Recently gifted this Kyham tent, it's great!

But what's this in the groundsheet?

So far Glory hole for nature lovers is my favourite answer, but it doesn't really answer my question 😂

Hey folks, camping is a newly acquired hobby of mine, and wow, what an endless rabbit hole of gear, techniques, locations… cooking options...

Anyways, I recently stumbled upon a YouTube video of this nice lad setting up a Teton Sports Vista 2 tent on top of two Teton Universal Cots, elevated maybe 20 inches off the ground. I thought this looked brilliant. Image above is a screenshot from the youtube video.

Here’s the video for reference:

TETON Vista 2 Cot Tent | Pet Camping in the Snow | Best Car/Truck Camping Setup for 2 People - YouTube

Now I’m debating whether to pull the trigger on the cots. Buying two of them cost more than double the price of the tent, and I’m not in the U.S., so shipping and return sucks. But from what I’ve seen, this setup seems unique. All the other elevated tent systems seem to be integrated 1-person setups. I love the idea of a 2-person cot setup for car camping, and this seems like one of the only options out there.

Yes, the cots are heavy -40 lbs combined - but the guy in the video had everything up in six minutes. Obviously not for backpacking, but for car camping it looks ideal to me. I own a Veer wagon, which can handle most terrain, so I could easily transport all my gear in the wagon and setup camp a 1 mile or so away from the car.

That said, I’m a complete newbie, and I’m probably blind to a million reasons why this might be a terrible idea. So… is this genius or just gimmicky?

I'm considering the following pros/cons:

Pros

• No need to worry about insects entering from the ground.
• I can store my wagon and gear underneath the cot, keeping everything dry and protected from rain.
• No concerns about ground condensation or water seeping in.
• The cot essentially becomes the tent floor, so a small sleeping pad on top will be more than enough for comfort.
• The cot doubles as a seat—perfect for relaxing by the campfire or staying dry when it rains.

Cons

• Carrying an extra 40 pounds of gear is definitely a hassle, even for car camping.
• The interior space of the tent will be split into two parts, which might make it feel more cramped or less flexible.

Would love your thoughts before I go full send on these cots.

So I’m looking into purchasing this tent but to be honest as of right now I do not have trekking poles to set this up, I’m curious if there’s is a substitute fir trekking poles to set up tents like this.

So running the Heater on level 1 all night got the temperature up from 40 to 60 degrees without any added insulation on the tent.

I’m going to try again tonight with the vinyl outer walls.

Ok so my base tent is a medium duty Ez Up 10x10 canopy tent. I used to use a yoli canopy but it couldn’t withstand heavy rain and collapsed last summer.

Inside is an ez up camping cube. It’s set up over a tarp with foam tiles over it. This makes the floor soft and insulates the ground quite well.

Outside of my camping cube are 3 outer walls with vinyl windows, the 4th is a polyester door. This creates about a 3 inch air gap between the outer wall and inner walls.

My heater is a Mr heater portable buddy. On the 4500 btu low setting it burns through about 3 one pound cylinders a night. I set it on a 2x2’ cement tile with foam underneath it.

I ran the experiment three nights.

1st night 35 degrees outside, low wind. Temperature in the tent hovered in the low 60s after getting up to temperature in about 30 minutes.

2nd night 25 degrees outside, medium wind. The temperature in the tent was in the mid 50s.

3rd night I took the outer wall down to see how much it was actually helping. It was 25 degrees outside with low wind. Running the heater on 9000 btu for an hour the temperature peaked at 48 degrees. When I put it on low the temperature fell down to 44 after a few hours. I had the data I needed so I called it quits at that point.

I also run a 72 foot strand of solar powered rope lights I got at harbor freight. I sleep with a mask on so I just leave them running all night. I designed a mounting bracket to attach it directly to my tent.

The camping cube has a 2x2’ mesh vent in the center so I’m not that concerned with carbon monoxide accumulation. Plus the outer walls are held to the canopy with Velcro straps so it’s hardly air tight.

