mev

Thanks for sharing the review and photo.

At least as much as the one vs. two - what seems nice on this tent is the overall height. I finally got rid of my last tent with a low enough ceiling that I couldn't sit up. That is a somewhat larger issue than the overall width. It looks like the width of the 1-person (36 inches) vs 2-person (52 inches) makes this a one-person on the roomy side and a two-person on the narrow side.

I got my experience with both size tents on an extended trip across Russia. Through my own fault, I hadn't set up my tent before my trip and was surprised to find myself with a one-person (MSR Hubba) when I thought I had ordered a two-person (MSR Hubba Hubba). On that trip, I spent a lot of time in the tent in intense Siberian mosquito/bug zones and I was grateful to be able to sit in my tent. Even that one-person model had two doors and vestibules on both sides so I was able to place some panniers in the vestibules. Part way though the trip, my brother visited and brought with him a two-person Hubba Hubba tent. After he left, I did the remainder of the trip with a two-person tent.

Overall, I have a slight preference for a two-person tent, but it isn't as big as my preference to make sure the center height is tall enough.

Although when I go with my minimal tube-tent I also can't sit in it (and it doesn't have doors to keep out bugs) but that is more of a provisional situation when most of my nights are in motels and just a few in the tube tent.

bark_eater 

Ive back packed with a hennesy hammock since they fist came out. I have a Blackbird now but have only used it few times. I took a tent last year because I wasnt 100% that every campsite would be hangable. If I was stealth camping around maine I would definatly take a hammock.
that's an excellent engineering solution for the missing tree. Myself I like to be able to set up camp well after the reptilian mind has taken over.

Tourist in MSN

On the two versus one person tent, I agree with the consensus, prefer two person when I am traveling solo. I have used several different two person tents for bike touring, usually there is enough room for me to lie down in the middle, on one side I have two panniers and on the other side have two panniers plus handlebar bag.

I like to be able to pack up my gear while I am in the tent in the event it is raining in the morning, then the last thing that needs to be packed is the tent. My tent is always packed in the front right pannier and other stuff in that pannier is stuff that I do not care if it gets damp from any moisture on the tent. This way, when it is raining while I pack up in the morning, I can get three panniers packed inside the tent where it is dry. As Mev noted, you want to be able to sit up in the tent, if it is that tall then it is easier to get stuff into and out of your panniers inside the tent.

In post number 10, above, there are two photos of my tent that I prefer for bike touring, that is a two person tent, it also has a vestibule that offers some more storage space in the doorway area.

I have done some trips with a one person tent, one of those was so small I could not get more than one pannier inside the tent with me and could not get the other three in the tiny vestibule where the door was.

A two person tent is heavier than a one person tent, but not by much, carrying a few more ounces and spending a few more dollars is worth it.

fourfa

ctrl-F 'bivy sack' not found...

They're not for everyone. (Neither is a hammock.) But it's hard to argue with a complete waterproof and comfortable* shelter for 16oz that packs down to the size of a can of soup. Personally I'm a fan; I pray for group backpacking trips to have an odd number of people so I can bivy rather than have to carry half of someone else's tent. Done two complete solo tours in one (~5 months worth), very happily. I couldn't spot a definitive answer from the original poster, but it seems they are talking about a solo trip, so bivy should be one of the options under consideration.

* not for claustrophobes. And best not for rainy-season trips (though I'd rather avoid that altogether), nor winter trips where you might need to zip in for 12+ hours.

If it's not a solo trip... I also have a 4-lb "3 person tent" that's really a roomy 2-person tent, and it's been terrific bikepacking with the girlfriend. Room enough to get all the panniers inside and still have room to change etc. Tents have come a long way in recent years. In 2020 I personally wouldn't look at anything that's over 4 lbs. Hub-and-spoke pole design, lightweight fabrics, minimal pockets and zippers and other cruft. You can also get under 2lbs with a TarpTent style design - waterproof singlewall but so roomy and breezy that the usual problems with condensation don't happen.

mev

After having tried a bivy sack is why I went back to a tube tent like this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FB7XYRS/
I can unzip it into a tarp, or put a string through it and pitch it like the following photo. The drawback vs. a bivy is no good bug protection. The advantage is slightly more room/versatility as well as being less expensive.

If I am going on a trip where I camp a considerable amount of time, I'll bring a real tent. If I go on a trip I expect to motel most of the time, but want some flexibility if the motels are full/unavailable (e.g. photo above), then I'll pack my tube tent.

DropBarFan

I would go with a tent, adds some weight but IMHO more versatile than a hammock. For a shorter tour it might be cheaper & more convenient to get food from restaurants/grocery stores than toting food & cooking. For rainy Nova Scotia one would want appropriate clothing of course.

bark_eater 

I was a committed tarp camper, and the primary reason I am carrying a tent is for camping in state campgrounds.

For flying bug protection I used to use small mesh dome tent that went over my head. That was only efective when it was cool enough to stay in a sleeping bag and in tick free areas. You could fit one of those in your tube tent or they are available without poles that hang from your Ridge line.

