Solo Camping in the Mountains with Heavy Rain and Wind - Storm Testing the Nortent Ly 1

Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. So, back in the mountains. Today I'm in Snowdonia, Wales for an overnight camp. As you can probably tell, the weather is questionable at best. It's not supposed to be a very nice night. It's supposed to start raining this afternoon slash evening and pretty much continue throughout the entire night into tomorrow morning. But with lots of rain and wind in the forecast, it should be a good test of this new tent that I'm trying out. So, I'll be curious to see how it does. But after I make the hike up and find a nice place to pitch, I'm going to make myself a nice meal, just relax, and enjoy the wet weather. Let's get hiking. Slowly making my way up to the top. I've done this route before, so nothing too exciting. Still beautiful though. I love this valley. Anyways, almost to the top there. And then it's going to level out and I'm going to decide what I'm going to do once I get to the Linn that's up here. I only kind of have a loose idea of what I'm going to do tonight since the weather is going to be kind of terrible. There shouldn't be any visibility. I'm not going to pitch anywhere as cool as I did last camp, like on the side of a cliff. If you didn't see that camp, I'll put a link up here. Really cool little ledge I found with such incredible views. Unfortunately, I'm not going to get that tonight, but I should get a good bit of wind to test out the new tent. All right, up to the first ledge here. There's a Linn just a little bit further up. As you can see, there's basically no visibility up higher, so I may make the decision to just stay down here so at least I have some kind of view. All right, here's the Linn. I was planning on going up a bit higher. Actually, there's a ledge up here, but as you can see, it's already covered in cloud and the cloud coverage is actually supposed to get worse as the weather comes in. So I'm not going to do that, but instead I'm just going to head over to a spot I've actually been before about three and a half years ago actually. It was actually the spot that I first started talking in YouTube videos, so I'm actually really kind of curious to go back to it since I feel like that's the point in time where my channel took a different direction and I started getting to know you guys a lot better. It's a beautiful spot and the benefit of it, because it's in this little bowl, it typically does not get completely covered in cloud because you have the surrounding mountains which kind of block it. I'm hoping that's the case tonight so that even though when the weather comes in, I'll still have some views of the surrounding area. That's the hope at least. Let's get to the spot and pitch the tent. Well, it's good timing. The rains are actually starting, so I'm not going to pitch the tent quite before it starts, but it's only misting at the moment, so hopefully it stays just like that until I can get the tent up. It really stinks. I almost made it. Hopefully it stays like this and doesn't get too heavy until I'm completely pitched. Almost there, but this is an absolute bog. All right, I think this is going to be home for the night. The rain's off and on, so I'm going to go ahead. It's a little bit early, but I'm going to go ahead and get the tent out and pitched before any of the heavier stuff comes. This tent does not pack down as small as some of my others, but it is a very big one-man tent as you're going to see. That cloud cover is rolling in now. I might lose visibility soon. lines on this side because it's going to be receiving the brunt of the wind, and there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, seven guy lines, hence why there's so many pegs, which do account for a lot of the weight of this tent, but I'd rather have it than not just to have the option. So tonight when it is going to be windy, I'll feel much more comfortable knowing I've guided out quite a bit on this side. Well, there's definitely no shortage of guy lines. I think this may be a kill, but the winds are supposed to, around eight o'clock, get to 20 miles per hour and then consistently increase to 25, and then between 12 a.m. and 3 a.m. I believe it's going to be around 35 mile per hour winds. I don't think the tent needs this many, but because this is the first time I've actually camped in the tent in wind, I just want to make sure it's good. I think it'll be completely fine though. It is a tunnel tent, and in my experience, those handle the wind extremely well. The wind's going to be coming from the east slash southeast pretty much the entire night, so I'm not going to guy out all the spots on this side. Just the main ones, like the bench, the cover, and the poles probably. All right, here it is, all pitched. As you can see, it's got so many guy out points. This is the leeward side, so I only guide out, well, pretty much all of them except two of the side. I would call these secondary guy lines because they're relatively short, but I didn't guide these out. And then I took the two guys that go along the center of the tent here, and instead of staking them out separately, I stake them out on one peg with a heavy rock on top. I think that'll be sufficient, and