Mountain Equipment Torres 2 Tent - First Look

Mountain Equipment Torres 2 Tent - First Look

Price: £325

Weight: 3150 grammes (claimed with four poles and bags pegs etc) 3288 grammes actual.

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.

Stable, tough feeling, pitches as one, good quality components. Slightly weighty, black pole coding a pain to spot...

---

Update - see our revised opinion after a week in the Alps

The Concept Mountain Equipment's new range of tents is touted - with the exception of the Hielo 2 expedition geodesic - as being UK specific. That means lots of vents for, erm, ventilation in our damp climate and a tough spec to cope with Scottish winter nastiness.

The company's built its reputation on tough, functional UK-friendly kit, but the in-house expertise is in clothing and down products, so to keep standards high, they brought in Dutch tent designer Frank Merks with a brief to produce a range of tough tents.

The Torres tested here is a three/four season geodesic mountain tent. It's a cunnning design because you can use either three or four poles plus optional supports to beef the structure up for winter, or save 250 odd grammes by leaving one pole at home for summer use.

---

Features You only have to look at the specifications to see that ME has gone to town with the basic components and fabrics - to take one example, the groundsheeet uses a Hypalon coating to ensure longterm waterfastness, while there are loads of neat touches like reflective trim on zip pulls, pegging points and pole runs.

Then there's stuff designed to simplify pitching, the achilles heel of many geodesics. The poles are colour coded and the inner and outer are semi-permanently linked so they pitch as one. That's great when you're tired and anxious to keep the inner dry plus get inside as fast as possible.

We've already mentioned the vents, two at the front, one out back, but it's worth noting that they're designed with as smooth a line as possible to maintain a smooth outer profile. Inside you get lots of storage pockets and a detachable gear loft, plus a reasonably large porch - if you need bigger, check out the XT version with its extended vesibule.

---

In Action The reason this is a first look rather than a full test is that so far, every time we've used the Torres, the weather has been near perfect, so while we can tell you that it feels bombproof and stable, we're still waiting to have it proved at first hand.

Picthing is basically straightforward, though it's shame the instructions sewn into the over-sized bag don't mention the colour coding - duh... The red and gold anodised poles and sleeves are easy to locate, but the black one is a bit of a headache to spot and for an unfamiliar user in the dark would probably induce total fury. Once you have spotted the offending sleeve though, it's a simple matter to thread the poles through the continuous sleeves and tension them up.

Because the inner and outer are linked, all you need do then is position the tent according to preference and peg and / or guy it out. If you've struggled with inner-first pitching geodesics, it's all a blessed relief and hardly ant more complex to erect than our fave Macpac Minaret tunnel.

Once up, it really does feel bombproof with a reassuring solidity to the structure and a smooth, low, aerodynamic stance. We didn't, by the way, bother leaving the fourth pole behind, the weight saving - more about weight in a minute - hardly seems worth it and our experience of summer mountain weather in the past makes us wary of weakening any tent structure regardless of the forecast. Luddites eh?

Incidentally, there are pros and cons to all in one pitching: it certainly makes for rapid deployment, but it also means that the bulk of the tent's weight is in one big lump, so sharing loads between two requires a little more ingenuity. It also means that it's easier to dry the tent by simply putting it up rather than slinging it over a washing line when the four layers of folded fabric take ages to dry. You can of course separate the inner and outer, but re-connecting it is fiddly and we usually forget to do it...

Internal room is pretty much par for the course for a two-person mountain tent, which means a snug but not overtight squeeze. You get plenty of pockets too, plus an overhead, removable gear loft which we found sat a bit low and made things feel claustrophobic.

The porch too is classic two-person mountain tent, so enough room for either two packs or to cook under cover, but not both at the same time. As we said earlier though, if you feel the need for a more lavish arrangement, the Torres XT has an extended porch for those Gordon Ramsey moments.

What else? Condensation management seemed very decent and you can adjust the ventilation into the inner tent. Keeping the inside of the fly dry, by the way, is down to a decent throughput of air, so we guess that the neat vents work. The detailing is good; the doors, one each side, roll back neatly and are fastened with shock corded gizmos. Meanwhile, the mozzie mesh sits outside the inner tent door, so you can vent easily on warmer nights.

Weight

ME's weight estimates on other tents have been questioned so, as ever, we weighed the Torres using our teutonic digital scales. According to ME's workbook, the total weight including all poles, pegs, tent, guyline and sacks comes to 3150 grammes.

Our total, based on weighing all the coponent parts then adding them together was slightly higher at 3288 grammes, so there's a relatively small 138 gramme difference. We also weighed the 'optional' pole and twin struts at a total of 225 grammes, giving a summer weight of 3063 grammes as compared to the 2900 quoted.

If you discarded the bags, you'd save another100 grammes or so. Note that none of these weights include the repair kit which is included with the tent.

---

Initial Verdict

Update - see our revised opinion after a week in the Alps

The Torres 2 isn't the lightest tent out there, but from what we've seen both build and the quality of components and fabrics are both excellent. Internal space and facilities are par for the course for a tough two-person mountain tent, which is to say snug rather than spacious, but that's the price of the low profile, wind-cheating design and a desire to keep weight reasonable.

It also appears to be well vented enough to cope with our humid air conditions without inflicting an involuntary morning shower on the occupants... Unfortunately, the weather isn't always cooperative when it comes to tent testing, so while we can tell you that our gut instinct is that the Torres is a bombproof all-season mountain shelter, it's not yet had the chance to prove it for real. Having said that, we'd happily pack it for a Scottish winter trip.

Yes, it could be a little lighter and the black pole sleeve really needs to be coloured differently for rapid recognition, but on the whole, the Torres simply does what it says on the box. A great option for UK conditions.

---

Mountain Equipment web site

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.