I have spent hundreds of nights under a kelty Noahs tarp pitched upside down. It has a bunch of additional tie out points that I hung a cheap army cot sized mosquito cover from. Cheap,light and capable of q bomb proof pitch.
​

Fissile

I have a Hennessy Hammock. These are pictures of a test set-up from several years ago. I can get the hammock and sleeping bag, into a single pannier with a bit of room to spare. Be advised, a hammock is really a warm weather option. Cooler weather will require an under-quilt or you'll freeze.

bark_eater 

I used a first generation Hennesy for a long time. Mosquitos could bite through the bottom so I needed to atleast sleep with a fleece sleeping bag or "pajamas", so it wasn't that great for true jungle nights. The blackbird I replaced it with has a double bottom, but I miss the bottom exit / entrance of the hennesy.

Fissile

This is true. I never used the Hennessy without a sleeping bag. If it was warm, I'd sleep on top of the bag.

Tourist in MSN

My tour last summer in Canadian Maritimes, sometimes in the morning looking out through the mosquito netting in the door I could see the mosquitoes were waiting for breakfast.

cyccommute 

If your food gets eaten or crapped on, you are hanging it improperly. It needs to be high and away from the trunk of the tree. And it’s not like the food is out of some container. I hang the bike bag or backpack that the food is in. If an animal is going to be able to shred hanging bags, they are going to shred the tent as well. In my experience, both are made of the same material.

If an animal knows that a hanging bag is food, they also know that a tent is food. We have had bears enter tents in Colorado. We have had bears enter cars, garages, houses and even restaurants. All of those reek of humans but bears still go inside because they smell food. People aren’t really going to concern them much, especially if the bear is habituated to human food.

The main reason that I keep my food out of my tent and I hang my food (as well as any food waste if there aren’t bear proof trash cans available) is to avoid habituating a bear to human food. A habituated bear is a dead bear walking. My state (and most others) has a 2 strikes rule. The first time a bear is caught around human food, it is tagged and moved. If it gets caught again around human food, it is killed. Even if hanging food were completely ineffective, I do it to keep a bear alive.

I camp in places where there are no trees all the time. Out on the plains, I don’t have to worry about bears since they no longer range there. Above timberline, I put my food away from my tent. There’s not much for bears to eat above 11,500 feet but they might range there. I still keep food out of my tent.

Concentration. It’s a matter of concentration of food odors. To mitigate food on my clothes, I cook food in my bike clothes or I have “cooking clothes”. When I go to bed, I change to clothes that I don’t cook in. Clothes that I’ve cooked in go into the bags that get hung up. I wash up before bed which drops the concentration of the food odors enough so that the “reeking” of my human self might come through and keep those bears at bay.

I’ve never had any kind of chew-through on any tent in 40+ years of bicycle touring and 50+ years of camping. I also don’t take food in my tent.

So you do use bear boxes if they are available. You just don’t if they aren’t. The bears are still there. And I agree that bears are smart. At least 5 or 6 per year figure out how to get into cars around here (often Subarus). But they are also fairly dumb as they can’t figure out how to get out.

He way over-blows how difficult hanging food is. It shouldn’t take 15 minutes to do it. It takes me more time to tie a knot around a rock to throw into a tree than it does to hoist the food up there. It might take 15 minutes if you are rather inept at it but I would hope someone could learn how to do it and do it more efficiently. People are pretty smart.

And he does “rodent hang” which is just a bit less involved than a bear hang. I also noticed that his complaint about “spindly trees” shows limbs that are further out from the tree and could support hanging of food. His arguments against it are weak at best.

Yep. Everything goes in the bag...or, rather, stays in the bag...before it goes up. And how much food I carry depends on the type of touring I do. I carry 3 days of food, at least, when I road tour because I’ve never found food to be as available without long detours off route. For off-road, back-country tours, I carry up to a week off food (I don’t do much more than week off-road because of the routes). But off-road I carry freeze-dried. 30 lbs of freeze-dried would be expensive and enough for 5 to 6 weeks of off-road touring.

djb

how I was brought up doing outdoor stuff food safety wise is pretty much in line what cycco said, and pretty much is in line with the common take on it, so won't change lifelong habits taught early on.

Now here is an important point in my opinion, I certainly dont have the backwoods experience a lot of you do, and have never personally experienced any bear food problems BUT I have seen on numerous occasions people get their tents chewed through by mice, or tent screen entrances broken by raccoons during the day. On some sort of canoe trip with friends and our kids eons ago, we had dry bags nibbled through by mice even though they were hung up, not quite sure how that happened, but all I want to say is that in all likelihood, the chances are pretty high that your nice equipment will get ruined by not human killing bears, but the smaller little critters.

still a pain, and still a drag that holes get chewed in good equipment that will then leak in rain, or let bugs in with busted zippers or whatever.

good light tents aint cheap, so it would be a real shame to have your 500 600 dollar tent chewed through by rodents, and a total PITA for repair.

cyccommute 

Just to be clear, I believe that bears are in the same category as snipes, Big Foot and unicorns. They don’t exist! I’ve wondered through the Colorado Rockies as well as much of the US for all my life. I’ve never seen a bear in the wild. I’m convinced that bears in zoos are products of Disney’s SFX lab

The only bear I’ve seen outside of a zoo was in New Jersey...of all places! Still not convinced that it wasn’t a very large dog*





* I know it was a bear but the story is better if I deny the existence of bears.

