Backpacker Magazine – April 2009

Gear Guide 2009: Big Agnes Slide Mountain SL 3 Tent Review

Rain making your fly droop? Adjust your tent from the inside with this pricey tent.

by: Kelly Bastone

Tags:
• Gear Review
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• Gear
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• Tents
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Innovative Idea
The problem: Rain makes your rainfly sag, causing it to droop like a Dalí painting. The solution: the Slide Mountain, which is equipped with a Boa cable system so you can snug up the fly without crawling out of your warm bag, much less going outside. Just use the ceiling-mounted reel to increase tension. Downside: It also increases price–a lot. "Cool idea," said one tester, "but $600 seems like too much to pay to solve a problem that's easy enough to fix for free." But if you like the idea of an auto-fly tensioner, everything else about the tent is dialed. The freestanding tent is unusually livable, with plenty of headroom and a 90-inch length that fit our tallest testers. Two doors and cavernous, 15-square-foot vestibules provide tons of storage space, and one vestibule can be staked out with trekking poles to create a flat-roofed awning. Practice pitching the Slide Mountain once to master the tensioning system. $600; 5 lbs. 11 oz. BigAgnes.com

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