I think that can actually save me a couple pegs in the future, so I don't have to bring all the pegs. I've got rocks everywhere. This side I've got completely guide out. This will be the windward side tonight. It's supposed to get around 35 mile per hour wind, so I want to make sure this side's solid. So I've guided out. I have rocks on all the pegs, as you can see, except the secondary. So this tent is the NorTent Lee One. So this is only the second tent I've ever tried from NorTent. Last year I purchased a tent from NorTent called the Vern One PC, or polycotton. I really like that tent, however, it is polycotton, so it's really heavy, and it's a single skin tent. So if the conditions are not right, you can get quite a bit of condensation. So this is actually the second tent I've tried from them now, and this one's actually a double skin tunnel tent. So condensation should not be an issue at all. It's quite unique because it's actually got three doors. So we've got one door here in the middle, one door here on the side, and then the side that I pitched into the wind has one door as well. But I'm going to use this side since it's out of the wind to get in and out of the tent tonight. So let's move in. I don't want to spook him, but look at this guy. He was crawling under my tent. I didn't want to crush him. It's a baby newt. It's cute. One of the things I really like about this so far is you notice how the tent, the inner tent, kind of looks a little high and loose. So you can actually, and I haven't seen this in any of my other tents, but you can actually tighten the inner tent to make it more taut, which is really cool. So if you want, you can actually make the other side a door as well. So there's three doors, two on this side, and then one on this side in the middle, which is kind of cool. Because the wind's going to be coming from this side though, I'm just going to keep it closed and just vent it. It's still pretty early. I set up the tent a bit earlier because I knew I was going to lose visibility. And it did start to rain, but luckily the rain actually stopped as I was setting up the tent, so that's good. But I have lost all visibility at this point. So it's just kind of a waiting game until the rain comes now. All right, before I get too comfortable, I need to go get water. A little tricky to work my way down here to get water. The tent's just right up there, so at least the water's close. As I was saying earlier, this is actually the very first... slippery rocks. In any case, as I was saying, this is actually the spot that I camped in around three, three and a half years ago now, where I first started talking in a YouTube video. And I've been running my mouth in videos ever since. So it's kind of cool to be back here. It's a bit tricky because there's no real easy way to get to the water, and I don't want to slip and fall in. No, it's not easy. Scoop my way before I slide down this rock and fall in the water. It's nice that I've gotten this break in the rain. It's a really pretty area when you can see. It's kind of nice pitching early. It's best practice to pitch late, but when you completely lose visibility like this, and I'm way off the beaten path, so I'm not going to run into anybody and just relax a bit more. There she is. Really weird looking tent, but that's one of the reasons why I wanted to try it. So unlike my other tunnel tents, and actually most tunnel tents nowadays, you sleep in line with the tunnel, meaning you would actually sleep in this direction. But this tent, you actually sleep perpendicular to the tunnel, which is kind of interesting. One of the benefits, I suppose, is you don't have that big piece of fabric, the large gap kind of between these poles, which, you know, can flap a lot. So this one actually, because that fabric, or because the poles are so close, the fabric doesn't seem to move as much. That's one of the one things I want to actually test though. But what it does allow, which you do not, or at least I haven't seen in any recent tunnel tents, is because you're perpendicular to the tunnel, it actually gives you a vestibule on this side and a vestibule on that side. So the result is a one-man tent that's actually really spacious. So you have your sleeping area here, and then you can store gear on one side and cook on the other. I actually did the math, and so each vestibule is about 15.5 square feet, so you get 31 square feet of vestibule space, and only 17, or it comes out to about 16.95 square feet of inner tent. So there's plenty of space in the inner tent for a large, wide pad. However, that's all you have room for there. So you really, if you're going to cook or store gear, it has to be on one of the two vestibules. So the majority of the tent is vestibule space, but when you're inside, because of the two vestibules, and when you have both the doors open, it actually makes the space feel quite large, which is interesting. I'll be curious to see how it performs in the wind tonight. All right, let's get in and get a little more All right, all comfortable now. So yeah, like I said, this is kind of a weird tent. I kind of like the idea of having these two vestibules, just to give you an idea of the space here. Because it has two vestibules, I can