Mountain Hardwear Ghost 2 Sky Tent Review

I totally have to give Mountain Hardwear props for their great customer service and standing by their products with their limited lifetime warranty.  I'm on my third tent which has been replaced twice for free under their warranty.  This tent is my lightweight backcountry 2 person tent I have been using on many of my adventures.  I bought my first tent in 2004 or 2005 - it was an Airjet 2.  This was a single wall lightweight tent that I liked quite a bit.  I had it for 3 or 4 years and the seams started to degrade and fall apart - something to do with the chemicals in the material or taped seams breaking down.  I sent it in for warranty at the time and they replaced this tent with a Skyledge 2.1 tent for free, as the Airjet was discontinued. The Skyledge was a standard two wall tent with two entrances and two vestibules, which gave lots of real estate for stashing gear and easy entrances if you happen to have towo people in the tent (I only did once and it was cramped).

Now the Skyledge 2.1 I have had for the last 8 years and it served me well those 8 years.  I was car camping just a month ago with it and noticed the bottom side of the fly getting sticky when it has never been sticky... along with the taped seams flaking.  At one point while just zipping up the fly, one of the taped seams just peeled off with little force.  Seems like a degradation issue again, but this time the tent lasted much longer.  I contacted Mountain Hardwear and they told me to send it in for assessment. I didn't really expect much from them. After all, 8 years for a tent is quite enough already.  There's certainly not much other pieces of gear, especially ones containing some kind of fabric that you would expect to last much longer than that.

Mountain Hardwear Ghost Sky 2 Tent

Mountain Hardwear/Columbia Sportswear (they are the same company) called me after receiving the tent to say they would replace my tent for free under warranty!  Great stuff.  They even gave the the option of either getting the newer model Ghost Sky 2 tent or the Ghost UL2 tent.  I chose the Ghost Sky 2 tent.  Although the Ghost 2 is slightly heavier than the Ghost UL 2 tent (4lb 1 oz vs 2lb 9 oz),The Ghost Sky 2 is just is much more practical - with a square footprint instead of a trapezoidal footprint, 2 entrances and 2 useful vestibules instead of the 1 not-so-useful (as reports say) vestibule of the UL 2 tent. For super ultralight expeditions I could also use my Hennessey Hammock, so I chose the Ghost Sky 2 tent.

The Ghost 2 tent is really a newer version of my  older Skyledge 2.1 tent.  It amazes me that tents continue to evolve so much.  The improvements on the Ghost Sky 2 tent are noticeable andd welcome.  The two main poles have a connector in the center.  This makes for much quicker setup and breakdown, as you can do both poles at the same time, and justclip the center of the tent to the attachment point instead of having to thread the poles through the c-clip on the Skyledge.  the shorter crossbar for the doors just clips into the top and attaches at the sides with a ball joint clip.  Fancy stuff and so easy to set up.  There are 12 pole clips that are quick and easy to clip to the poles as well.

The inner tent is almost all mesh, perfect for gazing at the stars flyless on non-rainy nights.  The two teardrop shaped entrance ports are large enough to enter with ease.  Inside, there's 4 pockets for storing gear and loop provisions in the upper part for a gear loft if that's desired.  The fly is easy to put on with some toggles that attach to the pole attachments on the 4 corners and velcro ties to the poles in the 4 corners as well, halfway up. 

I used this tent car camping, kayak camping and backpacking in Algonquin Park recently and it's a great tent, I would recommend it to anyone, for it's features, well thought out design, qucikness and ease of pitching, and it's light weight.

And again, props to Mountain Hardwear/Columbia for replacing this tent free under warranty with no hassles.  I'm sure i'll get a lot of use out of this tent in my future adventures.

Paddling and Photography – how to make electronics and backcountry paddling trips mix

    I'm into landscape and nature photography and take many photos during my backcountry paddling trips, both for the beauty of the landscape or the moment itself, and also as sort of a photo journal for the trip and what the area looks like.    For the on the water shots, I use my trusty Panasonic TS2 waterproof tough camera.  Back about 5 years ago, I used to go through 2 or 3 of these ultracompact cameras a season as I kept getting them wet in one way or another, and waterproof cameras didn’t exist at the time.  I kept it in an otterbox strapped to my kayak deck.  Nowadays it’s all good with the ubiquitous waterproof tough camera.

