Tent for two around the world, looking for advice
 

Hi Hubb
My girlfriend and I are planning a 6-12 month trip next year and I am starting to look at gear etc.

One of the bigger investments is the tent, we are right now thinking of buying a
MSR Mutha Hubba NX 3-Person Tent. My thoughts:

- 3 person, so we have room for gear in the dry and a bit more room if we need to spend a day in the tent.
- The Mutha Hubba is light
- Fair price

Do any of you have experience with the tent or any other good recommendations for tents in the same price class?

Thanks bier

Vango Omega 350 is heavier but with much more space for keeping kit out of the weather.

MSR is good gear though.

MSR makes good stuff. But my wife and I opted for a Vaude Space 3P. The main reasons were: It pitches outer first (or all-at-once) which is more convenient in the rain. The doors are on the sides, which we prefer for crawling in and out. And the porch areas are a more convenient shape to store wet gear.

I am in similar situation. I have a number of backpacking tents that I've used for motocamping (and backpacking), but the only one large enough for our planned 9+ month trip is old and I don't trust it for such a long haul. Agree MSR makes good equipment, and so does Big Agnes, as well as REI. But I'm curious about opinions of the motorcycle-centric Redverz Atacama. I see lots of them in pics of motorcycle rallies, but is it really a good tent for prolonged overland adventure touring?


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No why? I used a $50 Texel 3 tent untill the zipper broke after sleeping in it every day for two years all the way around africa http://adventure-travel-experience.d...en_transafrika

Now i bought the next bigger version texel 4 of the same iglutent again and used it to travel with my girlfriend. The most importend thing is it can stand without pegs: Tents - Which are the best tents to travel?

Hi, I was looking for a long time. I chose Coleman Tatra 3 and I think it was an excellent choice. I recommend it!

After many quality tents including Exped Mira III, Exped Mira II, Vaude Argon, Vaude Hogan... my current is a MSR Hubba Hubba HP (2 man tent) for solo use which together with sleeping mat and sleeping bag only takes up half of a pannier. When I'm with someone else I can attach the MSR gear shed to take wet clothes and the like. But if there's two of you all the time, I agree it's better to get a three-person tent.

As ta-rider writes, the next point is whether the tent is freestanding so it can be pitched on rocky ground, on sandy ground, or even on a concrete/tile base near a building. For me this is far more important than whether it pitches outer first. And yes, the MSR Mutha Hubba is freestanding. Another advantage is that you can erect the frame and inner tent, then move the whole caboodle in one hand to position it exactly where you want it.

Many of the supposedly three season tents use lightweight mesh on the inner tent to both save costs and also weight, but if there's any wind blowing you can get a jetstream through the tent. So unless you are going to be mainly in warm areas, I would suggest the MSR Mutha Hubba HP tent which has less mesh, more solid fabric (currrently £380.78 on Amazon UK).

But whichever you get—the NX or the HP—the Mutha Hubba has loads of headroom which is important when you're trying to get out of/into riding gear and makes it feel very roomy. I don't think the HP has the 'stay-dry' doors of the NX.

I would strongly recommend you get a 'gear loft' (£28) so you can place important stuff like torch, phone, etc at roof level so they are easily found. Consider buying a footprint designed for the tent (£48). You can also get groundsheet 'mudmat 1' (£20) for each of the vestibule areas.

Will it fit into your panniers? You can pack the poles, the inner tent, the outer tent and the footprint separately.

Some weblinks
https://www.alloutdoor.co.uk/tents/tents-/
https://www.ultralightoutdoorgear.co...all-tents-c148
http://www.exped.com/international/e...category/tents

My wife and I are using an Exped Venus iii on our RTW trip. We had a few issues with the zips on our first one. Exped customer care was excellent and we got a warranty replacement. Zips are now bigger and no further issues.

