EQUIPMENT REPORT: the Springbar Tent

There's a piece of equipment I need to mention. There are lotsa tents made around the world, and many of them are wonderful for their intended use. Backpacker/mountaineering tents. Yurts. RenFair-inspired historical contraptions. Truly, grotesquely wretched canvas tents with external frames of mystery and difficult erection. Wal-Mart specials. And others.

Many of their tents have uses, even if some of them — especially some of the discount specials — appear to be fair-weather tents designed primarily as a privacy cabana. Some of them — particularly those "external frame" canvas relics from the sixties — remain in use principally to provide entertainment to other, wiser campers.

It was 1998. I was back in California, having just returned from our most-recent period of Hawaiian residence. We had not yet purchased another RV, had no immediate plans to settle in CA, and were just enjoying weekends traveling around the state. We had purchased a "really cool," kinda-expensive, and fairly-esoteric outfitter tent. In a bit less than a year, we had already camped in a dozen-or-so regional parks, Lassen Volcanic Park, and Yosemite.

With no hurry (and plenty of time for a Pete's Wicked) and with two of us doing the duty, we were able to erect our tent in about an hour — fully an hour faster than some of the canvas relics (but much longer than some little backpackers, of course).

We were camping in Point Arena to do some "beach" diving the next day. We had just set up camp when a new camper arrived at an adjacent site. She was a petite woman, and she was alone. The tent she had dragged out of her van was obviously one of those canvas behemoths, and my wife and I nudged each other knowingly.

Sixty or eighty pounds of canvas. This woman (and for that matter, any unassisted man) was going to have difficulty erecting this monster. I stood proud and tall in my masculinity, and offered to assist our new neighbor. My wife (equally prideful, if a bit less tall and not-at-all masculine) offered to assist.

Our neighbor stopped — briefly — to say "Hi neighbors, no thanks."

My wife and I immediately started our snooping, arranging our camp chairs to keep an eye on our neighbor's activities "without being too obvious." C'mon, you know what I mean! Snooping? Well, I mean...

Before I had time to finish a fresh Pete's Wicked, our neighbor was finished.

Our neighbor had stretched out the bottom of the tent, and driven a dozen or so tent stakes into the ground around the tent perimeter (ten minutes, or half of my beer).

I was a little puzzled by the apparent "misunderstanding" of what I thought should be the order of events, and remained confident we would have to assist.

She then assembled four springy-thingies-like-auto-antennas onto a thicker tubular bar while threading the springy-thingies into loops on what will become the roof of the tent. A serious-sounding "snap" turns the lumpy canvas into a trampoline-taut roof, still lying on the ground (five minutes, or several more good pulls on my beer).

Now mystified, I waited to see more.

Our new camping neighbor assembled tubular pieces into four tent poles. One of them was used to partially erect the tent — raising half of the roof. A second pole raised the rest of the tent with impressive, near-straight walls. The remaining two poles were used, along with the first guy-lines I had seen, to raise the fly over the entrance. (Another five minutes, bringing me up to the last swallow of my beer).

Wow! I was impressed. Our neighbor still had a buncha guy-lines to make it stable (still confident in my engineer's eye and near-godlike camper wisdom) under wind conditions, but this thing already LOOKED like a tent — and a really cool tent, at that.

At least as impressive was the fact that our neighbor was a very petite woman, yet her erection of this heavy tent was effortless.

I downed the spit-swallow (beerese for the last bit of my beer), and already considering another when I noticed new activity at the neighbor's site. She had thrown a couple of sleeping bags into the tent, spoke briefly about this or that errand, and driven off in her van.

— Leaving me to share with my wife my worry that we would now have to install the guys after darkness and, perhaps, even deal with a bit of wind. Well, as many of you might guess from any local knowledge of Point Arena or the Mendocino coast, this late-summer evening included an offshore breeze reaching as much as 15 knots.

The Springbar, of course, took it all in stride — despite the near-vertical nature of its side walls.

The next morning (I was unable to remain awake for the neighbor’s return) my neighbor laughed at my concern. “I have never used any other guy lines, and I have camped all over the west — even in the desert during wind storms,” she said gently.

Oh, my. A heavy canvas tent that is easily erected by a 95-pound, size-4 petite! And it stays up!!!

I bought one.

I might go on and on about the style and design simplicity, its cool looks, its USA manufacture (in Utah), its impressive ability to withstand wind and rain, the modern materials used in its manufacture, the tent’s history, the joy that standing headroom is to users bigger-than-the-standard-bear (78” max. for the model I selected, the Traveler) and everyone else, whatever.

I bought one.

www.springbar.com

Seeya ‘round the campfire,

Johnny