have, you know, a camera there. I can use this space for cooking. I can have a space to store all my gear and organize stuff, and I can get in and out of which is really quite cool. I don't think a solo camper would normally need two vestibules, but I'm a little weird because I'm pointing a camera at myself from a lot of my camps. So it is really nice for me in a single man tent to have this extra vestibule, because I can have the camera over here, and I can use it as a dedicated cooking area, and I can have my gear on one side. So I'm able to keep the sleeping area completely clutter-free, which is really kind of nice. That's one of the reasons why I really wanted to check out this tent, but it does come at a pretty steep cost. So as is with the footprint, all the pegs, the poles, the stuff sacks, and everything, this whole package weighed about 3.45 kilos, which, you know, is kind of heavy for a one-man tent. This is heavier than my Nimage 2, which is a beast of a tent, which I think comes in with its footprint and everything around 3.4 kilos. So that's a two-man tent, and it's actually a little bit lighter than this. But this does give you kind of a different feeling, I would say. When you're inside of it, and it's open on both sides like this, it actually does feel like a two-man tent. It kind of gives me the same feeling, almost like my Allak 2. And it has a hexagonal footprint, more like a dome tent, which is kind of cool. But like I said, it does come at a cost, and that's the weight. So yeah, I'm really kind of curious to see how it goes tonight. Especially with the wind, and that's the biggest thing. So like I said, it's going to get up to 35 mile per hour winds tonight, and it's going to be raining supposedly all night. So this will be a really good test to see how the tent holds up. Well, it's been a little bit since I talked to you guys. The wind's starting to come, but one of the things starting to drive me crazy already is this. This vent, there's no way to secure it, which is kind of annoying. So it just keeps flapping. I don't know, Nortent, if you happen to see this video, a toggle or something, I don't know, it's just really loud. It just flaps like crazy. I'm just going to keep it like that. It doesn't flap as much, and that's still letting plenty of air in. So since the wind's coming from this side, and it's actually blowing it in just a bit, this is the first time I've camped in this tent. So not to say I don't trust it, but I wouldn't trust any tent that I haven't camped in multiple times, especially if I'm going to be cooking in the tent. Luckily, it does have two vestibules. So the windward side, I'm actually going to move my bag to this side, and I'm going to undo the vestibule on the other side here and cook on that side since it's not blowing in at all. Even though I'm going to be cooking with gas and not an alcohol stove, I'm going to go ahead and just pull the footprint back. All right, so tonight for dinner, I'm going to be making shrimp pad thai. I was actually going to make this recipe on my Scotland trip with a few modifications to make it more stable for a multi-day trip, but this is just an overnight trip, so I brought all the good ingredients, and I'm going to make it the way I would make it at home. So shrimp pad thai, let's get started. I'm actually going to be cold soaking the noodles. The directions for rice noodles are usually like four minutes in boiling water and they're done, but just to save fuel and to make it really easy so I don't have to worry about it. If you actually cold soak the noodles, you can leave it there for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and you don't have to worry about overcooking them, and they're perfect, good to go, and you'll be able to add them in the pan to the pad thai as you're cooking it. Well guys, I made a massive mistake. I didn't forget a sleeping pad or sleeping bag or anything like that, but this one's pretty bad for for me since I like cooking. I forgot my knife. I don't know why I did not put it in my bag. I've checked three times. I don't have it. So I do have my yuko fork, spoon, and knife. However, I don't know if you guys can see this. This thing is absolutely pathetic as a knife. Luckily it's serrated so I might be able to cut through some stuff, but wow is it going to be difficult. If you've been following the channel for a long time, this is one of the things that I love doing at camp is cooking, and so forgetting the knife is... that's a big boo-boo. So I'm gonna make it work. Wish me luck. Luckily the first thing's very easy to cut, and that's the tofu, so not need all this. All right, so for this pad thai, I'm actually saving a bit of time just bringing a pad thai sauce. It's nice because you can pretty much easily find these anywhere, and it makes it really easy for like multi-day treks, but if you wanted to make your own pad thai sauce, I'll leave that recipe on my website for the pad thai. It's pretty simple. It's just tamarind water, palm sugar, and fish sauce, pretty much in equal parts, so super simple to make yourself. I couldn't find tamarind water in the grocery store near me, so I just picked up a sauce. It's actually so much easier than you think to actually make it at home on your own. First