Between 2 011-07 and 2 011-09, my partner and I did a 3 300km bicycle tour of southern France. Between 2 014-05 and 2 014-10, I did a 7 000km bicycle tour of northern Italy, south and east France, north and west Switzerland and north western Spain. The below is a review of a product that I used during those tours.
One of the best attributes of The One is how quickly the spinnaker cloth dries. A few minutes of warmth and/or direct sun was all it needed. Unfortunately, being a single-walled tent, The One needed to be dried a lot. If I was able to keep the rain fly open overnight, the ceiling would stay dry. If, however, I had to close the rain fly (due to rain or cold), I knew I would wake up to a moist tent. One might even get a few drops now and again.
Throughout the initial stages of the 2 011 trip, the The One sagged, particularly in the rain. Since the ceiling was often dewy on the inside, this made for some uncomfortable nights. A quick look at the set up video revealed our error, though, and the tent never sagged again. Hint: order of operations is important. By day 20 or so I could set up the tent in less than 3 minutes, rain or shine, light or dark.
Stake-based tents are lighter, but they do have drawbacks -- stakes don't always go into the ground and they're easy to lose. Our first campsite of the 2 011 trip had rocky, hard ground, high wind and heavy rain. We ended up bending several of the stakes before getting the tent stabilized, and even then the stakes were in less than 3cm. On a night near the sandy Atlantic coast, we camped "sauvage" on loose soil. The soil was barely compacted enough to hold the stakes. In both cases, though, The One held. With a few other (less dramatic) exceptions, the stakes were not an issue. Another draw-back of stakes is that they're easy to lose. I ended up losing two of the original six. My partner purchased stakes painted yellow. She didn't lose a single one. In fact, if not for my partner's extras, I would have had to buy a new pack of "montant" for 20 Euros. In my 2 014 trip, I only had to resort to trickery once to get the tent staked properly (using rocks). Though at times it was difficult to get stakes in sufficiently, generally I was able to muscle them in enough (wearing a bike glove while pushing them in helps a lot).
Not all stakes are equally capable. To save weight, we purchased titanium stakes. My partner's were a classic hook shape (purchased directly from Gossamer Gear, see left in photo above), mine were a shepard's hook from Quest Outfitters. The simple hook consistently had trouble holding on to the tent. The shepard's hook worked much better, even withstanding several direct hits from yours truly (I forget things like tent stakes stuck in the ground).
Paracord is typically used to hold together poles. I decided to forgo the cord in order to save weight. I seem to remember that it saved 40g or so. This worked better than corded poles for packing because the poles could be packed without regard to the position of the other poles. It was in another way dangerous, though -- I early on lost two of the end-tips out of the four originals. If I had lost one more I would have had to jury-rig something to set up the tent. No camping supply store (of which there are very few in France) had replacements.
In the spirit of multiple use, each morning I put the poles, stakes and end-tips into my mittens, then placed the tent and the mittens in the tent bag (see photo above). On a cold night, of which there were several, I used mittens to keep my toes or tukes warm. The polypropylene mittens I used in 2 011 were one of the only items for which I did not try to save weight. It didn't occur to me. I bought them in 1996 at an Army/Navy store. Army/Navy stores sell things more on the car-hunter vein than the ultralight cycle tourist vein, so I looked for lighter mittens for my 2 014 trip. Z-Packs had just the answer, with a warmer mitten at 60% of the weight.
I also put my 500ml food container in the tent sack. I didn't realize when preparing for travel how important water- and air-tight storage would be. With so few vegan choices, we relied on jam to get us through the day. The glass jam jars were heavy, so I put the contents into a plastic container. The container fit neatly into the top of the tent sack, which allowed ready access.
poles: 105,6g
stakes (7): 46,2g
tent: 481,2g
total: 633,0g
stuff sack: 11,3g
mittens: 32,xg
container: 28,6g
