Since we first wrote this post we have received comment on this blog, via email and other online forums about our honest post about our experience with Hilleberg.
Hilleberg have come back to us offering to fit new zippers on our tent, so we’ll update our blog once that has happened.
Faulty zippers aside, as regular readers of our blog will know (as we bang on about our tent so often), there are many things we appreciate about our Hilleberg. If they could get the zipper thing sorted out, I think it would be the perfect tent. Read our Review: What we like about our Hilleberg.
Original post :
I blogged last July about the problems we’d had with the zippers failing on our (otherwise wonderful) Hilleberg Kaitum 3GT tent.
Despite Hilleberg replacing the sliders on the outer tent and providing us with a discounted brand-new inner tent, our zipper frustrations have continued. We’re now stuck with an unusable tent and here’s the story of how we got here.
In August 2012 I contacted Hilleberg’s US office in Redmond, Washington to explain that three out of our tent’s five zips had broken down irreparably. They invited us to send the tent for …
Nelson, Christchurch, Abel Tasman Park, Nelson Lakes, Westport, Franz Josef, Haast Pass, Wanaka, Queenstown, Glenorchy
Highlights: Rain, knife making, pancake rocks, limestone arches, lakes and mountains.
Highlights: Ferry, warmshowers, mountain biking the Queen Charlotte Track, bays, stunning views, broken hands.
Highlights : Wild camping in Auckland, tailwinds, stunning views, new friends, hot water beaches and getting reacquainted with ripio!
We have recently described our frustrations with the zippers on our Hilleberg failing in this blog post. There are plenty of features we do like about the Hilleberg, however, and if they could only get the zippers problem sorted, we think it would be the perfect tent.
Fabric strength: It has taken some serious beating. We have heard of people losing or ripping tents while pitching theirs in Patagonia. We pitched in very strong winds which we could barely walk in and even in the middle of the night on Tierra del Fuego, and the fabric withstood such battering admirably.
Rigidity: We endured a massive thunderstorm with winds from all directions which shook the tent and bent the poles down so they touched us laying inside, for more than 12 hours on New Years Eve, 2012. Other campers bailed out and hid in their cars or the refuge shelter, while we woke up dry albeit in a ‘waterbed’ with 10cm of the wet stuff all around and underneath us.
UV resistance: Camping for more than a year in summer temperatures and in strong UV light in New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, Chile and the USA has caused the fabric to fade, …
Hot Water Beach, Tauranga, Rotorua, Taupo, National Park, Pipiriki, Wanganui – 414km (Total 6895km cycled)
Highlights: Active volcanoes, ice cream, wonderful hospitality, hot mineral pools, rainforests.
Day 309 – November 9 : Bus ride from hell
We had booked a bus to Tauranga to gain a few days and bypass a narrow and busy stretch, which had the nickname “The Suicide Highway”. A wise move, we thought.
The first bus arrived on time and the driver was helpful, nice and drove very sensibly. We changed buses in Thames and the new driver was a nightmare – swore at us, was unhelpful when one of our bags went missing (“I don’t care about your bag! I’ve a bus full of pissed off people and you’re pissing me off with your missing bag!” etc) and drove like a complete idiot. Yet another reason why we didn’t want to do this bit…
But after seven kilometres ride from the bus station in Tauranga peace was restored. We were in the beautiful home of John, Sylvia and Heather, the brother and family of Penny and Paul, two lovely Kiwis we’d met when we visited the South Island in 2010. We enjoyed a delicious meal and …
Auckland, Helensville, Dargaville, Whangarei, Russell, Doubtless Bay, Kaitaia – 569km (Total 6119km cycled)
Highlights: Back in New Zealand, cycling with friends, Boysenberry ice cream, beautiful views and surprisingly good driving from lorries.
Day 293-295 – October 15-17 : Back in NZ
After being in the air for two hours from Portland to LA and then 13 hours to Auckland, where we missed out on October the 15 completely, it’s not really the best time to be spending three hours outside a windy, cold Auckland airport at 8am putting our bicycles together.
We cycled the ten kilometres to the nearest campsite, crawled into bed (we’d booked a basic cabin for two nights) and proceeded to sleep for 18 hours. We even missed dinner time! I know I watched four films on the plane, but can only remember three. We will never get used to long distance flying.
We spent a day pottering around a sunny, windy Auckland trying to find free and working internet access, which turned out to be rather hard. We had become used to free, fast and available wifi in the remotest of places in Patagonia and North America. But New Zealand is still stuck in the stone age of the digital age …
Seattle – Aberdeen (via San Juan islands) – 1046Km (Total 5550km cycled)
Highlights: Beautiful weather, beautiful views, beautiful orcas and beautiful sunsets. A reminder of the joys of cycle touring!