bite. Oh man, just cannot go wrong with shrimp pad thai. It tastes just like you would have it in a restaurant. In any case, like always, the recipe for the shrimp pad thai will be on my website, so after you're done watching this video, you can go check that out. That'll be at goingsolooutdoors.com, and I'll also put the recipe for the pad thai sauce if you want to make that on your own. Like I said, it's super simple. Just tamarind water, fish sauce, and sugar basically. The only problem is it's kind of hard to find the tamarind water or tamarind paste sometimes. My store didn't have it, that's why I had to pick up a pre-made packet. But you know, on a camp like this, find a good pre-made pad thai sauce that you like and just bring it. That way you don't have to fuss with mixing those ingredients in a separate dish before adding it to the pad thai. I'm gonna go ahead, tuck into this, and the wind's off and on. The rains haven't come yet, and the winds are, they were pretty strong there for a while, but then they've died down, so it seems like they're coming back. I'm just gonna sit here, enjoy my meal, and I'll get back to you guys when I'm done. I just came out to see the last of the light. Calm before the storm. It's only 6 50. I got a weather report. All the weather's coming in at eight o'clock, video, but this is how I do my dishes. I have these little kind of like wet wipe sort of things, but they're dehydrated and compressed. They're called coin, in case you add a little water to it. They rehydrate, and then you can use it to actually wipe down your dishes. Makes it very easy, but they're like, they're really strong. They're like towels almost, which is great because it makes it super easy to clean your pots and pans after you're done cooking. Nice and clean. Reattach the footprint. I know some people don't like footprints, but here in the UK, and actually in general, just anywhere where the ground's always going to be wet, it's nice to have one just because it significantly increases the area in your tent you can be comfortable in. So I can use this space. I can sit here while I get my bed ready in the interior of the tent. I don't have to worry about getting anything wet, which is nice. All right, well, I'm all done with dinner. Just cleaned up, and as I was changing the camera battery, look what I found inside my camera bag. My knife. I've never forgotten this thing, and I was shocked that I would have. I don't know why, but I put it in my camera bag for some reason. So irritating, but you know what? It is what it is. The meal was still fantastic, but the star of the show was this guy. I've had this thing for years. It's just a, what company is it? Yuko. It's a fork, spoon, and knife, and typically I just use the spoon and the fork and occasionally the knife if I make a steak on a nonstick pan like that, but it actually did fantastic. The serrations on this thing really, really worked well. I may have dulled them a little bit from this endeavor, but it did fantastic, and I was able to cook that meal. I would have been gutted if I couldn't have. So awesome bit of kit. See, this is one of the things, like I said, I really like about having a footprint so I can sit in the vestibule, and that way I'm out of the way when I set up the bed and blow up the air mat, which is really nice. I don't think I would like this tent as much without the footprint. The footprint drastically increases the comfortable space you can actually use inside the tent, which is nice. All right, the bed's all set up. The wind's died down again. I don't know. We'll see. Hopefully later in the night I get some wind and rain so I can really give it a test, but until then I think I'm just going to maybe make myself a tea. I actually brought a beer on this trip, but I don't think I'm going to drink it. I woke up this morning with a bit of a cold, so some chest congestion and soreness in the throat, and you know how when you get sick, like during the day you're okay, but then when the evening comes your throat gets sore again and whatnot. That's kind of what's happened, so I'm a bit under the weather. So I think I'm just going to make myself a tea and then lay in bed and probably just try to get to sleep early. That way just in case I'm woken up by the wind, at least I get some good sleep before then. So let's do that now. All right, I think I'm just going to relax, have my tea, and then I'll catch you guys in the morning. Well, we're definitely going to find out if this tent's waterproof tonight. It's been pouring after I made that tea. It started to rain late at first, but for the past two hours now it's been really heavy. I'd say starting around 10 o'clock it started really picking up. So the winds and rain came, which is good because I did want to test this tent. There's absolutely zero condensation, which is great. No leaks or anything so far. It's just really loud. Try to get back to sleep. This is hard because it's so loud. Unless something crazy happens, I'll catch you guys in the morning. I went to grab something from my backpack and I noticed it was quite wet. And the tent does appear to be leaking. I don't know if you guys can see it. And that's dropping onto my bag. This is the windward side. You can see it's