We have a complete list of our camping kit here Bike and Kit Lists - Two Brits and a Triumph Tiger 800 Round The World

We also have a few reviews up of our stuff (been on the road since June 2014) here Gear Reviews - Two Brits and a Triumph Tiger 800 Round The World

Saludos
Steve and Janette in Colombia
Tiger 800 RTW - Two Brits and a Triumph Tiger 800 Round The World

Are you still in Colombia? I’ve been living there for almost three years. Let me know if I can help



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I have a Exped Orion III and this is a freestanding design which makes pitching on rocky ground easier than needing to stake out the entire tent all the time. You should stake out a tent anyway where possible, but a freestanding design makes life a bit easier. This is my second Exped tent and for the money a most excellent product. My previous model tent was the Exped Andromeda which they don't make anymore, and it was a bomb shelter too.
I am a solo camper and just like to have the extra room for my gear and when the weather is bad it feels less claustrophobic with the yellow interior.. YMMV

I am taking the Nature Hike Cloud Peak 2 tent on my upcoming trip across USA and down into Central and South America in the coming few months.

I researched for a long ass time, and I think this tent was the perfect combination of price- to weight-to volume- to build quality/construction.

Its 4 season, freestanding (this is important), with enough ventilation for hot and humid summers, enough insulation for extremely cold temperatures, and enough support for extremely windy weather. It also has covers to store your stuff away under the tent and away from the rain.

I have field tested it on a 2 week trip, and can attest to the build quality. Only annoyances are you have to crawl on your knees to set up the internal tent structure.

Lol my tent looks very similar to yours! But at 2/3 the capacity, 1/4 the price and 1/2(ish) the weight :|.

I bought mine for $170.

https://www.amazon.com/Naturehike-Cl.../dp/B07416CWCH

Once I bought my single pole, Golite Hex 3 tipi-style tent back in 2006 and sampled the delights of tent s-p-a-c-e, ease of erection:innocent: and so many other benefits, my North Face geodesic never got another outing and has since been given away. Golite are not longer around, but the same people formed a new company called 'My Trail Company' and the tents are pretty much just tweaked versions of the Hex 3. There are other companies that sell similar pyramid tents at better prices, such as Luxe, but I've not needed to buy one as my Golite has been leak proof and hardy, withstanding around 14, month long, camping tours in all weathers. It's super light and packs small too, so doesn't take up much room in my pannier.

The headroom and living space these tents give is just incomparable to other tent designs. And there's nothing worse than pulling off the road cold and wet, fiddling around with tent rods and then crawling around the tent on all fours dripping water everywhere. Oh, I'm sorry, there is something worse--2 people doing it and then spending the next week doing it while they wait for the rain to abate:rain:

Looks like a good deal. The Exped is a 4 season tent however.
Apples to apples bier

Exactly. If you don't need an all-weather (four season) tent there's no reason to spend far more money for something heavier and (often) more work to set up. And for motorcycle touring we'll seldom need all-weather capability, which by definition includes usability in high winds, heavy snow or rain, and combinations of all three.

I've been out in three season tents in high winds, by which I mean hurricane force--say, 75mph/125kph and up. They collapse, sometimes accompanied by broken poles and torn fabric, and they admit massive amounts of whatever is falling out of the sky at the time--dust, rain, snow. It's worth noting that under those sorts of conditions, everything needs to be securely staked down anyway, so that nifty "self-supporting" feature is irrelevant. One windy night in Torres del Paine, my tent and only a few others remained standing in the morning; I slept soundly.

I've also been out in three season tents in heavy snow; they collapse surprisingly easily when snow accumulates on them. Plus all that weight-saving mesh admits wind-driven snow in huge quantities, which is uncomfortable at best.

This seldom happens while motorcycle touring, because who rides around in such conditions? But I was on a bike in Torres del Paine, and that single night made me glad I carried a four season tent for the other 350+ nights of that particular trip. That was a single-person, four-season, 3lb/1.4kg Hilleberg, and it cost US$400 or so when I bought it almost two decades ago. It might not be right for everyone, but it's been right for me (so far).

Apples, yes.

