Why Does This Tent Cost $2000?

well hey guys it's Darwin and this is the Somaya Assault 2 ultra a 2 lb twers freestanding tint that cost $22,000 but why what's it do that other tents can't who's it for why do I have it and again why the hell does it cost $2,000 so over the last year I have fallen down a rabbit hole and gotten completely addicted to a new outdoor discipline mountaineering last year when I was in Europe to do the tour to mount Blanc I met up with my buddy and pretty hardcore alpinist Fez that you guys might remember from my 2018 PCT through hike to do some light Mount nearing in the Alps well we ended up going out and doing some Glacier travel and climbing on the mirrored glass around Mount Blanc and I absolutely fell in love so ever since getting back from that trip I have been in this big research and learning stage trying to learn as much as I can about mountaineering techniques and testing a bunch of gear a bunch of crazy gear that I have never used over the last eight years of ultr light through hicking like big insulated heavy clunky climbing boots uh safety equipment like technical ice axes helmets and even fullon climbing equipment like this climbing rack that I have not ultra light bro not to mention uh needing some high elevation snow camping gear because I'm going to be out at High elev on glaciers so I started looking at tents because for the past 8 years I have exclusively used trkking pole tents and trkking pole tents aren't exactly great in super high winds at crazy high elevations they're also not great on snow because they need tension to stake them out so I started doing my research and figuring out what new ultralight freestanding tins there were out there and a tin brand and a specific tent that I kept seeing come up on people's gear list that were big hardcore alpinist was Somaya specifically the Somaya Assault 2 ultra but when I looked at the price tag it was $2,000 now to me it just looked like any other Dome freestanding tent so I couldn't quite figure out why this tent was so damn expensive and why so many people used it well with doing all of my research and testing all this new gear there was no way I was going to drop $2,000 on a tent just to see if it might work for me in the long run but luckily my buddy and climbing partner Jason owns two of these so he lent me one of these about 5 months ago I've been testing it out using it on certain trips to find out why it cost $2,000 what makes it special who's it for and is it something that I could use going forward so before I get into the pros and the cons of it and why it's so expensive expensive let's go over the specs the Somaya Assault 2 ultra is a two-person Dome style freestanding tent that is made out of a dynic composite Fabric and a two- layer diema laminated eptfe membrane fabric man that's a mouthful it uses two eastn carbon poles to make the Dome shape with a smaller carbon cross pole for the peak it has one single front entry door with no vestibule and it features no mesh not on the door not on the vents and this tent has some of probably the most unique features I've seen in any tents like two big mesh wall pockets for storing tons of gear it has a little bitty mesh gear Loft to be able to dry socks and stuff like that at night and probably the most unique feature are two big zippered vents at the peak again with no mesh and a single dynema Runner line that goes in between them that I'll talk about here in a minute uh with the poles the weight of the tent on my scale comes out to 2.6 o it's made in France and again the cost of the tent is between $1,800 and $2,000 depending on where you buy it so for this review uh I kind of want to do something a little bit different I don't want to just go over the pros and the cons let's start off with talking about some of those very unique features and who they're for uh for that let's head back out to the field okay so one of the things you'll notice right off the bat with this tint is the fact that it has no vestibule uh the main reason it has no vestibule is because if you're at higher elevations and the winds are high you don't want something to be able to get up under the wind to be able to get up under that vestibule and then kind of turn the The Tint into a sail but that does make it very strange if you're using it in like any other environment so if it's raining you don't really have anything to kind of hide out under cook under anything like that so this is just a one single piece door um and then it has this kind of like little overlap here that protects the zipper so you can kind of see the inside of the tin right there um so if I go to open that up um again there is no mesh on the door it is just a single piece of that uh that membrane dynema fabric um on the inside again here are those big Side Pockets that go down the side I've never seen this in a tent this is completely new to me so again it it's a fullon mesh pocket and it's pretty tall as you can see here's my hand so you can see how big that is and it goes the entire length of the tent and it's on uh both sides and then up top is that gear Loft that I was talking about um again so you can put things like socks and uh to dry out throughout the night and really anything else and then on both sides you have these big zipper openings these big vents um but again no mesh no mesh on the inside and then you can see the line the dyema line that runs in between and the main reason for this is actually if you have a climbing harness and you're wearing it you can actually take the tent you can secure it to the side of the mountain like kind of put in an anchor to the side of the mountain tie it to that line and then you can tie your harness to that line and then basically if there's a big wind or a big storm you're not going to get blown off the side of the