The footprint for my Big Agnes Seedhouse SL3 finally came today. Works quite well, and I’ll be future testing it during May Long weekend. Given that it was a sunny day today I had to improvise rain testing it. After running the garden hose on it for a good 20 min, it didn’t let a drop in. The 3-4 in gap along the sides didn’t prove a problem either. It would take one heck of a sideways blowing wind to get any rain in the sides. And even then you could stake the fly down a little differently to get it closer to the ground. The tent feels nice and airy inside and just a little bit bigger. Providing May long goes well I’ll be taking the fast fly setup on the Kootenay trip.

So we’ve rearranged the order of the July and August backpacking trips since the people going in July had already been to Yoho and those going in August haven’t been to either.

These means the June 30th to July 3rd trip is now to Kootenay National Park. A revised information sheet can be found here. The August 4th - 7th trip is now to Yoho National Park, although a partially different trail than last year. I’ve made up an information sheet for this trip as well and it can be found here.

My new tent came today. It’s light, really light. I’m quite happy with it. It’s light enough that I could even take this tent solo if I had to. And split between 3 people it will be just over 1.5 lbs/person. On that note it’s going to be a tight squeeze for 3 people. We’ll definitely have to sleep staggered like the tent diagram suggests. While it may be somewhat small I’m very confident we won’t have any “it’s raining in the freakin’ tent!” issues like we did last time we went to Absaroka.

I still haven’t received the footprint as it’s backordered, so I haven’t been able to test the Fast-Fly setup yet. Setting up the tent in this matter means not using the main body of the tent at all, and simpy securing the fly directly over the poles and attaching it to the footprint. This cuts more than 25% of the weight and doesn’t look like it will affect the weatherproofness at all. I’m hoping I’ll be able to field test the Fast-Fly setup in Kootenay in July when the bugs shouldn’t be an issue.

All the stated weights are accurate with everything weighing in at 2.207 kg including the footprint.

This was also the final piece of gear I needed to finally have a fully accurate pack list. For a 4 day, 3 night trip to Kootenay my base pack weight will only be 14.34 lbs, and total initial pack weight - including fuel, food, and 2L of water - will be only 24 lbs.