Mark

There's probably more tents on the market than there are raindrops to fall on them with price ranges to match, but I think it's false economy to underspec a tent that's going to be used as a home / shelter for an extended period away. Buy something bigger than you think you need - a 3 person size for two people and something made with decent quality materials. Do you really want to spend the night shivering under a tree because the rain did this to your cheap tent -

https://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hu...4-img-1202.jpg


Even if you dried that out and used it again you're always going to be worried when you hear rain being driven against it in the night.

Something that'll stand up to the worst conditions you can conceive of encountering is no1 on my list. So that's:

1. Seriouly rain resistant fabric. 4- 5k mm water resistance is a start.

2. A pole arrangement that'll take high winds / snow load without breaking. You're going to need some good quality materials if you wake up in the morning to find this has come down overnight -


https://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hu...-bike-trip.jpg

That from a bike trip I did back in Jan this year. Fortunately I'd decided not to camp that night.

3. UV resistant outer. Use them in the sun for too long and they degrade, i.e. rip in subsequent high winds

4. A decent quality groundsheet. That's getting harder to find as manufacturers underspec the floor in an attempt to reduce the tent sticker weight and then sell you a 'footprint' to protect it.

My other two pet hates in bike trip tents are restricted headroom - anything under around 105 - 110cm inside the sleeping area is a complete no no for me - and small tents (1 to 3 person size) that pitch outer first so you have to crawl underneath to attach the inner with clips. Any advantage about pitching the inner in the dry is rubbish; by the time you've dripped all over it crawling inside it's wetter than it would be if the inner had gone up first. Plus, it doesn't rain that often but you have to crawl inside every time. Of the 10 or so tents I have at the moment 2 pitch outer first and I've more or less stopped using them because they're so fiddly. Another one has the inner permanently clipped in and that works well.

OTOH hot weather in a winter spec tent is horrible. All that thick rainproof fabric feels like you're sleeping in an oven when it's hot and humid. Something where you can take the flysheet off and keep insects out with mesh doors is a real advantage. The only tent I had that would do 'reasonable' bad weather yet worked flysheet free in a hot climate has just started to delaminate so isn't going to be long for this world.

Hi,
We are in a similar situation, looking to do an extended European motorcycle trip next year, and are looking for a new tent. Our criteria are a 3 person for extra room, with good head room preferably can stand or almost(not so young anymore) also light weight. One tent we have found is the Wild Country Zephyros 3 Living ~180cm high, weight 4.2kg.My question is that we are in Australia and this brand is not sold here, so has anyone used or had any experience with this tent and where or if they are available as seem out of stock on the Wild country site.
Thanks
Joe and Henrietta

We've been very happy with our Vaude Space L 3P for many years now.
Room enough for the both of us and our luggage inside the tent. Plenty of room for the dirty/wet stuff in the 2 porch areas.
2 side entrances so you don't have to wake each other when going for a pee in the middle of the night.
Semi-freestanding, sufficient for pitching on a slab of concrete if really necessary.
Worked well for us in the heat of summer in Iran and also at sub-zero temperatures in Scandinavia.

It does look like a versatile tent with a lot of headroom and I've always regarded Terra Nova as one of the 'old school' tent manufacturers whose products I'd trust along with Vango and one or two others. From looking at pictures it doesn't look like it would cope with high winds particularly well but if it's for summer-ish use in Europe that shouldn't be a major drawback. The rest of the spec looks pretty good.

Only UK retailer I've found that seems to have it in stock is Sports Direct - link: https://www.sportsdirect.com/wild-co...ng-tent-783033 Sports Direct are to be found more at the 'pile it high, sell it cheap' end of the retail spectrum, more akin to a supermarket than your local camping corner shop.

I'm not sure if it's the way the camping world seems to be going these days but tents (and I'm sure other stuff as well but we're talking about tents atm) do seem to come and go from manufacturers catalogues with unseemly haste. It almost seems to be a shotgun approach to manufacturing - fire everything at the market and see what sticks / sells. If it doesn't reach its predicted sales volume its gone in a couple of years. The Zephyros seems to be one such as is a Vango (Nemesis 300) I bought a month or two back. It does mean that there are some good deals around as retailers try to get rid of them but it does make me wonder what's happening in the outdoor world.