Digger Goreman

My untried (and possibly flawed) search fu has rodentia repelled by vinegar. Any practical collaboration?

Miele Man

LOL

I was riding along a dirt logging/mining road in Northern Ontario, Canada and came across a large area that'd been burned out in the Great Fire of 1922
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_1922) and saw a large open area just teeming with blue berries. I was going to venture over there and pick some until i saw a couple of big black bears, and then a couple of more and then some more. I don't know how many were in that berry patch gorging themselves but I figured I'd just continue on. No berries for me that day. LOL

The area around Matachewan, Ontario has a lot of bears. there used to be a spring bear hunt there and hunters came from all over - even from the deep south of the U.S.A.

Cheers

Tourist in MSN

I decided to wait for a while before I started pedaling again after seeing the bear near the road up ahead as I was riding out of Waterton Park in Canada just north of Glacier National Park.



Several years ago on a kayak trip, I was camping on an island in the Apostle Isles. I was organizing some of the food in the bear box. Noticed a bear in the distance with her cub slowly looking for blue berries as they browsed through the brush and approached our site. Then the bear stood up on back legs and looked like she was getting a good sniff, and then the bear and cub started moving away from the campsite. That was before I owned a digital camera.

Later that day I saw one of the park rangers, I congratulated him on how well they had trained their bears. I described the sighting, he asked if she had a tag in both ears and I said yes. He then said, yeah I know which one you are talking about.

***

Yes, I know you were joking. But if you were not so careful with your food, you might see more bears.

phughes

I hang my food bag, but ammonia works well as a repellant. We use it at home to keep animals away from the trash. Very effective. I have considered using it on tour, but don't know if I want to smell ammonia all night.

phughes

I'm sort of shocked at how big the Hennesy is packed up. The Warbonnet Blackbird packs much smaller. I didn't think there would be so big of a difference.

Here is the Blackbird, and the Mamajamba tarp packed, and in the Ortlieb Classic Back Rollers. They compress a lot more as well if necessary, but they really take very little room, and with the stakes I use, weigh only 2.5 lbs, maybe a bit less.

Fissile

[QUOTE=phughes;21511106]I'm sort of shocked at how big the Hennesy is packed up. The Warbonnet Blackbird packs much smaller. I didn't think there would be so big of a difference.

Here is the Blackbird, and the Mamajamba tarp packed, and in the Ortlieb Classic Back Rollers. They compress a lot more as well if necessary, but they really take very little room, and with the stakes I use, weigh only 2.5 lbs, maybe a bit less.

/QUOTE]

The hammock is on the right...rain fly included. The thing on the left is a North Face 3 season bag. I no longer use the stuff sack for the hammock...switched to snake skin.

Fissile

I live in Jersey...10 miles from NYC and we've had a bear in the back yard on at least one occasion. North Jersey and Northeast Pennsylvania have the highest concentration of black bears anywhere in the US. Very little hunting pressure and lots of trash cans and dumpsters full of half eaten meatball heroes and pork roll sammiches is the reason. The bears around here are half tame. They're not interested in people, all they want is your pick-a-nick basket. As long as you don't get between a Jersey bear and its meatball hero, you're fine. So if you're in Jersey and a bear got a hold of your sammich, forget it man, it's gone.

None of the above apply if you're in other parts of the US Murica where brown bears and polar bears can be found. Brown bears and polar bears will kill people just for the lulz. Srsly, brown bears and polar bears are dangerous and should not be farked with.

Digger Goreman

The ammonia is supposed to be for bears and snakes, in an internet article. I wouldn't want it near the tent either.

phughes

[QUOTE=Fissile;21511127]That makes more sense.

I have thought about using snake skins, but like the stuff sack that came with the Blackbird. I can keep it on the hammock since it is open at both ends, and simply unclip the hammock from one tree, and stuff the hammock back into it, then unclip the other end. Really nice and easy.

seedsbelize 

I will be the one. I live in Yucatan, and LIVE in my hammock. I have a Hennessy that I haven't had the chance to use yet, except in the back yard. The cold air underneath was indeed a problem. I have thought about a lightweight bivy instead of an underquilt.

Carbonfiberboy 

We see black bears when we hike in the Cascades. Not an issue. Funny about the tent damage fears. We've worn out 3 tents, just using them. Never had any serious animal damage, just the three 1" holes from mouse attacks over the hundreds of tent nights. Fear isn't healthy. I feel totally safe in the woods, much safer than anywhere else. Typical campsite. So you got your 2 X 50' parachute cords and your rescue pulley and your special throwing rock and . . .
What I'm really looking for is some nice flat rocks to build into my camp kitchen. Some nice kitchens I've built have lasted for years. There are abandoned FS pit toilets that only my wife and I remember where they are.
That's also our bike touring tent.