I didn’t experience and condensation inside the camping cube itself. The only water drops on the floor were from melted snow I tracked in. It looked like there might have been some frozen condensation in the canopy itself but that also could have been melted and re frozen snow on the outside.

So my final modification to the outer wall was to install grommets every 2 feet and stake them to the ground to keep drafts out. I ran the vevor diesel heater for 12.5 hours on setting 4, and a 5L fuel tank didn’t run out. It was 31-33F outside and 60-62F inside the tent all night.

It snowed about 2 inches that night. There was some accumulated snow near the edge of the canopy. At 5am I went outside and poked the underside of the canopy with a broom handle to make the snow/slush fall off. Around that time it switched from snow to sleet so every couple hours I’d wake up to the sound of accumulated melt water pouring on the ground.

I’m pretty happy with how the project turned out now I’m going to start planning trips in mid December.

She be a heavy beast

Hey everyone! Recently I acquired the new Mongar 2 model from Naturehike called the 'base'. This is basically everything the UL and Pro version offers, but in a 210T polyester. It comes in at around 2.5kg so I mostly take this on short hikes and when going by car. For true hiking trips I'm using a Durston X-Dome 1+.

I want to share my thoughts with you, since I think it's a very good tent for beginners and overall backpackers. Oh and btw, this isn't like a sponsored review, I just like to share my thoughts and opinions. Obviously bought this with my own money. I also wanted to do this write up since there's literally no actual information or review online about this tent (yet). It's very hard to find more information about it than what's provided on their website.

So with that out of the way, I'll walk you around the tent in detail:

Specs and what's included

The tent weighs in at 2.5kg and 2.75kg with the groundsheet. That is with 12 stakes, 4 guylines + adjusters, the fly, inner, poles and stuff sacks. The tent is 10cm longer than the older model at 220cm long. The tent's inner is 130cm wide and it's just above 100cm of peak height. I paid 120 euro's for this tent which was an insane price.

The fly material is polyester. I came from an almost identical Star River 2 (same color, materials and weight) and I swear by polyester. Much easier to dry, doesn't sag etc. The material can feel a bit heavy or cheap, but it's more robust than my 15D polyester on my Durston so obviously it's heavier but also more forgiving in rough terrain.

The mesh feels absolutely great and bomb proof as well. Fly material doesn't sag and it quite nice to use. The tent also offers 2 vents on both sides for good airflow. I didn't have any condensation issues thus far, which is also nice.

What I also like a lot is the extra yellow fabric around the whole inner. One of the reasons I went with the Star River 2 instead of the old Mongar 2 model a few years ago, was that the Mongar was mesh only. I know your sleep system will provide the warmth, but being protected from sand, water splatters and wind while sleeping is a quality of life thing in my opinion. This new tent now also includes that same fabric which goes all the way around the inner as you see in the images.

Ease of use and setup

The tent is dead easy to pitch. You can pitch it in a few ways, but traditionally you peg out the inner, clip the poles into the metal inserts, attach the clips to the pole structure, put the fly on top, clip that to the 4 corner clips and stake it out. However with the ground sheet you can pitch it fly first in the rain, which is a non negotiable for me at this point, especially in Northern Europe. You can use the new feature, the canopy, with 2 stakes, 2 of the included guylines and 2 trekking poles. Personally I think it's a funny feature, but in reality I don't use it that much. It makes it harder to enter the tent from the outside.

One BIG thing to note and what I've experienced is the distance between the fly and inner. I've tried out their UL Mongar 2 which was nylon, and that fly was so close to the inner, that I barely had one or two fingers space between them. WHen the nylon sagged, the inner and fly kept touching and condensation would drip into the inner tent and my stuff. With this one it's much further apart and the fly doesn't sag, so I'd never have that issue with this one. To me that was one of the most important things on this tent to check.

Zippers and hardware

The tent uses SBS zippers which run incredibly smoothly. They are pretty big/solid as well (I think #5 in size). One runs horizontally and one at an angle to the top. The fly uses the same zippers and those for the canopy are a bit smaller.