You might also want to have a look at what REI in the US are offering. This is one of theirs (no idea which) - pictured without the flysheet - that we used on a US trip a few years back. It also had enough headroom to stand up inside, it was freestanding (helpful when the ground is like concrete) and, for its size, quite stable.

https://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hu...5-rei-tent.jpg


Two downsides though - all that mesh + internal volume made for a cold tent when the weather turned and REI were spectacularly unhelpful when we took another one of their tents back under warranty.

Thanks for quick responses, need to do some more homework. From responses can I assume the Zephros 3 is out of production? Any other suggestions would be welcome. Will be in Europe from May till November
Thanks Again
Joe

I don't know but my guess would be that it is and retailers are just selling off existing stock. Most of the first page of Google UK camping retailers list it but almost all say they don't have any. That was much the same as the Vango I bought and that is out of production. Seems odd to me that tent designs are listed and delisted in such a short time particularly as I first used one of Vango's other tents in 1971 and they still sell it!

I'm not sure there's anything wrong with buying a run out tent particularly if it's being discounted like the Zephros 3 is. Consumer rights etc are still the same and if it works for you... For £200 if you get six months use out of it I'd have said that was good value.

Went ahead and ordered it, as you said could not find any others for sale and it was the one which fitted our criteria best. Found a couple of reviews and both were positive, and as you said at that price for a name brand tent it was not too bad. Also they only wanted 5 UKP for delivery to Australia, so can get used to it before we go.
Thanks Again
Joe

Tent arrived a short time ago, as we live on a farm put it up in a nice windy spot, and it holds up well even without most of the guy ropes up, has enough guy ropes to raise the Titanic on it! Size is exactly what we wanted with plenty of head room in both tent and verandah. Was easy enough it put up and with practice would be quite quick. Was a bit disappointed to find one of the loops to hold fly open not sewn on properly easy fix, but as a whole quality seems OK. Terra Nova responded OK but with us in Australia don't expect much action. As mentioned in first post the fact it cannot free stand is our only concern, but don't think it should prove a big issue.
Joe

Wickiup 3 by Nigor tipi-style tent
 

If you have a larger budget you could also consider the WickiUp 3 by Nigor (or WickiUp 4 if you want to have a luxurious amount of space). It is a tipi-style tent, meaning you only have one pole and it packs very small! It also allows not-so-tall people to stand upright. It is tested stormproof :).

We combine the WickiUp 4 with the half-size inner tent. I love the room to store your gear inside the innertent (at the bottom of your feet) and the extra vestibule room. It is really spacious. We can fit 2 small Helinox like chairs and a small table in the vestibule and still sit comfortably.

After much research (including following this awesome thread) and a fair amount of anguish (so many tents ...), my wife and I finally pulled the plug (and emptied the wallet) on a Hilleberg Nallo 4GT. We will be using it for the next year as we head south for Mexico then on to Central and South America. Feeling good about the investment, but time will tell.


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Has anyone had any experiance with the new Lone rider adventure tent?

From what I can see they look very similar to the MSR Hubba Hubba but with the good points that Tim made already built in?
https://www.lonerider-motorcycle.com...otorcycle-tent

Tent recommendation
 

Dear adventure friends,

I use currently the Coleman Coastline 3 tent. I never used it for longer a longer tour. Just for a weekend or two. With 7kg it is heavy. But I like the space it offers. Would you go with such a tent on a longer tour (6month) with mostly ok weather but expecting some stronger wind as well?

Loads of space and good headroom is a plus but I've never been a great fan of tunnel tents as they (the ones I've had anyway) move around too much when its windy and they need pegging to stay up. I've always been a bit worried that glass fibre poles and a flexible structure don't make for a long life and you can be pretty much certain that it'll be 3.00am on a stormy wet night when they break. That keeps me awake so not terribly relaxing.

A frames (not many of those around any more) and geodesics have tended to be my tents of choice. Full geodesics are very stable and, at a pinch, can be used without pegs, but all those poles are fiddly and take ages to put up (my current Vango does anyway). That becomes annoying when you're moving on every day.

I won't pretend like I'm a master long-term camper. But.