      The photos that come out of the Panasonic camera are great for on the water, but I do prefer to have my SLR on land, for the depth of field, quality, resolution and low light performance it offers.  But, bringing something that costs that much with you where there’s water all about, and the possibility of getting all your gear soaked is very high can send shivers down some photographers spines.  I looked around at all of the options available for waterproof containers for my camera and I found a great solution with the Lowepro Dryzone 200.

     Firstly, I like to have my SLR accessible during shore stops, lunch, portages, etc.  when on paddling trips so burying it in a drybag in a dry pack doesn’t work for me, not to mention, there is not much protection against crushing, rubbing, etc.  I also wouldn’t want to just strap a typical drybag to the deck or put it in the bottom of a canoe, as I don’t trust 100% any dry bag to be sealed properly.  I could have also used an otterbox, but they are very bulky, square, and don’t have any proper straps for when I need to portage.

      I bought a LoweproDryzone 200 backpack about 5 years ago – it was the only type of purpose built water protection for cameras that is also carry friendly at the time, and still is, as far as I can tell.  It consists of an inner pod, what they call a drypod, which is essentially a PVC watertight casing with a drysuit zipper from a german company named tizip. The bag  comes with a variety of Velcro dividers you can configure any way you would like to, so you can separate lenses, filters, cameras and accessories.  It’s big enough to carry my D600 with 28-300 lens attached, and maybe one or even two more medium/large SLR lens would fit in it as well.  The drypod is attached to a nylon outer backpack shell with loops around the case and some wire.  But, I have since taken the drypod out of the backpack shell and just use the case itself.  The reason why I did that was the shell made it harder to access the contents as I would have to undo another nylon clip in addition to opening up the zipper, the shell is also heavy and soaks up water making it wet all the time and even heavier, and the shell does add some extra non-protected storage, but not all that much, for all the downsides it has.  The shell itself weighs 3 pounds, seriously.  And that is when it's dry.  There's no use for it for my needs.

  The full Dryzone 200.  I just ditched the outer nylon shell and use the inner drypod bag.

     When kayaking, I thread some bungees directly through the loops around the drypod base and attach it to my deck lines on the rear of my kayak.  It is easily attached this way, and is awesomely accessible when I get out of my kayak.  When canoeing, I just place the drypod on the bottom of the cane in front of me…  once in a while I will take it out of the case for some photos while on the water, but not very often.  I generally use it for all of my electronics while on a trip – batteries, phone, filters, etc, and sometimes even put my toiletries kit or a book in there for dryness and ease of access.

     The one downside of using just the drypod itself is the lack of straps for portaging.  I have used the bungies themselves many times to act as backpack straps, but it isn’t quite ideal, although it is manageable.  My last rip, I didn’t have the bungie configuration the best configuration, and I did pull one of the attachment loops off of the base.  Basically the glue gave way on the attachment loop itself, it didn’t tear a hole in the outside.  I am going to look into getting some aftermarket PVC attachment points and some glue to mount some attachments for just some simple backpack straps to make this this ideal for my needs as a paddling drypod for my SLR.

     As for keeping water out itself, it is rated for IPX7 which means it is submersible.  It comes with a small tube of silicone grease to keep the Tizipzipper lubricated and sealed properly, as is used with drysuit zippers.  I have done rolls in my kayak with it, and there is no issue.  There is one caveat though.  You must make sure you do the zipper all the way up.  One trip to the French River I was lining my kayak down some rapids and the kayak flipped over, putting the drypod in the water.  I wasn’t concerned at all about the water and took my time righting the kayak.  Then I realized I hadn’t done the zipper up all the way, it was about 2 inches open, and there was some water in my bag.  The water  did mess up the electronics inside the Nikon D300 that I had at the time.  Luckily I was able to recover $700 by selling it as a water damaged item on eBay at the time.  So now, I make sure double check the zipper before putting in with the bag.

     The Dryzone 200 inner drypod is very functional and I think it is the most useful product out there to take your SLR camera gear on backcountry paddling trips.  The outer backpack shell is somewhat useful, but I prefer to use the drypod without the outer shell.  My only complaint is it is very pricey for what it is.  I wish that Lowepro would make a different version to sell of this – just the inner drypod with just two shoulder straps attached directly to it, without the outer shell  to reduce the price.

