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Reviews > Shelters > Tents > Six Moon Designs Europa and Europa II > Owner Review by Andrew ClausOwner’s Review – Six Moon Designs Europa II Tent Tester Information: Tester:
Andrew Claus Backpacking Background: I live and play in the Colorado Rockies. I through hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, Mexico to Canada, in ’04. I have section hiked the entire Colorado Trail. I hiked Mt. Washington to Mt. Katahdin on the Appalachian Trail in ’02. I have been backpacking, backcountry skiing, and bike touring for over twenty years. I have climbed all 54 of Colorado’s “14ers” (14,000 ft/4,260 m peaks). I get out on day trips into the high country at least once a week, year ‘round, and on backpacking trips several times a year, including at least one in the winter. I also do a lot of outdoor travel as a wildland firefighter. I’m not a fanatic ultra light packer. My pack base weight is about 14 lb (6 kg). I use a tarp, a bivvy, or no shelter at all. Product Description: Manufacturer:
Six Moon Designs The Europa II is a lightweight single wall two-person tent. The roof and floor are made of waterproof silnylon. The front door, back wall, and side vent panels are bug netting. A trekking pole can be used to support the front peak, or it can be tied to a tree. A single hoop pole is included for the foot. I used four titanium stakes for the corners. The manufacturer provided two large aluminum spikes for the front and back. The Europa II is slightly unusual in its design. It does not have a front beak. Rather, the entire front is cantilevered out to provide a measure of protection from rain. There is a rear beak that completely covers the rear vent, and also provides guying support. All seams are made with a single line of stitching. There are loose thread ends visible in the seams inside the tent. The raw edges of the cloth are visible. I was disappointed in this. I’ve never before seen a shelter using this type of seam. I’m accustomed to seeing overlapped seams with a double line of stitching. I ordered the tent with seam sealing from the manufacturer. The seam between the canopy and the floor was not sealed. The manufacturer admitted that this was an omission, but did not propose a correction. I did not seal this seam myself because I was in the process of hiking the PCT. I could spread the unsealed seam and easily see through to the inside of the tent. There are large gaps between the stitches. Stitch count is 8 per inch (2.54 cm), so there are 1/8-inch (3 mm) gaps. I was slightly concerned about rain entry, but not too much. The immediate use was in the Sierra Nevada in June, and insects were more a concern than rain. The gaps were too small for insects. There are two mesh pockets. The pockets are about 12 in (30 cm) wide and about 4 in (10 cm) deep. Listed weight without stakes is 33 oz (924 g). Actual weight without stakes is 32 1/8 oz (910 g). Listed dimensions are: 90 in (229 cm) long, 60 in (152 cm) tapering to 50 in (127 cm) wide, 41 in (104 cm) tapering to 24 in (61 cm) high. Floor area is about 35 sq ft (3.25 sq m). Maximum pole segment length is 13.5 in (343 cm). Field Information: I used this tent over a period of about 90 calendar days and about 1,800 miles (2,900 km) during my through hike of the Pacific Crest trail. I pitched the tent about 60 nights. Conditions varied from high desert to alpine snow and ice, temperatures from 20 F to 60 F, (-7 to 15 C) elevations from 1,000 to 11,000 ft (300 to 3,300 m). Maximum wind was about 30 mph (50 kph), never severe. Precipitation exceeded record levels in the Washington Cascades. Ground conditions often were very soaked. Field Test Report: I began using this tent at Walker Pass, at the beginning of the Sierra Nevada range along the PCT in Southern California. I switched from a floorless tarp because I was having some ground insect and scorpion problems. I decided to carry the extra weight of the floor to ease the site selection difficulties at the end of every fatiguing day. The tarp was also giving me problems in moderate wind. And I was coming into the mosquito season soon. I was immediately pleased with the decision. The first few nights of mosquito swarms came soon. Ventilation on those warm nights was good. Condensation was slightly more of a problem than with the tarp. Initial attempts at pitching were not quite successful. I needed a few nights to get the hang of it. I needed to apply a lot of tension at the peak before staking out the sides. It is recommended to retension the tent before sleeping. But I seldom had that chance. The typical through hiker walks until dark then sleeps almost immediately. So I had some sag problems. The manufacturer recommended that I apply as much tension as possible, and that helped. There was sufficient room for me and my wife and all our gear. We would stow our packs at our heads near the net door. The mesh pockets were too shallow and loose to be of any use to me. But that wasn’t much of a bother since I didn’t really have anything to put in them. The pockets are about 12 in (30 cm) wide and about 4 in (10 cm) deep. The first harbinger of problems came