The North Face Particle 13

Marc Lewis
Reviewed: 05 February 2012

Great tent if you can pick one up

Light

Spacious

Well designed

Easy to set up

Water can drip inside when opening door if it's wet.

Floor can get damp, so best with a footprint.

Great buy, one of the best tents I have ever brought.

Marc Lewis
Reviewed: 04 September 2009

MY FAVORITE TENT, AND LOVE THE COLOUR AND DESIGN.

Good head height and plenty of room for 1 plus my 7 year old son. Simple to pitch. Very high quality.

Damp floor, even with footprint. Water can drop on internal floor when getting in and out.

Despite the damp floor and door weaknesses, this is my favorite tent. I also have The North Face Tadpole, but I still prefer the Particle 13. My Tadpole is an older model and you have to stretch out and down to the ground to reach the flysheet zip. My head always gets wet. The Particle 13 is much easier, you open the inner door and simply open the outer door. If it is damp with condensation, carefully lay it back over the top of the fly.
I went to Lynton & Lynmouth over the August bank holiday with my 7 year old son and we slepped well for the 3 days we were there. As the inner has a lot of mesh, you can get a breeze under the fly. However, this is only the third time I have used it and if the fly is setup correctly, with the fly as close to the ground as possible, its not too bad. You can clip the fly to the bottom of the poles, but this can make the fly and inner touch each other. I pitched without connecting to the poles, but feel I had the fly too high.
I know you cannot cook in it, but are there any one person tents that you can? Most are probably too small
All in all, a great tent of great quality for one plus a child.

Liz Gulliver
Reviewed: 22 October 2005

GREAT LITTLE TENT

Lightweight, easy to erect, no condensation inside yet provides good shelter from rain and light breezes.

As Alex says groundsheet not so waterproof. Rain drips straight off top of doorway into bathtub as well. Can't cook and shelter ( so use pub ).

A great little tent for one or two nights. Have used it 3 times but not in extreme weather. Comfortable to sleep in and can store things around you ( feet, head and shoulders ). Just fits a thermarest so you don't go sliding off down the tent in the night and besides, all your bits stacked around you help pack you in too. Pain in the rain as you can't shelter your stove, so bear the wet or go to the pub or eat cold stuff. There is a knack to fastening and releasing the poles from their tabs so I don't find it so difficult now but I can see problems for cold fingers though. One of my poles has bent slightly but it seems to work ok, though Alex's point about replacement does concern me.
All in all its brilliant for its weight and has been muched admired by our D of E kids!

Alex Roddie
Reviewed: 17 September 2005

My favourite piece of gear!

- Weighs well under two kilograms
- Very roomy for a one-person tent: you can fit a great deal of stuff at shoulder level, and the porch is big enough for a 65-litre pack, stove, boots, and trekking poles ... with room to spare!
- The silicone-treated flysheet is lightweight, surprisingly tough, and despite a relatively low hydrostatic head, is waterproof in any conditions. I also love the red colour.
- The semi-geodesic, semi-hoop design of this tent, featuring two extra poles for stability, means it can withstand a surprising amount of bad weather, provided it's pitched tail to wind

- The groundsheet isn't as waterproof as I'd have liked, and it gets unpleasantly damp in wet conditions if you don't use a footprint (which is advisable anyway, as the material is very thin)
- It can be a little difficul socketing the pole ends whilst pitching: this requires some strength, and may be beyond the means of an exhausted backpacker trying to put the thing up in high winds
- The ultralight aluminium poles tend to bend slightly after a couple of seasons of punshment. This doesn't affect stability, but is a minor worry as I can't find anywhere in the UK to buy spares from!

I'm amazed at the quality of this tent. The innovative design is incredibly strong, and shrugged off gusts in the Ogwen Valley that measured at about 50mph. On that particular occasion, my Particle 13 was one of the only tents in the campsite that made it through that two-day period without being flattened. I felt rather smug.

At an earlier trip in Coniston, however, where the wind swung around and attacked the tent broadside-on, the thing flapped about like a sail. This was probably when the main pole became slightly bent. Wind coming from the side also tends to get under the flysheet, which makes things very chilly.

Still, this is an ultralight shelter, not a four-season expedition tent. Use it in the environment it's designed for--not a storm-lashed mountainside--and it will perform flawlessly. Just don't pitch it at right-angles to the wind!