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The Wandering Woods

  • Sprinter Conversion
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Gear Reviews

Backpacking With The Fly Creek UL3 Tent

July 10, 2015 Betsy Woods
  Using our Fly Creek UL3 tent in Death Valley National Park 

Using our Fly Creek UL3 tent in Death Valley National Park 

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For a number of years we've been using a Kelty four-season tent (no longer being manufactured) for all our camping and backpacking needs. It's a sweet tent that's seen us through a number of snow storms. But if you're backpacking in the summer you really don't want to carry an eight pound tent. And so began our search for an ultra light weight tent. There are a lot of great tents out there but in the end we decided to go with the Big Agnes Fly Creek UL3. This is a three person tent that weighs just over three pounds, so it's pretty awesome. Here are some things we like about it. 

  1. The packaged weight is just 3 lbs 8 oz. If you just use the fly and footprint you're only packing 2 lbs 5 oz. This tent is easily light enough for me to carry along with clothes, 3L of water, sleeping bag and pad, so that Justin can cover our food. And I'm no Amazonian women. 
  2. This tent is insanely easy to set up. It has just a single hub pole in an "I" shape that attaches to the tent body via twist clips. This eliminates having to run poles through those sewn fabric loops in which they often get caught and require lots of tugging to get all the way through. All that's left is to slip the ends of the poles into the grommets by the stake loops and it's up and ready to go. 
  3. Even the stakes are ultralight. They could have sold this tent with average stakes and made you invest in your own nice ones, but the Fly Creek comes with 11 super light aluminum stakes.
  4. A nylon mesh top that runs half way down the walls enables great ventilation when its hot and a 360 degree view. 
  5. Even though they aren't big, there are a lot of pockets and loops for a gear loft so you can get nicely organized. 

Now this wouldn't be an honest review without addressing some undesirable things about this tent. The first two that comes to mind is that it doesn't come with the foot print or gear loft. This seems stingy to me for a tent that retails at $430. We've chosen not to invest in the gear loft and just use the foot print from our Kelty tent, but it's still annoying since our Kelty foot print is a tad too small. As I mentioned above, the pockets are fairly small so if you're going to be camping somewhere for awhile and want to stash a lot of stuff in your tent then you might not be very happy about that. Lastly and probably most importantly, I don't think you'd want to go through an intense storm in this thing. It comes with a nice rain fly, but to be honest the fabric and poles are just too light and thin to handle crazy winds and so forth. When we bought this tent we read a review from a guy who got caught in a real ripper and had some of the poles snap. We've only experienced some light rain in it so far, so we can't speak personally about how well it holds up. Here's the deal. If you truly want an ultralight tent then you're not going to be able to get around thin, light materials. And it's not like Big Agnes has skimped in that department. The poles have been treated with new techniques for increased longevity and the tent body and fly are made of high-tenacity ripstop nylon. But even so it's of course never going to be like a four season tent. With this in mind Big Agnes is nice enough to include a tent pole splint with the Fly Creek UL3. In summary, we find that the pros out weight the cons for this tent and have only had good experiences with it so far. As such, we highly recommend it if you're looking for something ultralight to free up you backpack this summer! 

Tags Fly Creek UL3, ultralight backpacking
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@wandering.woods

It's been legitimately hot in the van today to the point where I've had to open the window and turn on the fan, and I'm loving it for now after all the rain and cold.

Thinking back to another warm day when we were lucky enough to take the Sprinter on Highway 101 up the coast and do some kayaking 😊 From this angle you can just see our three solar panels and two fans on the roof. It came with the fan at the front, but we installed the second one directly over our bed in the back. Makes a big difference in the summer when it comes to sleep.
My last post was about making tacos, but to be honest I've barely cooked since we returned to the Sprinter. It's still cold enough that all I'm interested in doing when I'm in the van is curling up in a sleeping bag. As such, we haven't been eating the healthiest of late. What has been a nice addition to our Taco Bell runs and cafeteria meals are these Shine Organics snack pouches. They're perfect for the van. No mess, no need to refrigerate until opened. At first I was leery because I'm a big texture person, but they're like a cross between a juice and a smoothie and the flavors are on point. So is the fact that it's just pureed fruit and veggies with no added sugar. Excited to take them backpacking to supplement our usual staples of instant mashed potatoes and Ramen noodles 😁 We've always wanted to be those people who cook gourmet food when they backpack, but we're just not. Not yet at least. One can always dream.

Today was the warmest sunniest day we've had in a long time. It was so nice to get off and discover that the van was considerably warmer than outside from all the sun shining in. It definitely wasn't that way this morning when Justin and I crawled out of our sleeping bags around 5:30 to get ready for work. If there's one thing I hate, it's being cold. Poor Justin has probably been begging God to send us some sun and warmth so he doesn't have to hear me complain 😉

#shineorganicspartner
Tacos have managed to make the cut  onto our list of easy to make van meals. We make them a little different then most though. Soft shells, rice, vegetarian meat substitute (Morning Star grillers crumbles are my fave), homemade guacamole, chipotle salsa, sour cream, and salty lime-drenched shredded cabbage 👌 The cabbage part might sound weird but it adds the perfect crunch and I love it so much I make extra and eat it plain afterwards.

What's your favorite easy van meal? Don't worry, we eat our fair share of things like mac and cheese so no judgement here 😁
Had a wonderful phone conversation today with someone I've never met who had lots of really thoughtful questions about what it's like to live in a van, if it's been financially worth it, things we might change and so forth. She and her husband are contemplating building out a van in the future. Being able to share our experiences to help others make an informed decision regarding van life makes me really happy.

Hope you all have an excellent weekend filled with adventurous plans 😊

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{all photographs copyright of Justin + Betsy unless explicitly stated}