Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Mountain Laurel Designs UL Tent - Cricket


If you happen to have $295+ to spend, perhaps you might be interested in Mountain Laurel Designs new tent - the Cricket (http://www.mountainlaureldesigns.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=47&products_id=174). MLD introduced the Cricket at the same time they introduced a new solo Trailstar tarp ($155/10.8oz in silnylon, 7.5 oz or 5.8 oz in two grades of cuben fiber).


The Cricket represents MLD's first move towards a lightweight tent and accomplishes it nicely with a silnylon option coming in at 19.5 oz and a cuben option at 13.5 oz. Both are essentially an outer fly with inner net tent which clips to the fly. This modular design means you can use separately the fly, the inner net tent, or both together. This seems to be the most common way I've seen lightweight tents manufactured lately Add another $150 for cuben. The specs on MLD's site aren't too telling right now as all details haven't been posted, so I can't provide headroom, length, etc. Regardless, owning several MLD products myself, I have no doubt it will be well engineered, well made, and more importantly...a real possiblity for many lightweight backpackers looking for greater protection from the elements.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Broken link. Missing an e

Jolly Green Giant said...

Ah. Thanks. Not only was it missing an "e", but the link changed since yesterday. I think I have it right now. Thanks for pointing that out.

Unknown said...

I am genuinely interested in the Trailstar as a winter tent - Steven Horner and Colin Ibbotson (both respected in the UK) have it as a very tough shelter in a storm and I like the idea of being able to fit a few of us under it for dinner before retiring to our own shelters- especially when the weather is appalling. Didn't know there was a solo version so thanks for alerting me but in the end, the main version actually suits me better at the moment. Good luck to MLD though.

Anonymous said...

Sweet! At this very moment, this is the tent I would use for my AT thru hike...now if I can just find some money laying around...

Tent said...

Nice tent. Hope to have this in the future because my old ultralight backpacking tents is already worn out because friends keeps on borrowing it.Now I need a new one so thay can borrow it and also worn it out!. :-) (just kidding!hope not!)