Day 233 – August 30 : Train to Seattle
The Amtrak Cascades railway route is one of the very few trains in the USA which allows bikes without needing to pack them into cardboard boxes. So the 3-hour journey from Portland to Seattle was very easy and stress-free.
We had ten miles of riding to get to our warmshowers host. They’d given us a brilliant route description which took us away from the busy road and onto good trails.
Day 234 – August 31 : Hilleberg visit
From Seattle to Redmond there is an offroad rail trail which runs almost door-to-door from our hosts’ house to Hilleberg’s USA HQ. So we made a day out of it, testing Peli’s legs on her first ride after all the asthma business, and we got to explore a bit of Seattle that not many visitors see.
The Burke Gilman trail goes around Lake Washington on the north side and then follows the Sammamish river all the way to Redmond. Yes, the same Redmond where Microsoft …
Since I wrote the below updated review of the Showers Pass Elite 2.1 jacket (quick summary: thumbs up!) we’ve had another visit to the Showers Pass offices in Portland. My replacement jacket was a lovely electric blue colour, but while cycling down the Pacific Coast I felt a little invisible, so wondered if I could swap it for a brighter colour. No problem, was the answer, as I was presented with the NEW Women’s Elite 2.1 in a quite delightful shocking pink colour (I appear to be having my ‘pink phase’ later in life, though my mum reckons I did have a flirtation with a pink tutu aged five – but we won’t go into that). If pink isn’t your bag there is also a nice bright gold colour, or the electric blue.
More importantly, I was very pleased to see the updated features of my men’s jacket had made it to the female-specific design, such as the sensible (non-neoprene) cuffs and heavy-duty waterproof zip. And the staff at Showers Pass were as welcoming and helpful as ever. I’m really impressed with these folk and their passion for their jobs.
Next stop: New Zealand, and we understand they are no …
Santa Fe, via Yellowstone, Missoula to Portland, Or. – 0Km cycled but 2200 miles driven (Total 4570km cycled)
Highlights : Endless roads, Dinosaurs, Old Faithful, The two J’s, Glacier National Park and back to our second home in Portland.
Day 210-211 – 5-6 August : Route 66
The All American Road Trip started with yet another trip to the ER after we’d only managed to make it from Santa Fe from Albuquerque. First stop was Urgent Care with unusual symptoms accompanying Peli’s wheezing. The doctor said we’d better get her checked out by ER as soon as possible, so we spent another delightful night strapped to machines. Peli got the all clear after blood tests, an EKG and x-rays, though we – and the medics – are still not sure what kicked off her asthma. At 3am we found a crap motel with cigarette burns on the bed sheets and an air conditioning unit that made more noise than cold air. Yes, it was definitely time to get the heck out of New Mexico.
We jumped into the car after a few hours sleep and headed north in hope of better motels and lower altitudes. Peli felt OK in our little air conditioned …
Santa Barbara – Santa Fe – 65Km (Total 4570km cycled)
Highlights : Train ride, great warmshowers hosts, Wiggos Gold in the Olympics, New Mexico green chilli, brilliant emergency staff.
Day 199-201 – July 25-27 : Train ride
We left Santa Barbara on the train towards Los Angeles, where we had a few hours layover before heading towards Santa Fe in New Mexico, from where we would pick up the Continental Divide trail.
We spent some of the time walking on the Walk of Fame along the not-so-glamorous-in-actual-fact Hollywood Boulevard before going back to the train station. This mingling with thousands of tourists gives us both the shivers, but we decided to endure it given that we’ll probably never find ourselves in Hollywood again.
The train journey was easy, with plenty of space and even a glass-roofed viewing carriage from where we stared out at expanses of desert: a scenery which is entirely unfamiliar to us. It took 18 hours to go from LA to Santa Fe.
In Santa Fe or rather Lamy, which is the nearest station, we still had 18 miles to ride into town. We had been warned that there would be a little hill we needed to get up …
I’ve now used the Extrawheel trailer for nearly six months and 3500 miles, in nearly every condition you can throw at a cycle tourer, so it’s probably time for an updated review of this fantastic trailer.
The first part of our tour saw us cycling for four months in Patagonia in southern Argentina and Chile on some of the roughest road conditions there are in the world. Very steep hills, very strong winds (up to 40km/h head/side wind) and roads that resemble deep pits of gravel (AKA “ripio”). The ripio is often made up of golf ball-sized stones, sometimes bigger, on top of a hard-packed surface with a bumpy corrugated finish. In contrast to these extreme riding conditions, I’ve also enjoyed riding with the Extrawheel on smooth tarmac down the Pacific Coast of Oregon and California. The Extrawheel trailer for cycle touring certainly attracts attention: it’s usually the first thing that people – cyclists and non-cyclists alike – comment upon when we meet them. They all quickly agree that the concept makes a lot of sense, and are keen to hear all about it.
We use the Extrawheel trailer to carry our kitchen materials (Trangia stove, pots and pans, …
