In early August 2009 we purchased a Hilleberg Nano tent which we took on a 2 week hiking holiday to Norway. Unfortunately we have to report that the tent did not perform as we expected.
We are both seasoned campers having camped regularly in Britain and abroad both in campsites and “wild” in the mountains. We currently own a mountain north face 24 tent which we have used extensively and have also used, on a month long trip to Chile and Argentina, a Terra Nova voyager which was borrowed from a friend. None of the problems experienced with the Nallo tent were experienced with the mountain 24 or Voyager tent.
The most annoying aspect was the large tent front hood flapping in the wind (not even that strong, though persistent) above our heads and keeping us awake all night. We tried folding the hood down, which had little effect, as well as attaching boot laces and straps to the hood and pegging it to the ground – this too proved largely ineffective. Incidentally, I always wear earplugs at night when I camp and even this did not drown out the noise.
We couldn’t make the fabric sufficiently taut to prevent flapping, but in trying to do so, we were unable to re-close the front door on several occasions – we had to release all the front pegs and re-set the tension. This was annoying and frustrating .
One windy night when we were in a campsite with other tunnel tents (Hilleberg or similar) I went out to investigate why our tent hood was flapping while theirs was not. The next morning I took a picture of the hoods of two tents and found they designers had realsied that a large hood flaps and had used additional guides and stifners to prevent the flapping from happening. Both these tents were 3 + man tents and had their opening at the sides of the tent. In other words the lines from the hoods to the ground do not interfere with getting into and out of the tent. To do this on the Nallo would be inconvenient for the user as it would interfere with the entrance – thus herewith lies the problem.
On several nights we folded the hood down (we used several configurations) to give us some relief from the noise. It didn’t work. The wind got under the hood, opened it up again and the flapping noise continued through the night. We also used our shoe laces as guy ropes from the two small tabs on the hood rim to the floor with no success. Incidentally, we have camped in far stronger winds without flapping in the other 2 tents we have used.
We have taken the tent back to the shop where we bought it. It was sent away for inspection and came back without a fault in the hood, however this was never our issue. We believe that the fault is inherent in the design and feel that a tent with the premium price of the Hilleberg should not have had this problem. We obviously could not have tested for this problem in the shop when we bought the item but instead were relying on the excellent reputation of a quality tent manufacturer to provide us with a tent that worked in windy weather.
We are very reluctant to spend any more sleepless nights in this shelter and are annoyed that we have spent so much money on a tent that flaps in windy weather and repeatedly keeps us awake all night. Watch out for it on ebay soon.
(Written by: tnortham)