1) I would worry about packed size more than weight. You're on a motorcycle - you don't care if the tent is too heavy for a backpacker to carry on a month-long hike. You can trade off the lightness for cheapness and/or ruggedness in other models.

2) 500 euros seems like an awfully big part of the gear budget. Unless you and your partner are very keen campers, you may find that for a large part of your RTW trip, you will have options for sleeping indoors that will be much more preferable. Developing countries will simply be cheap by Western standards; developed countries will have restrictions on wild camping, and official campsites will often cost the same as a decent hostel.

This is not to say "don't carry a tent" - more to say "don't make camping the center of your strategy". Spend a hundred euros on a *fine* tent instead of five hundred euros on an *excellent* one. Those four hundred euros will get you much further in experiences. (Speaking as some whose hundred-euro Coleman Darwin 2 tent has lasted fine through multiple trips.)

3) That particular model seems to have a lot of unhappy owners on Amazon at least.

I concur, at least for traveling Mexico, Central and South America. We spent a lot of money on a Hilleberg tent, which we have hardly used in the past 10 months of travel. And not because we don’t enjoy camping, it just turns out there are not as many occasions as you might think where you can, or it makes sense. If you can get a hostel/hotel with breakfast for $15, vs wild camp behind some gas station, and you are dead tired from a long day with another ahead of you, you decide what option you’ll take. It wasn’t until we reached Argentina that we started to see established campgrounds as a regular feature. That said, two wild camps, one in Mexico and another in Peru, rank among trip highlights.

We have camped some, and hope to do so more as we head into Patagonia, but we would have been well served by one of my existing backpacking tents, saved a lot of money and taken up less space.

The Hilleberg is an awesome tent though, and perhaps we will be glad for it in windy Patagonia [emoji4]. But still, in the balance, I think it was more than we needed.

Jim


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Like everyone else, I carried a tent and (minimal) camping gear throughout Central and South America, using it seldom. There were a couple of times when I actually could not find a place to stay in a given town after arriving right at dusk—usually due to some sort of local festival, although sometimes it was the Dakar rolling thru—and was glad for the tent option.

I didn’t bring the complete kit, since I knew I wasn’t going to be camping regularly. When I went trekking in Torres del Paine, I bought a little camp stove locally, plus maybe some other odds and ends that I’ve since forgotten. This is easily done in any area which has a camping culture. On the other hand, most of South and Central America have little or no camping culture. When a friend from Venezuela came to visit in the US and we went camping with friends, he said he’d never been camping before and was furthermore amazed that we just slept outside without bringing along bodyguards. That would be a country where I would not expect to find a lot of camping gear in the shops.

I have several Hilleberg tents, and I had one with me in Torres del Paine. Mine was one of the very few left standing when the winds picked up late one night. Yes, it cost a lot—but it’s still going strong more than 20 years after purchase, and it’s light, waterproof, windproof and compact. If I’d just been buying a tent for a single trip, I’d have bought a cheaper one...and gotten miserable that night in TDP. Instead, I look long term to the extent I can afford, and it’s been a long time since I had to even ask the question “what tent should I buy.”

YMMV, naturally.

I bought a Hubba Hubba 2 man tent from MSR back in 2008 for a trip across Europe, around Greece and back over the Alps. Worked faultlessly and used in in many camping trips since. Easy to set up and pack and at around 2kg can be used for backpacking too. Only now there is the odd drip, probably due to the seam tape having dissintigrated, but that can be replaced. It is nearly freestanding, the vestibule areas have to be pegged out. Good for hot weather as the two entrances are on opposite sides and can be left partly open at the same time, allowing a draft through.
I did look at the lone Rider ADV tent, as a replacement one day, this seems to have a similar design but looks tougher and roomier.

I've used a Coleman dome tent now for over 25 years. Finally after a lot of thought and investigation we are going with the Coleman Darwin 4+

Like I said above, been using a Darwin 2 and like it a lot.

These days Coleman makes one that looks just like the Darwin, but is made of blackout material. You should check that one out - it's what I would go with if I was buying right now.