Latest - see Mountain
Equipment's comments and confirmation that there has a been
a recall on this model due to a production fault. Current Torres
tents should not suffer from de-bonding of suspension points
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Mountain Equipment Torres 2 Tent
- Update
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Price:
£325
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Weight: 3150 grammes (claimed with
four poles and bags pegs etc) 3288 grammes
actual.
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Features: Three /
four-season mountain tent with optional fourth pole and two
support struts for winter use. Connected inner and outer for
rapid pitching, continuous pole sleeves, aerodynamic air
inlets for ventilation, silicone-coated nylon fly with
sealed seams, rip-stop nylon inner tent, floor with Hypalon
coatingnylon No-See-Um mesh windows, YKK zippers,
silicone-dipped polyester webbing, Duraflex buckles and
rings, Yunan Air Hercules ST poles.internal storage pockets,
removeable gear loft, colour coded poles, lots of reflective
bits, lightweight anodised vee-pegs.
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Stable.
Condensation problems, welds coming apart.
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Update
When we originally took a first
look at the Torres 2 we were cautiously optimistic though
we stressed the difficulty of testing tents generally. Since then
however, the tent's been used for a week in the Swiss Alps with some
less than stellar results.
First time
pitching was problematic, in particular, locating
the black pole sleeve is a right headache and in a trial run it took
our tester almost an hour to get the tent up. The tester also found
that the tensioners at the pole mounting points were ineffective and
made it impossible to get the flysheet to sit taut, instead it
created a sort of fabric shelf on one side of the tent.
Using the guys at the front of the tent pulled the top of the fly
down so it contacted the inner leading to serious condensation
overnight and an involuntary cold shower next morning after a rainy
night with all kit in the gear loft and the inside pockets 'wringing
wet' due to condensation.Sacking the guys helped matters, but would
obviously have reduced the overall strength of the tent.
The vents, which are supposed to cope with humid UK
conditions, didn't appear to help much either and sat very close to
the inner. The condensation problem became a nightly occurence
despite sleeping with the tent inner door unzipped bar the mozzie
net. The points ringed, above, were all wet spots due to contact
between outer and inner.
Overall Design thought our tester was too fiddly and
complex with too much going on. The curve on the main door is too
tight making the zips hard to use, the gear loft hangs too low making
the tent interior cramped when it's in use and the glow in the dark
zip-pulls only really work when it's pitch black, at which point
you'll be using a torch anyway. The side pockets were felt to be too
small as well.
The worst issue however was debonding of the fixings for the inner
tent, where it connects to the outer. These are glued in place, but
after three days one of the front ones started to pull away, then
another - see above, the glue is clearly visible - and finally
a third, at which point the inner was unclipped from the fly. Not
good. We suspect that the heat of the sun was responsible, but it
shouldn't happen with a £325 tent.
Based on our Swiss experience, we can't recommend the Torres 2. The
combination of pitching quirks, consequent condensation and debonding
problems meant that we rapidly lost faith in it.
Mountain Equipment makes excellent, practical and well-designed
clothing and other equipment, but in this case at least, their tents
still seem to need some work.
Know more or want to?
If you'd like to add your own experiences of this product check
out our user review system and post your opinions to the world. If
you have questions you can mail
us direct, ask
Richard Gear or try a posting to our gear
forum.
Phil Allen 2