mountain and you can see that uh right here on the outside of the vent so it kind of just hangs out right there basically take that you clip that you would run that out to the ground and then you would clip yourself to that part basically now the main body fabric that all the walls and everything are made out of is this two- layer diema uh breathable material um it's it's this is totally different than any other tint material I've seen and I think this is kind of what makes this tint very unique so this stuff is meant to breathe really well and and just let air flow through it a lot better kind of like a like a rain jacket basically so it blocks out uh moisture from the outside but the inside is able to breathe a lot better another reason it doesn't have a lot of vents now I had spent two nights in this and I can say that I didn't have any condensation I did leave these guys cracked open a little bit uh the handful of knights that I've SLE in it so that probably helped but overall I I I can't really speak for if this is better than any other Fabric or if it's just because of the environment that I was in and then you can see that the uh the floor material the main bathtub is all kind of the standard DCF uh that you would find on something like a zpac tent or something like that as far as the Headroom goes in this tint it's pretty standard for most like small free standing Dome tents but one thing that I noticed uh being 61 is overall I didn't have a lot of room you know this is supposed to be a twers tent but whenever I slept in it I definitely had to lay diagonally there's no way that I would be able to lay in here straight with another person and I think that's mainly because this tint isn't really meant for like General backpacking and camping where you want to spend a lot of time in your t tent this is really made as a shelter to kind of make it through the night if you're in a bad storm um high winds high elevation lot of snow and then the overall structure of it being that Dome and having those cross Poes uh makes it very strong to be able to stand up against uh high winds and heavy snow so very unique uh in the grand scheme of things this tent is a very very unique tent yeah all right so after going over all those crazy specs uh who's this tent for well because it lacks so many of those General tint features like mesh to keep bugs out like a vestibule for rain and to store your stuff obviously it is not for the everyday Backpacker and camper it's not for the bike Packer it is a one tool for one job and that is high Alpine mountaineering you know the features that this has in it is really made to to make sure that it's a safe tent that if something were to happen if you were to get in a storm if there was a high wind and you were possibly going to be blown off a mountain that this could help save your life so um it's definitely not made for me where I really want to use something like this and I see the benefits of it in mountaineering um I always like to have gear that is multi-purpose and I want to make sure that if I'm going to buy a good freestanding tint that I can use it for not only for season mountaineering but I can also use it for bike packing in the summer I want something that I can use on General winter backpacking trips it's going to be good on snow and because this lacks all of those other features for me um it just doesn't do it now with that being said is it worth $2,000 well I guess that all depends uh the I guess that's in the eye of the beholder or I guess it's in the pocket of the outdoors because it does have those very specific features like that dyema Runner to be able to clip your harness to because it has that structure to it where it can be really good in snow because it has that membrane fabric to it that makes it breathe really really well at high elevation in a ton of snow and not get a lot of condensation on the inside yeah sure I if you want those things I'm sure it's worth $2,000 but for me not exactly um not something that I would use going forward and I'm not going to be buying one of these these I am still in search of that Perfect ultr Light freestanding tint and uh this ain't it so uh there you go uh I have a new tent coming in about uh a week that I'm going to be taking out to Colorado next month for a mountaineering trip uh to get ready for Island peak in Nepal in April and I hope that that is going to be a better option and it didn't cost $2,000 which is a good thing for me and I'll keep you guys updated on that of what I end up going with for these excursions and for uh some of the other upcoming trips that I have where I will need a free staining ttin speaking of that what is a crazy expensive ENT that you've seen what's a crazy expensive piece of gear that you're like why would people pay that much money for it or what's something that you have been recently testing have you been getting in into crazy stuff like mountaineering uh whatever it is leave me something down below and let me know your thoughts I love knowing what you guys are into and what you're checking out because gives me ideas uh on what I should be checking out I hope you guys are doing well I hope you're taking care of yourselves I hope you're taking care of each other I love you and as always thanks for [Music] watching

Channel: Darwin onthetrail

Views: 264,732

Keywords: UL Backpacking, UL Hiking, UL Hiking Gear, AT, PCT, Pacific Crest Trail, PCT Thru Hike, AT Thru Hike, Appalachian Trail, Colorado Trail, Great Divide Trail, Backpacking, Hiking, Adventure, Hiker Trash, Long Distance Hiking, Thru Hike Gear List, Favorite Backpacking Gear, LOng Distance Hiking, CDT Thru Hike, Continental Divide Trail, CDT, Backpacking Gear, Camping Hacks

Id: SPUFBXA_fBw

Length: 13min 0sec (780 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 08 2024