Expedition By Name & Nature

Last year, Aussie mountaineer Chris Wills and a small but committed crew set off on an epic 15-day field trip with one goal - to create a documentary on backcountry riding in Australia. Australia's backcountry scene was exploding, and with an incredible abundance of backcountry terrain perfect for touring, these snow hounds were keen to promote the local scene. But when you're exploring three different alpine zones, and bagging summits, riding playful lines or building booters along the way, all in front of the camera, you can't be worrying about what you're wearing or how you're camping later that night. They chose the Expedition 2-Person Tent for that reason - reliable rest when the time came to put the boards down and the feet up.

Expedition 2-Person Tent

When travelling in a Winter alpine environment, or any remote outdoor setting for that matter, your shelter is your lifeline. Without it, deteriorating weather or any other nasty conditions can quickly have hazardous consequences and will certainly put an end to your adventure. Last Winter, Tim Van Der Krogt, Divya Gordon, Aaron Dickfos and I set out to make a backcountry skiing documentary in Australia. This involved three remote alpine locations and over 15 days in the field with self-supported Winter camping. We used the Mountain Designs Expedition 2-Person Tents as our primary shelter.

Expedition 2-Person Tent: a balance between light weight and durability. (Image courtesy of Aaron Dickfos)

Field Test

At around 2.8 kg, the Expedition 2-person tent strikes a balance between lightweight and durability: remember this is a legitimate and fully-featured 4-season tent. Sharing the load of carrying the tent ensured that we weren't adding any unnecessary weight to our already heavy packs. Once set up, it's clear that this tent can withstand some serious weather. On our expedition the weather threw everything at us: blizzards, high winds and overnight snowfalls. The silicone/nylon construction of the fly held all of the weather out and the four aluminium poles ensured the tent maintained its shape during high winds and heavy snow, twice on the trip we woke up to 15 to 20 cm of snow! The eight tie-down points as well as four guy lines ensured that the tent wasn't going anywhere in a gale.

Set-up is easy and integrity is reliable - there are 8 tie-down points and 4 guy lines to anchor it. (Image courtesy of Aaron Dickfos)

Once inside, the tent is quite spacious, Tim and I are pretty big dudes and we were able to sleep and move around quite comfortably. During our trip we waited out many days of poor weather so there was lots of tent time - we read, sipped coffee and talked smack as the anticipation of good riding intensified. Interior mesh storage options meant that our gear was well organised, and the breathability of the tent ensured that condensation was kept to a minimum.

For us, the defining feature of this tent was the size and shape of the vestibule. On its own it's quite spacious, but by digging down into the snow we were able to double the size of this space giving us an area to store gear, cook in bad weather and stretch our legs.

The versatile and roomy vestibule was the best feature for us. (Image courtesy of Aaron Dickfos)

Overall, this tent held up extremely well given the abuse we dished out to it and kept us safe, warm and dry the entire time. Any minor damage was quickly repaired with the repair kit that comes included with the tent. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this product to anyone considering taking on a rigorous mission that requires a bombproof, yet lightweight 4-season shelter.

A robust Winter home. (Image courtesy of Aaron Dickfos)

Photo Credits

All images supplied by:

Aaron Dickfos

• Instagram @expedimage