ultimate equipment tents.

information on the peapod one man please.

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al anon
15/04/2005 at 12:44

i have what i think is an old ultimate equipment peapod one man tent. the logo is a goat on mountains. the tent is the same size as my jetpacker but with more room at the front.

my interest is for general info on the tent. what happen to them? does anyone else have an old peapod?
al anon
17/04/2005 at 15:12
bump - anyone ?
Chris Townsend
17/04/2005 at 15:31
The Peapod is a two pole tunnel tent that was popular in the 80s when Ultimate Equipment was one of the best known lightweight tent makers. The Peapod is easy to pitch but tends to shake in the wind as there the sides are unsupported and the two poles are far apart.

Ultimate tents were high quality so if your Peapod is in good condition it should still be usable.
Lazy Dog
09/07/2005 at 20:23
Hi,
I dug out my 15+year old peapod this summer, and after a good re-waterproofing it has served me well again even after its decade long hibernation.Survived the very big storms we had around the Glastonbury weekend. So goes to show that they were made to last.I'm off canoe-camping in east Poland in Aug and its coming with me.A damn good tent in my opinion, just look at all the modern copies of the design.Even if it does flap abit!
Sw3
05/08/2005 at 17:13
ooo, that brings back memories....One of my first 'proper' tents that survived being buried in snow, run over and gales [the poles bent so far i had a faceful of roof, but didn't *quite* snap].
the only problem I had was ends of the fibreglass poles roughing up a bit.

If you're brave, you can put a couple of zips in the small end & get yourself a handy little porch / boot store / wind tunnel. i colour coded the poles with tape as well, which sped things up

not the biggest of tents, especially if you're tall, but was still going strong when I lent it to a mate & promptly forgot who....they either lost it at glastonbury or emigrated to NZ .
Gavin Lee
14/04/2008 at 19:47
I get a warm fuzzy glow when I hear people reminisce about the peapod tent.  My dad designed it, and I still have the prototype in my loft (it still works just fine).
GG64
14/04/2008 at 20:05
ultimate gearwas the dogs, i believe some of the stuff was made in halifax. i well remember going to the twice a year sale to buy seconds. you still get some stuff on ebay too.
Hugh Westacott
16/04/2008 at 13:35
I have two Peapods one of which is a single-skin made from Gore-Tex. I never liked the Peapod and much prefer the really first-rate 2-person 4.5 lb Tramp which I still use when backpacking with my son. Despite its age, it recently weathered 70 mph winds on Dartmoor.

The Gore-Tex version of the Peapod was not a success because of problems with condensation. I suspect that for Gore-Tex to work it has to fit closely to the body which makes it unsuitable for tents. On second thoughts, I'm not even certain that it ever went into production (I bet that Chris knows!). I tested it when working as a consultant for Bill Wilkins, the founder of Ultimate.
Hugh Westacott
16/04/2008 at 13:38
'ultimate gearwas the dogs'

I'm not familiar with street argot so am unclear whether this comment by glenngeorge 64 is intended as a compliment.
Chris Townsend
16/04/2008 at 13:49

Hugh, it was high praise! 

I think the Gore-Tex Peapod went into production but my memory is a little fuzzy! Gore-tex works fine for tents in dry climates - I used a Gore-Tex Phreerunner (from Phoenix, set up by two ex-Ultimate people and Ultimate's successor in terms of tents) successfully in places like the Pyrenees but had severe condensation problems in the UK.

The  Tramp was an excellent tent - I used one for 10 weeks on a Land's End to John O'Groats walk thirty years ago. It wore out sometime in the 1980s though - the flysheet fabric becoming stiff and brittle and starting to tear, as happened with PU coated nylon back then. 

Chairman Bill
16/04/2008 at 13:55
I've still got my Tramp, but as Chris says, the flysheet fabric becomes brittle after prolonged use. I also had an Ultimate 'The Tent', but some git (Hugh, that's street argot for 'not a nice fellow' ) pinced a set of poles, fly tore, and so to the bin it went. Have considered whether I could get the fly re-made in a newer fabric (Kerlon 1200 would be good). In fact, I think that with modern fabrics, the design could be made lighter than some more modern one-person tents.
Chris Townsend
16/04/2008 at 14:28

I also had "The Tent" - it collapsed at heavy snow on the campsite in Edale! I woke in the morning to find my feet buried under broken poles, fabric and snow. Lucky it wasn't the other end .....

I'm still waiting for someone to make a good double-skin tent that pitches with trekking poles. Mountain Equipment's AR models are the best so far. 

Bigbananafeet
16/04/2008 at 14:56
Has anybody got any pics of these tents? the web seems to be lacking in them.
Hugh Westacott
16/04/2008 at 15:46
I have a digital photo of my Tramp but being a dumb technophobe and a dirty Macintosh man I have no idea how to transfer the JPEG image from my iPhoto album into this message. Sorry, no photos of Peapods.

Incidentally was there not a 2-person version of the Peapod?
Chris Townsend
16/04/2008 at 15:53

I only have transparencies of the Tramp - and no means of turning them digital. (And it might take me hours to find them!)

There was a two-person Peapod and a bigger Tramp, the Tramp 2. Another Ultimate tent I had was the Phaser Dome,  a good three-pole two-person tent.   

Hugh Westacott
16/04/2008 at 16:07
I still have an Ultimate Phasor Dome and use it occasionally as a base camp in winter. It has a UV reflecting flysheet, is wonderfully stable, has two entrances (which are a boon in foul weather, and has oodles of room for gear. But it's heavy and I'm now too frail to lug it about.

I remember the Tramp 2 but I have never used one.

The flysheet of my Tramp shows no sign of cracking or perishing as reported in some posts. Perhaps its because I always pitch in the rain!
Cath Sullivan
16/04/2008 at 16:11
glenngeorge 64 wrote (see)
i well remember going to the twice a year sale to buy seconds

Me too - most of my earliest fleeces came form the 'ultimate sales' in Halifax (presuming it's the same company?).
Hugh Westacott
16/04/2008 at 16:16
Ultimate Equipment was based in a Victorian mill in Halifax.
Chris Townsend
16/04/2008 at 16:21
Ultimate was based in Halifax for a while, after the original company was taken over, and was one of the first companies to make fleece garments in the UK. Ultimate also made waterproofs (I used their 5oz PU jackets in pre-Gore-Tex days) plus down and synthetic insulated garments and sleeping bags (including ones with a continuous filling called P3, which was great if it stayed in place but if it stayed to leak it came out and out and out......).
Hugh Westacott
16/04/2008 at 16:33
This is turning into reminiscences by wrinklies (polite, posh argot for geriatrics). I have an Ultimate Mountain King synthetic sleeping bag which I use when I sleep overnight in my car.

The late Robin Adshead was also part of Bill Wilkins' team of consultants and I seem to remember that the young Cameron M was also involved before he went on to Higher Things - but my memory may be at fault here. Chris, of course, was far too young.

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