I have and have had many different shelters during the years, but I'm new to ultralight tipis/shelters and stoves. The hot tent I have at the moment is a Helsport tipi, which is good, but terribly heavy. Same goes with my current stoves, work but are heavy. I do some trips with a friend or two, but mostly I'm skiing or hunting just with my dog. I don't even have a snowmobile anymore, so it's always either backpack, a pulk, or canoe where all the stuff is loaded in. I have convinced myself that I need a lightweight shelter + stove. Skiing trips with pulling a pulk are easy, there few more pounds won't matter that much, but a 4 person tipi + stove would be packable even for solo packpacking trips. Especially on late autumn hunting trips this would be much more comfortable compared to open front lean-to type shelters I use now.
I've been qoing back and forth between 4 person tipi, Redcliff, and Cimarron. Cimarron would be ideal for solo trips, especially weightwise, but I'm afraid not having standing height near the center pole leaves it out of the question. So it would be either 4 person tipi or Redcliff. Weight is about the same, max height is the same. At least in theory a tipi is more resistant to winds, but not sure how big the difference is in real. Do these two designs have much difference when it comes to handling winter weather? I would say where I live we have real winter conditions. Nothing extreme, but the winter lasts from November to early May. Every winter temp. drops to -40 at least for a short perioid of time, sometimes below. Right now we still have about 3 feet of snow here. So my question is if either 4 pers. tipi or Redcliff have any differences when it comes to handling snow fall ? Is either on better from the other handling the heavy snow fall without cleaning the snow out of the fabric, let's say it would snow heavily overnight for example?
How about the half liner, which is included in bundle? I have experience on lywith full liners, or without any. Would the half liner give enough protection from condensation on solo trips?
Last thing is the stove. Both 4 person tipi and Redcliff bundles have large stove included. Would this be enough also for -13 to -40F temps? Firewood here will be mostly pine. As it easily builds up a lot of creosote, I would think not having a too large stove is good, as you can then burn it richer most of the time. Also with pine there's plenty of sparks, so I think an extra foot or two of pipe would help, as the sparks would have more time to burn out before reaching the canopy. If I got it right, the spark arrestor ultra would be a good choice in winter conditions, and probably when having pine as firewood too. Also with a slightly longer pipe I could use the same stove with my Helsport tipi, which has 8' 8" of peak height.
Ultralight hot tents really are pretty much non existing here. Not much dealers, not much experiences heard around. I've read the forums quite a bit on the subject, but would appreciate all the input here. After all it's quite expensive purchase. I'm happy to pay for a quality product, just would like to make the right choice. When I just can get along with the thing that for outside European Union purchaces I have to pay 3% customs and 24% Finnish value added tax
Thanks in advance!
