief pole segments that make packing simpler. It’s straightforward to arrange, with good air flow choices to maintain you snug in honest climate and foul, and a aspect door, which is much extra handy to make use of than one which solely opens in entrance. Light-weight and fairly priced ($299.95), it’s a superb possibility for wild tenting in stealthy tent websites with its low profile and comparatively slim house necessities,

Disclosure: Sierra Designs donated a tent for assessment.

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