dropping. So this is one of the guy out points. At the base of the guy out point, the water seems to be seeping in underneath this patch. And it's actually doing it not as bad, but it's doing it on this side as well. It's coming through the door tie out points as well. So looks like I am going to have to put some seam sealant or something around this patch. I think I'm just going to go ahead and move my backpack to the other vestibule. It doesn't seem to be happening on that side. No, I spoke too soon. It is starting to happen on this other side as well, the leeward side of the tent. And it's only happening where these Dyneema patches are actually. You can see it right up there and up there. All the other seams on the tent are completely dry, which is good. Yeah, I just need to be careful because I don't want to get important equipment like my camera and stuff wet. My camera, I moved it in the middle of the patches and I'll probably move my backpack again just so that doesn't get wet from that patch. Oh well. This is a good test though. This is why I wanted to come out. It was ideal because it really didn't rain that much when I was hiking. But it has been pouring rain, like I said, for the past few hours now. And it's meant to continue doing this for the next six or seven, so we'll see how the tent holds up. But it's doing great in the wind so far. Just these seams, not ideal. But all right, we'll see how it is in the morning. So I know it's still dark out, but it's mid-October now, so sunrise isn't until after 7. It's 7.01 right now. Oh, so that was a long night. So the rains have slowed. It's only a slow drizzle now. I don't know if you can hear it, but as planned, that was a really good test of the tent. The rains did end up coming around 8, 8.30, I don't know, whenever I made the tea last night. And then by 10 p.m. it was just a heavy downpour until probably around 6.30. So that's what, it's eight hours of heavy, heavy rain and wind. Pretty cool. There's zero condensation on the inside fly, which is to be expected with winds that strong all night. And both top vents open, I wouldn't expect there to be any condensation, so that's good. However, it did get quite drippy and it's on both sides of the tent now. Worse on the windward side. These Dyneema patches, however they attached them, I don't know if they sewed them differently than they did the seams of the tent. Because the seams of the tent are absolutely fine. It's just these Dyneema patches that leaked. So as you can see, we got a little puddle there. The leaking occurred. Well, it's still leaking so you can see it. It's just kind of poured in through the spaces in between the seams. Both ended up leaking. So this one and then this one leaked pretty good as well. You can see around the thing. This one, the single patch, it leaked but you can actually see it there and there. But this one was not as bad. Just to show you, I'm sure they added Dyneema because I was like, oh Dyneema, it'll be stronger on the guy out points. And of course, those are the points that are going to leak. So in any case, that should be an easy fix. But that's something company, NordTent, if they happen to see this video, then maybe something you guys want to check out in the future. But overall, really comfortable. But haven't seen how this tent does on multiple trips like this. Haven't seen how it doesn't snow and all that. So this is not a review or anything. This is just first impressions. But overall, very storm worthy aside from these leaky areas, which I'll need to fix. Alright, it's time to make coffee. Go ahead and make my coffee on this side now that the wind's died down. Just using a coffee bag this morning. Rain's back. Cheers guys. Oh, I was kind of hoping I'd get lucky. It's nice if you can test a tent in wind and rain, you know, for eight hours when you're sleeping. But I was kind of hoping it would disappear, fade out when I got up to pack away the tent and hike back to the car. Oh well. I kind of, I mean, I knew it was going to be raining pretty much throughout the night and into the morning. So it was wishful thinking. Hopefully I get a break in the rain so it's not as heavy as it was last night. Last night was heavy. I can actually hear running water now off in this direction, probably coming down the mountain. So I'm sure there's going to be quite a few new streams. Alright, I'm going to listen to the rain but hope it disappears. Enjoy my coffee and finish getting packed up and I'll get back to you guys when it's time to get out of this tent. Alright, as you can see, it's light enough out to hike so I'm almost packed up. I just got to put everything in the bag. And then unfortunately I'm gonna have to go outside in the rain. Oh well. Alright, looks like I might be getting a tiny break in the rain so I'm gonna go ahead and use the good pegs and anchor all three of these to just one delta and that should be plenty. I could probably do that on both sides and I'll save myself having to bring four pegs and I didn't even use two pegs so that's six. That's 16 grams a piece so quite a bit of weight that can be saved that way. These poles are much better than my Vern One PC. It'd be nice if they upgraded and allowed you to purchase these poles for that tent because