with an afternoon Sierra thunderstorm. I pitched the tent for shelter during a particularly wet afternoon. After about an hour of pouring rain, I found leaks in the canopy at the side vent seam and at the rear wall. Some rain was caught between the tent floor and my Tyvek groundsheet. The rain seeped easily into the tent through the silnylon floor under the sleeping pad. I wasn’t too concerned. It was a severe storm, after all. I vowed to try to prevent moisture from getting under the tent. It was still early summer in the Sierra, and I assumed, correctly, that the brief monsoon season would soon be over. I was a little disappointed in the floor though. I really wanted this tent to relieve most of my site selection problems. The tent continued to perform very well through the high (and dry) Sierra. Cold nights of 20 F (-7 C) or slightly below were common. The tent was at least 10 to 15 F (5 to 8 C) warmer inside on calm nights. Condensation ceased to be a concern most of the time. Mosquito swarms were successfully kept at bay, to our unending delight. Pitching became easier and quicker with experience. One person could easily pitch it. Two people could do it in less than two minutes. The warmer summer days of hiking through the Cascades of California and Oregon gave us no tent problems at all. We were happy for nearly 1800 miles (2900 km). In fact, the manufacturer paid us a surprise visit at a trailhead just north of the Columbia River. We were also using his pack, and he wanted to see how his equipment was holding up. I showed him the unsealed seam. He did not propose a fix at this time, and I did not have access to seam sealer any time soon. Coincidentally, the zipper on the tent door broke the next day. The zipper will not stay closed, probably because of a slider failure. The slider moves, but the coils do not mesh properly. I think the zipper failed because of dirt. I tried to clean the zipper with water and a towel, but I noticed no improvement. It was nearly impossible to keep the horizontal lower part of the zipper out of the dirt. It was too easy to kneel or step on it when entering the tent. It was also difficult to keep proper tension on this part of the tent, so the zipper sagged to earth. The outward-cantilevered door design exacerbated this problem. The zipper failed in this horizontal section. Replacing the slider will often repair failures of this type, but I have not done this. Then the Washington rains hit. We had several consecutive days of record precipitation. One night, we were huddled on a sort of life raft made of our sleeping pads, plastic pack liners, and packs. I was bailing about one liter per hour out of the tent, using a pack towel. By now, the door was useless, and at least this made bailing easier. Then the mice started coming in. I was sorely tempted to cut the floor out with a knife. This would have at least provided some drainage from the badly leaking seams. And the floor provided practically no water protection. Anything in contact with the floor wicked water right through the floor. Our packs and everything in them got soaked. On successive nights, we fared slightly better with careful site selection. I learned to treat the waterproof silnylon floor as a pest barrier only. It was more a hindrance in heavy rain. It did not allow the water leaking through the seams any place to drain. The worst leak I could see was at the seam between the roof and the rear hoop pole. After the trip, I closely inspected this seam, and was horrified to clearly see daylight through the 1/8 in (3 mm) gaps between the stitches. This seam sees a lot of tension when the tent is pitched. The tension seems to have destroyed the seal made by the seam sealant. I tested another area that did not see this kind of tension, and was easily able to “open up” the seam seal with slight tension. The other areas leaking heavily were the seams at the front of the side vents. These seams see some tension when the vents are pulled out by stakes. It became clear to me that the single line of stitching was inadequate to maintain a waterproof seal when under tension. We retired this shelter, with its leaking seams and broken door, at Snoqualmie Pass. We replaced it with a shelter with a heavier floor, double-felled and taped seams, and inferior ventilation. Summary: This tent can best be described as a very good shower-resistant bug shelter. With the seam specifications as tested, it is not resistant to steady rain. Site selection on wet earth is very important. Plusses are: a) light weight, b) very good bug-free ventilation, c) easy to pitch with a little practice, d) good size for two people with minimum gear. Minuses are: a) low quality seam construction, b) poor seam sealant quality control in my experience, c) low resistance of floor to moisture seepage under pressure, d) the door zipper easily contacts the earth and is very hard to keep clean. The basic design of the tent is quite good. It needs a waterproof floor and seams. Read more reviews of Six Moon Designs gear Read more gear reviews by Andrew Claus Reviews > Shelters > Tents > Six Moon Designs Europa and Europa II > Owner Review by Andrew Claus | |||