LoweproDryzone 200

Tizip

Paddling Bruce Peninsula National Park

   I recently got back from a 4 day trip at the end of June, paddling the tip of Bruce Peninsula/Fathom Five National Park and it was fantastic.  It had been on my list of paddling trips within a day’s drive for quite a long time, and I finally checked it off of the list.  I am glad I did.

     The northern coast of Bruce Peninsula is utterly spectacular and brilliant, especially when the weather is cooperating.  The water is amazingly clear with deep aqua marine tones colors against the white limestone.  It actually feels like a tropical destination.  Paddling along the coast you get the best view of the Niagara Escarpment cliffs while paddling by huge boulders on the shoreline, interspersed with the odd pebble beach.  The cliffs along the shore are dotted with caves, some of them at water level and have sinister gurgling sounds emanating from them.  You even have a good view of the bottom; visibility is 10-12m (30-40 feet), the ghostly white limestone reflecting the light in the depths makes for slightly eerie experience.

    I spent two nights on Flowerpot Island, one at High Dump and one at Stormhaven.  I made my way to Flowerpot Island myself for the first night, and my friend Peter caught up with me on the second Flowerpot Island night, then we proceeded down the coast for the other days.  It’s the first time I had done any significant ‘big water’ paddling for several days, and it is quite different than the other paddling trips usually do on rivers, smaller lakes and interior sites.  Flowerpot Island is in Fathom Five Marine Park, while Stormhaven and High Dump sites are part of the Bruce Peninsula National park.  Even though they are both National Parks, you have to call two different places to reserve.  On Flowerpot Islandthere’s 6 campsites, and you reserve those by calling the Fathom Five Park office. The other two sites – Storm Haven and High Dump (referring to an old logging dump site) are reserved by calling the  National Park reservation office, and both are much more frequented my hikers on the Bruce Trail than they are paddlers.  All three campsites have wooden tent platforms to pitch your tent (probably maximum two small tents per site) and a shared composting toilet which uses wood chips for odor control and composting, supplied with TP and even hand sanitizer.

         We left our cars at Lighthouse point in Tobermory, where there is free overnight municipal parking.  Another good launch spot with parking is at Dunks bay, to the south of Tobermory.  Both are a similar paddling distance to Flowerpot Island.  From lighthouse point it’s about a 5km paddle. 

     You need to have much respect the water when it is as big as Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.  Both the weather and waves can change very quickly and you have to be prepared.  And they can be independent – sometimes there’s no wind, but huge waves, sometimes the opposite.  Fog can also roll in at any time, reducing visibility.   There’s no way canoes here, it has to be a kayak, unless for a very short stretch when it is calm.  The shoreline is all rocky and is frequently difficult landing, even in small waves.  You need to be an intermediate kayaker, having a paddle float and being capable of self rescue at the least.  If you are with someone else, you should have practiced a two person rescue before.  The water is cold year round, so I brought my drysuit for the crossing to the island, even though it isn’t very far – about 5 km from lighthouse point.  And you pass by a small island called Middle Island on the way, making your way to the east side of Flowerpot towards the Beachy Cove site.

Flowerpot Island is named after, and known for the iconic ‘flowerpot’ stack formations on the shore, there are two of them.  Many tourists to the Tobermory area take day trips to the island from several boat operators, through the commercial dock.  The campsite has a smaller dock intended for powerboats I assume, the dock isn’t very useful for paddlers as it is too high out of the water.  The Campsite (called Beachy cove, although there’s not much of a beach, just a   bunch of rocks) on the East side of the island is protected from a breakwall if the waves are coming from the East, although the prevailing winds are Northwest.  The island is made from old fossilized coral reefs covered with limestone.   There’s a picnic spot for the daytrippers, as well as a small loop hiking trail, some stairs up to a cave, and a lighthouse station to see on the north side of the island, and a house/cottage sometimes manned by volunteer staff that sell cold drinks to those wanting refreshments.  The hiking trail is about a 5km loop, goes past the flowerpots where people can hang out, eat lunch and swim on the limestone shelves.  Since I was there for two days, I explored the island quite a bit and did some difficult bushwhacking to reach a pretty cool clifftop that overlooks the harbor, I am sure the parks people would prefer people to stay away from. 

