[philmont] tents

Our troop standardized on Alps tents about 4-5 years ago now. Our
day-to-day troop tents are Alps Outfitter 4s, and we had 1 crew in
2003 and 2 crews in 2005 at Philmont with Alps Mystique 2s, which
performed flawlessly. This year we have 3 crews going with a mixture
of Mystique 2s and Extreme 2s. We have nothing against the Philmont
tents but do prefer to be able to do shakedowns with the equipment
we'll be using at Philmont, plus we do enough other high
adventure/backpacking activities that we can justify having the tents
(especially at the Scout Direct prices). Our experience with the Alps
tents has been extremely good; the Outfitter 4s have an awful lot of
camping nights on them (we are a fairly big troop, > 50 boys, and we
have around 16 of those tents), and we've not yet had a zipper failure
or a hole in the tent that wasn't the result of serious abuse. We have
had pole failures and every one of them was due to abuse or improper
pitching - attaching the fly to the poles with the velcro underneath
is absolutely critical in a storm but the Scouts sometimes forget
that. The Mystique 2 is an excellent Philmont tent - light, sturdy and
a breeze to set up. We've been out in some serious storms with no
problems at all. The Extreme 2s are a bit heavier but are a self
standing design and are also quite sturdy. It's hard for me to imagine
a properly pitched one getting damaged in any storm less than a
tornado, but once again, the velcro attachments for the fly are
critical for strength. I have a personal Zephyr 2 which my wife got
for me - I was initially skeptical but I've come to love it; it's an
ideal Texas tent as the tent itself is all mesh but it's got a wide,
full coverage fly that enables it to handle an extremely severe storm
and hard rain while staying dry. The Zephyr 2 has now become my
favorite tent, makes an extremely luxurious solo tent and would be as
comfortable as a Mystique or Extreme if doubled up. It's pretty light
too. Lastly, we've had extremely good luck with Alps customer service
- I'll be quite surprised if they don't take care of you in some
reasonable manner with your tents, they are good people and about the
most scout-friendly business you'll find. I didn't notice if you
mentioned which model Alps tents gave you problems but I'd bet if you
go back you'll find that nobody explained to the boys the criticality
of the fly-to-pole velcro attachments - we have periodic tent pitching
competitions which we use as a mechanism to reinforce this.

T.W. Cook
SM - Troop 151, Georgetown, TX
2005 622-N5, 2007 802-C1

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Received on Tue May 8 08:42:53 2007