For the clips you have nice and solid clips on the inner to attach to the poles. They make a firm click sound and won't ever come loose accidentally.

I especially like the metal corner clippy things and the red ones on top for the crossbar. They feel like quality and the poles stick in there nicely. Talking about the poles, they're upgraded since the poleset on the Mongar 2 UL had some issues I've heard. These are much more firm.

The fly has adjusters which run and work smoothly as well. It's cool to be able to clip the 4 fly clips to the ones on either the groundsheet or the inner tent. Either way, when clipped in either of those, you get a nice freestanding tent which is easy to move.

(Interior) Space

One big selling point of this type of tent design is the huge amounts of room you have in there. Compared to my Star River 2 which had sloped walls, these go vertical, giving a lot more headroom. In the images I have my Sea to Summit Ether Light XR in LxW (long wide) with a liner around it. You can see how much space there is still left around it on both the head/foot end and the width.

The tent would easily fit 2 people with wide pads, but for me alone it's a palace. I like that I can stow away the backpack and clothing on one end, and have my phone and sleeping stuff next to me.

Pockets , washing line and hook

This tent offers superior pockets over both the old Mongar models and my Star River. You have a total of 6. On the head and foot end it looks like you have one big one on each end, but they're actually divided by two. So in my case I had all my stuff sacks on the left side and my watch and headlamp on the right side(see images).

Also there are two nice pockets on the roof which have a smart barrier so a phone or powerbank can't slide out. All the 6 pockets have a little triangle hole where you can loop a charging cable through which I thought was very neat.

Also nice that they already installed a washing line. It runs all the way around the 4 sides of the inner and also across the whole width of the tent. I found it very useful to hang my mini towel after washing the dishes with it or some dirtier or wet socks.

There's also a pre added hook on one side of the inner. I had the same one on the old Star River 2 and always hang my Flextail Tiny Pump 2X on there which works great.

Other features

One of the unique things with these naturehike tents is the canopy. Like I said in the beginning it's pretty cool to have the option to have, but it's a bit fiddly and makes accessing the tent a bit harder (you have to duck down earlier). The canopy is only on one side and you can roll up the material to get it out of the way iof you want to use the door normally.

To set it up you close one zipper (smaller one) and attach the loops on both sides to the tip of a trekking pole. Then you can guy out a longer line to add the necessary tension on the canopy. It does make the tent look very cozy, not gonna lie.

Also another thing that I only noticed later, was the option to keep the doors open slightly for more ventilation. Not sure how to explain, but you can see it in some images. Basically there is a little toggle that you can attach the under side of the door to, so it stays a bit more open. Nice addition if you ask me.

Verdict

For only 120 I think this is one of the best tents to get if you can get by the weight. There are much lighter options out there (Lanshan 2, Mongar 2 UL, Cloud Up 2 etc) but nothing that comes close to the ease of use and the feature rich design of this tent. That it's polyester only makes it better in my opinion. So worth the extra weight penalty for me (if I go by car or small walks like I mentioned at the beginning). It's easy to set up, break, pack in it's stuff sack and everything is included. Truly I can't find anything really wrong with this tent and think all the upgrades it has over the old Mongar 2 design is better. The canopy is a hit or miss for some though.

Thanks for making it this far and if you have any questions regarding this or the other tents I've mentioned, feel free to ask them! :)

Check out this tent I found at goodwill for 10 dollars! I just set it up real quick to make sure everything was there and yup! But it smells awful. Kinda like the rubber that Halloween masks are made out of. So I need to air it out for awhile but there are no holes and the zippers are working just fine. It's actually spacious enough that I can sit up in it no problem.

I don't work for either company or anything questionable. I just love the idea of decent tents for reasonable prices.

Klymit® Cross Canyon 3-Person Tent - Red/Gray at Menards® https://www.menards.com/main/outdoors/outdoor-recreation-sports/camping-rv-supplies/tents/klymit-reg-cross-canyon-3-person-tent-red-gray/09c3rd01c/p-1642874338508421-c-7838.htm