  We left relatively early the day we were leaving the island, as the wind and waves typically pick up more towards the afternoon, and we had quite a way to go that day, all the way down the coast to High Dump campsite.  We lucked out and the weather was gorgeous, warm, full sun, slight tailwind, little waves for most of the trip except as we approached High Dump.  We explored the coastline, Driftwood Bay, Overhanging point and the caves at the waterline, stopped for lunch on a rock shelf near Cypress Lake campground and the famous Grotto, a cave with a pool in it that has an underwater passage out to the bay.  Just East of Cypress Lake we passed Storm Haven backcountry campsite where we would stay the next night and continued on.  The water started getting a bit rough around cave point, where the spectacular cliffs plunge into Georgian Bay.  You can kayak under the overhang high above and past more caves, then the home stretch towards High Dump.

    High dump is a beautiful campground, especially when it’s low occupancy, with a long curving white limestone rock beach to the east.  To the west you can make out Flowerpot Island in the distance and Bear’s Rump Island on a good day.  There’s 8 sites here.  Hands down the best is #8.  It is close to the water and it has a built in beer cooler…  or spring, rather - that comes out of the rocks.  Nice and cold.  This campground has some new-and-improved bear hanging apparatus where there’s a series of wire ropes on pulleys supported by a steel structure for hanging your food.  Bears are quite common around here.  They used to have communal steel mailbox-like bear boxes stored at ground level, but I can attest that they didn’t work all that great, since I had all my food eaten out of one of them 10 years ago while hiking this section.  Despite the distance we had paddled that day, we still had a good part of the day left, so we relaxed, and made a couple’easy chairs’ out of the flat rocks on the beach to sit in.  Sitting in a chair with a back was wonderful. 

The next day, I got up really early, took some sunrise photos, and we set out after leisurely packing up and eating.  We only had about 7 or 8 kms to go, back to Storm Haven camp.  I planned in this leisurely day, as the waves and weather could have been much worse causing us delays in the last couple days, but fortunately that wasn’t a problem and we had extra time.  So we got to Storm Haven, found our site

Storm Haven has several campsites near the water, and some up on top of the escarpment as well.  The composting toilet is in the middle of the stairs on the way up.  It is a nice camp, has bear hanging apparatuses both near the water and up on the escarpment, and has a great view of Cave point to the East of it.  But, it also seems to be a site that many hicks camp at, since it is only 1 or 2 kms from Cypress lake car campground and doesn’t take much effort to get to.  Some litter was left at the campsite, some had made fires right by the tent platform.  I saw a beer can in the water, etc.But it really wan’t all that bad.

We spend the rest of the day hiking to the Grotto/Cypress Lake along the Bruce trail.  That night it rained really hard – 40mm in 13 hours of nonstop rain.  Now, I was finally glad I brought my tarp which I was bellyaching about the day before, since it took up half of the room in my rear hatch and was large, bulky and otherwise sucky to pack into my hatch.  A cool thing we saw that night was a bunch of glowing pieces of pine.  It has bioluminescent fungus growing in it, so it looked like shards of green glowsticks at night.  I was aware that some bioluminescent fungus existed, but mainly in tropical regions, I didn’t know it was in Ontario.  After researching I found it is probably Armillaria mellea, although it could be a couple other species.

  The last day was the stretch back to the Lighthouse and our cars.  It was foggy in the morning, we couldn’t see Cave point.  We also had to wait for a break in the rain to start packing up.  I started packing up before the rain stopped - I out to my kayak to put on my drysuit…  or better known as my don’t give a fuck suit to make things more comfortable.  We packed up and started out, the waves were a bit choppy and coming from multiple directions as we moved along the coast.  We cut across some of the bays to make the trip shorter.  In the home stretch, as we rounded Dunk’s Bay rocks, the waves were getting quite large, and random, rodeo style, as the waves reflected off of the cliffs.  We made it to the point opposite Lighthouse point after struggling with the waves.  We were glad to finally get into some calm water, the choppy stuff in large waves takes all of your concentration with constant corrections.  We paddled across to the lighthouse for a rough, ungraceful takeout as the waves were hitting the table rocks and we both fell in trying to get out.

  The North Bruce/Tobermory area is one of the best places around Ontario to experience some excellent sea kayaking with beautiful scenery and some great backcountry campsites.  You just need to be prepared for what the weather and waves with throw at you.  My only regret is not having enough time to explore some of the shipwrecks in the area, and the other islands of the Fathom Five park.  Oh well, I guess I’ll have to come back some other time.  :) 

Links

Fathom Five National Marine Park

Bruce Peninsula National Park

Tobermory

 

Everytrail Trip