Sale price $180 including free shipping to anywhere in Australia (I paid $350 brand new).
Please use the three links below to find huge amounts of information on this great tent.
- Exped's Vela I Extreme product page
- Exped's Vela I Extreme gallery page
- My own comprehensive Vela I Extreme review topic - no holds barred honest comprehensive review, including the good, the bad and the ugly (read the whole topic to get updates to the review after more experiences with the tent)
I originally purchased this tent in May last year in order to avoid carrying around my large 3 kg 2 person tent on solo trips or when not sharing a tent on group walks. So when choosing a solo tent, weight was one of the major factors in this decision.
The reason I'm selling this tent is that it is not great at handling large loads of snow, and I have been walking the heavy snow more often lately (eg, see this topic. It's no worse than a lot of other tents, but if I'm going to end up in snow like that more often (which seems likely), then I want a tent that's better suited for it.
In essence, the snow does not collapse or damage the tent, it simply compresses the sides near the ends causing the walls to lean on the legs and face/shoulders a bit and generally reducing the internal space inside the tent. This is easily dealt with by knocking the snow off by pushing the walls out quickly from inside the tent every hour or two, but it is not the way I'd prefer to spend a long night. I felt entirely safe in this tent in the snow (as well as in rain and wind), however, it was not as comfortable as I'd like to be in heavy snow conditions.
It handles wind OK, just a bit noisy with the flapping (tighter pitching would probably help), and it handles the rain just fine. It is well ventilated, but does get consideratble condensation on very cold (sub-zero) nights.
I'll be aiming to replace it with a tent with steep sides, and not shallow angled roof/walls. Probably a Soulo, but not sure yet - would prefer something lighter.
