Tents

On the bright side - its quite spacious for a 2 man tent.

This is us camping on a flattish spot at 2500m on the side of the escarpment:

Hi VE members
I'm needing some advice on tents, since my fail with the Hitec Tybet 2 tent I have been searching for a decent but affordable high berg tent, I came across this tent at CUM Gateway, and was wondering if anyone had experience with this particular K-Way tent?
I had the guy in the store pitch it, and on face value it seems a great tent, would be quite tight for 3men/woman with packs, it seems to have all the right technical aspects to it,
It retails for R1799.
Some advice would help, I have searched google and no luck

Ok - so I have already passed this info on to Fitness, but just if anyone out there is interested (this is based on me checking the tent out at CUM earlier today and talking to a fairly clued up employee) :

The Nerolite is the revamped Treklite that was such a nightmare of a tent. It has apparently been tested on Kili and EBC.

Problems with the old Treklite:
1) Its heavier than its biggest price rival, the 360 Degree Cool Mountain
2) Its fabric is very weak, mine tore on the first use
3) Its guy ropes are lined up with the poles, so the walls sit on the side of the tent. This causes the inside to get very wet
4) The ventilation inside the tent is poor, so you wake up to a large volume of water on everything
5) The inside of the tent has a large amount of netting making it fairly cold in winter

The new tent is roughly the same weight as the Cool Mountain, so a fair amount lighter than the old Treklite. The weight saving is apparently due to a lighter but higher grade fabric on the outer layer. It looks like the same fabric as the Cool Mountain and is the exact same colour. So that should theoretically should solve point 1 and 2.

The guy ropes are now lower down and use a bent 2 point fastening device (the same fastening device as the Cool Mountain, they are slightly easier to use). So that should theoretically solve point 3.

The tent now has a light frame around the vent window, but it has been reduced from 2 windows to 1. The window is lined up with the netting on the door, so apparently the ventilation should be better. So theoretically thats point 4, but I don't know whether this totally will solve this problem.

The inside of the tent now uses a smaller netting (i.e. smaller holes), so it should be warmer. And with that, all issues should be sorted - in theory.

But lets compare the Cool Mountain 3 Man to the Nerolite 3:
- The Cool Mountain is R100 cheaper (although this is negated by the fact that the Cool Mountain only comes with 6 pegs, vs the 16 on a Nerolite - both tents need 16 pegs)
- The tents both weigh about the same
- I don't have the size specs of the Nerolite, so I can't compare this aspect
- The Cool Mountain has flaps on the side of the tent that go right down to the floor - making it much warmer

Personally I will be a fan of the Cool Mountain until my faith is restored in K-Way's tents, but its good that K-Way has responded to the massive flaws in their tent design.

Hi Ghaz thanks so much, you did all the real home work for me. I think Iay be brave and go buy it. I get a 20% discount at CUM with my Discovery credit card. If it fails I'll simply return it to CUM. At least I have the consumer protection act to fall back on if it fails.

What are the other tent options in that price range? I don't have a large budget to spend.

Fitness wrote: What are the other tent options in that price range? I don't have a large budget to spend.

As far as I know its just K-Way and 360 Degree with tents in that range. There was some talk about the old ISO-dome being made again, but I don't know what happened with that.

Anybody else know?

Smurfatefrog wrote:

Fitness wrote: I get a 20% discount at CUM with my Discovery credit card.

ah thanks, I just realized I get 10% discount

I only get 5%

Although thats due to Mountain Backpackers, not Discovery.

My 1000th post! That's actually quite sad

After much debate i decided to buy the K-Way Nerolite 3, im happyy to say this past weekend Ghaz, myself and Johan tested the tent on the top of Tsepeng Pass, we managed to pitch it fairly quickly in deterioating weather conditions and light, to say it is a 3 man is somewhat debatable, although we did all have large backpacks inside the tent, but i can say that it handled the 20mm or so rain that was thrown down on us, happy to report no leaks and according to Ghaz it is a better tent that the Treklite 3 he used to have. so if anyone is looking at buying the tent im happy to recommend it.

Indeed an improvement on the Treklite. I did wake up with a marginally wet sleeping bag - this seems to be due to me missing 1 of the peg points on my side of the tent. The tent is wider and shorter than it used to be, so now it comfortably takes 3 people and doesn't have the needless amount of room to store your stuff above your head.

On a side note - anyone camping above the Mzimude Valley with a group that needs to pitch 3 or less tents, the spot we camped at was really good. Its at 3150m, about 100m inland from the escarpment edge by Tsepeng Pass. The tiny overhang behind this spot has a relatively deep drainage gully and the spot for tents is well sheltered due to the rock face, but as I say, is well drained. We had probably about 12mm of rain overnight in a wind of about 15km/h, and had no issues from water coming under the tent despite being on the Leqooa ridge:

@ ghaznavid

My new tent is the 360 degree 2 man 4 season tent - its lighter, cheaper and based on the few nights I had to share a tent with John on the GT, its very waterproof...

Which model is that 360 degrees tent, and are you still happy with it seeing you've probably slept a few more nights in it by now? Has it been tested in a decent escarpment wind?