Eureka Backcountry 1

I bought this in the fall of 2009, so about 3 years ago. I bought it for a bicycle tour that I was planning cross country. I needed a tent and did some research. And I went to some local camping supply store and this is what I ended up with.

So I will open it up and show you a little bit of what it’s got inside. It all fits into this bag. Not sure how much it weighs but probably not more than 5 or 6 pounds. It’s pretty light.

The tent is all just one piece that stretches out. What I have in this garbage bag is just a piece of plastic I am using as a floor tarp, which I am not gonna set up right now. You’ll probably wanna get something to put underneath the tent, just because it doesn’t have any sort of floor mat.

Anyways, just three poles here. Two of them are the same length. These two are gonna crisscross straight over the tent to create the frame. The third pole, I will get back to it later because it’s for the rainfly.

So anyways, this tent couldn’t be any easier to set-up. Just fit the poles in through the mesh here. Like I said ,these two are the same size and they just crisscross.

Like I said earlier, this tent is 3 years old now but still in pretty solid condition. I am using it for all my bicycle travels and camping trips. It’s pretty lightweight and compact, so it’s easy to travel with.

These tent poles just fit in here to these metal, or steel, rings. Once you fit the ends in, the tent just kind of begins to take shape on its own.

The tent is super lightweight. You can just turn it around on your own to face the one door in any direction you want. There are two clips on each end, so it keeps shape naturally.

One thing I love about this tent is how it stands up on its own like this. You know, it’s not staked down at all. Obviously there is no wind right now and if it was really windy it might be toppling over… I have seen a lot of capsule or single person tents that you need to tie down or use strings so that the tent holds its shape. And that can be a pain in the butt sometimes, if you don’t have a good surface to tie down to.

So, I really like that this tent stands up on its own, and that it’s superlight. You can just pick it up and move it around.

Anyways this is the third pole here, which attaches to the rainfly. It’s a very, very simple tent. There’s not much to it. I’ve never raced the clock, but you can probably set this up in two minutes or so, if you were all speedy about it.

There are clips that go into the corners of the tent, so everything kind of clips into place. You can then tighten it pretty easily just with these straps at the end of the poles. There is also strap here, just so you can stake it out bit more, so when it rains, all the rain will drip away from the tent.

There is also a couple pieces of Velcro on the inside here, which attach very easily to the pole. It helps keep everything together a little better.

And then of course, I didn’t stake this tent down, but when you do, everything holds a lot nicer.

Can you give us a tour of the inside?

Yeah, for sure. So, there’s just one door that opens very easily.

I’ll actually get in there so you can see just how big this tent is. A pretty solid size for one person. You can actually lay down pretty easily and even have lot of room to move around. That’s one of the things I liked about it. I’d fit in this tent with my sleeping bag and even all my gear and it’d keep dry.

There’s a little window that you can see. All you have to do is close the door and then roll the fabric back and you have a window. And even when it’s raining you can keep this window up and watch the rain because you got a little awning here. It’s pretty sweet.

So you got this window and if you look through the tent, you have another window up here at the top. So there is plenty of air ventilation and because there is not a lot of space, there is not much condensation that builds up. There have been a couple of nights where it’s been hot in here and cold outside and the walls have gotten wet, but not too many of those nights. It’s been pretty comfortable in that tent.

Anything you don’t like about it?

You know I gotta say, there is nothing that I don’t like about this tent. I can’t really suggest anything differently. Maybe it would be nice if it came with a ground cloth, but I guess plenty of tents don’t come with a ground cloth. But it’s not really a big deal.

And a just another thing I love about it is this tent is really just kind of net. If you take the rain tarp off, you can just see it’s kind of a net. So if it’s not gonna rain or it might be buggy or something, you can just sleep in this tent and watch the stars

How many starts out of 5 would you give it?

I would give this 5 out of 5 stars. No doubt about it. Really solid tent!