Sierra Designs Meteor Light CD
Quite possibly the ideal backpacking tent.
By
Kristin
Hostetter, BACKPACKER Contributing Editor, April 2001
Photo by
Steve Howe |
Palatial interior space. A giant vestibule. Two side doors.
Great ventilation and stargazing opportunity. Uncompromising
weather protection. Easy setup. Respectable weight. A
less-than-$300 price. Pick any three or four of these features
and you'd have a super tent. But the two-person, three-season
Sierra Designs Meteor Light CD manages to roll all of these
qualities and more into a shelter that perennially tops our
ratings charts and just may be the ideal tent for three-season
backpacking.
In the 13 years Sierra Designs has been building the Meteor
Light, the shelter has seen a few upgrades and improvements,
but the general shape and floor plan remain the same. The
footprint is a 40-square-foot rectangle, which provides ample
living and gear-storage space for two. The near vertical side
walls and 43-inch-high ceiling ensure that you won't feel
claustrophobic, even when stormbound with a smelly hiking
partner.
The current Meteor Light includes two circular doors so you
won't have to crawl over that odoriferous cohort to take a
midnight stroll, plus one spacious and windowed vestibule
suitable for nasty-weather cooking. A wide swath of mesh
graces the ceiling, a feature we've always loved, but never
more so than on a recent trip into the Grand Canyon, where the
magnificent star show threatened to keep us gazing all night
long. For even more versatility, the Meteor Light can now
travel in "fastpacker mode," in which a nylon footprint is
substituted for the tent body, resulting in a 2 = pound weight
savings. Other nice features abound, but the one that
ultimately makes this tent a classic is its
weight-to-living-space-to-weatherproofness ratio. Over the
years, various versions of the Meteor Light have kept us dry
and comfy on trips all around the country-from Georgia's
Chattahoochee National Forest ("Tents For The Frugal," August
1995) to Oregon's Mt. Hood National Forest. Says one tester,
"It's hard to imagine a better three-season, two-person tent."
SIERRA DESIGNS METEOR LIGHT CD
Price:
$279
Weight:(tent, fly, poles, sack; mfr./BP): 6
lbs. 12 oz./7 lbs. 8 oz.
Contact: Sierra Designs,
(800) 635-0461; http://www.sierradesigns.com/.