those ones are terrible compared to these. Alright, leave no trace as always. This is where we were last night. Believe it or not, those rocks were actually there so I just left those there. Kind of put them back in the holes that they were at and I spread the other rocks where I found them. What a view. This is such a pretty spot. I'm really glad I came back. If the clouds weren't there you'd be able to see Trafaln and the glitters up there. Really cool area. Happy I came back. Getting out of here is going to be interesting. You have all this flowing water coming down now so it's made this an absolute swamp. So originally I came in that way. I'm going to kind of come up the mountain a little bit on the higher ground and walk around this time because that is where I'm headed off in the What a fantastic camp. My goodness. If you're wanting to test out new gear, that was the perfect scenario. It was only windy and rainy really when I was already inside the tent which was fantastic. So it meant I didn't have to hike in it all that much which was great. Solid rain too. I recorded a bit of it on my phone. I'm not going to play eight hours of it but yeah about eight hours of strong winds and rain which was awesome because I really wanted to see what this tent could do and I think I got a good idea of how it can handle the weather. Overall some really nice features. A really comfortable tent if you're willing to carry the weight that is. The vents, they worked okay. Good, not great. The leaks, not ideal and it's specifically only in those places where they added Dyneema for support of the guys. I'm wondering if they didn't do the double fold over stitching like they do with the other parts of the tent. I doubt they did that with those areas. Maybe that's why they're leaking. I don't know. Pack size of that tent though is terrible. I don't know why. I think it's the bag. It just makes it really hard to kind of squish into the shape that you want to fit into your bag which I really like when manufacturers give you a really big tent bag so you can do that easily. Makes it easier to fit inside the pack. Overall interesting design. Glad I tested it out and I probably will use it again in the future. All right starting to head back down now. Again this is not a review of that tent. It's a four season tent and it's only autumn so it'll be a long time before I could give anything more than first impressions. It's an interesting company. I only have one other tent from NorTent. I purchased the VernOne PC last year and I had mixed results with it. I still use it because it's unique kind of like this tent. I like tents that are a bit different but I can't use that in conditions where there's going to be condensation because it'll just be a but I really do like that fabric and the size of that tent. So I was very curious to try out another tent from them. There's been all kinds of stuff online with NorTent. I stay out of that nonsense. I don't do this. One of the reasons I don't even do tent reviews. I would have to use a tent in all four seasons for over a year before I could actually do a review of it. A proper review I should say. There's been a lot of drama online with their products. That was one of the reasons why I was even hesitant to accept the tent but I'm glad I did because it was unique enough and I enjoyed using it. It does have some things that need to be fixed but I can easily do those myself. Like I said in my other video, I do have one other tent coming. I think it'll be here in November actually now. I thought it would come in October but it'll actually be here in November. It's actually going to be an ultralight dome style tent. Very similar in that rectangular design to my Uno which is my favorite tent. So I'm really excited to check that one out. I don't expect it to be a beast in the wind but as an ultralight option for the spring and summer months this would might be a really nice option. So I'm looking forward to checking that out. All right, getting back down in the valley now. Such a beautiful place. Let's hike down. It's turning out to be treacherous. I just fell. These rocks, everything's soaked so these rocks are just super slick and as you can see that's pretty much what you're walking on the whole way down so this may take a little bit longer than it did coming up. Look at all the water today. Like I said it poured for eight hours last night. Look at all the water coming down the mountain. Way more than yesterday. All right, well we just came from up there. We're almost back down. I have to cross this twice but as you can see now because of all the rain it's way bigger than it was yesterday. So I'm gonna have to probably hike down a bit and try to find a spot that I can actually cross it. Here's the spot right here. I can do that. All right, now I just have to find one over here as well. In any case, I probably spent way too much time on that but I made it. So great camp overall. I was really happy. I got to test out the new tent in some wind and rain in ideal conditions where I didn't have to hike out into it or hike back in it which was nice. So if you have any questions or comments just leave them down below and I'll catch you on the next video. Please like, share, get outside. Later!