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.2010 Outdoor Retailer Summer
Trade Show Video Interview...
Mark of
Brooks-Range talks about their
"Rocket Tent"
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August 13,
2010-- Part of the fun of going
to the trade shows is checking out stuff that catches your eye.
Gear items big and small that you can relate to, that you can
see yourself using and really enjoying.
Back in another
lifetime-- in the long distance hiking days, and when I worked
as a gear designer-- I really admired the work of Jack Stephenson,
in particular his 4-season tents. Jack was a pioneer of contrarian
concepts such as "vapor
barriers,"
and among his many innovations, he built highly aerodynamic,
hoop-style pole tents, the basic design of which went on to replace
the A-frame styles of the previous half century.
As an engineer who
also worked in southern California's then booming aerospace industry,
Jack did amazing things with the advanced, space-age materials
just then becoming available for commercial use. Including crazy-lightweight
cycling, backpacking and winter
mountaineering tents, made of gold mylar and held together with
glued seams. They looked like they'd been made to go to the moon.
Stephenson was the Paul
Ramer of
lightweight backpacking and mountaineering gear, a forward thinker,
always a little ahead of his time.
Anyway, this little
bit of personal history serves to explain |
A
Rocket Tent at the Summer Outdoor Retailer trade show, held last
week in Salt Lake City, UT. Photo: Mitch Weber
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why the Brooks-Range
Rocket Tent
caught my eye last week at Summer OR. It carries forward Jack
Stephenson's idea of combining the latest in modern, high strength-to-weight
fabric, with a clever, weight-trimming design. The material is
a super strong flexible composite laminate made by Cubic
Tech, a company owned
by world renowned, high-tech sailmakers North
Sails, and the design uses stuff you already carry-- ski
poles and a probe-- to keep the weight down to an astonishing
1 lb, 6 oz. This for a full-blown winter tent, with a floor,
zippered door, and a vestibule for cooking, etc. Now like a lot
of you, I've enjoyed building snow shelters, and I've slept great
in tarp-covered hybrid affairs, but I think most would probably
agree, there's nothing like a tent on a long, cold, wintry night.
And at less than a pound and a half, this Brookes-Range Rocket
Tent has me intrigued and inspired. I'm seeing some father/daughter
ski overnights in my near future... and I've been wanting to
make the long pull back to the Palisades some time, oh and maybe...
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