Tent Ahoy! X-Treme PAC, From Sports by Napier

Accessories, Other — By admin on December 18, 2006 at 12:00 pm

It is an invention someone would have gotten around to inventing sometime. It makes too much sense.
Sportz by Napier has built the X-Treme PAC, which is a small duffle bag that holds a two-person tent, two sleeping bags and two mini-stools. The bag is sufficiently small so that it can be easily packed on an ATV.
Two testers trekked into the back forty to try this rig out. The heat was hot, the sky was blue and the horseflies were abundant. One tester was in his mid-40s; the other was 15, which was good because the 15-year-old knew how to do pretty much everything.
The first thing we did was bungee-cord the bag to the back of a Can-Am 400, although the bag has built-in straps to attach to an ATV. We used bungee cords to see if the bag could handle travel without the straps. Then we rode the trails to find a campsite. The bag fit on the rig just fine and the cords were able to secure the bag easily and without slippage.
We found a campsite that was secluded and small. We opened the bag and found, as advertised, a portable two-man tent with a full polyester tape seamed rain fly in one corner, two mummy-style Thermolite sleeping bags stuffed in the middle, and two lightweight campstools folded in the other side of the bag.

Statistics: The carrying bag is a nylon/polyester combo with a handle and adjustable straps. The two-man tent has a polyester/titanium fabric with a polyurethane coating. When deployed, it is 7.5 feet long, 6.5 feet wide and 48 inches tall. The shock-corded poles are fiberglass with a carbon fiber wrap to prevent sheering and splintering. The two Thermolite sleeping bags are 100 percent polyester with polyester filling. They are rated for protection above 40 degrees. The two stools are about one foot high. The legs are made of steel with an aluminum coating and the seat is made of nylon. It can hold up to 250 pounds.
It was time to set up this package. When we put the tent poles together, one of the testers removed the iPod from his ears long enough to notice that markings on the poles were color coded to the support lines on the tent. That’s a pretty slick idea: After a hard day on the trails, messing around with tent poles is the last thing anyone wants to do. Color-coded poles and matching clasps and flaps is a good idea.
We unrolled the sleeping bags and they looked comfy and puffy enough. The instructions said the bags were good for temperatures no lower than 40 degrees, but they looked more substantial than that. The unusually hot start to the summer of 2006 prevented us from truly testing the bags’ cool weather capabilities.
The younger tester tried the stools. They were only about a foot high and the older tester didn’t try them, questioning his ability to sit down and then get back up again.
The younger tester said the stools were OK. “What do you mean, OK?” “I don’t know, they’re just OK.” “That can’t be all there is to them.” “They’re stools, you sit on them until you’re done sitting on them (you idiot).”
So I guess the stools are all right.
Then it came time to break down the gear. We folded up the stools and stuffed them into the bag, then stuffed the sleeping bags into their pouches and put them back in the bag.
We wrestled with getting the tent into the bag, but after actually reading the directions, we got the tent into the bag. Zipping everything up was an adventure, but it was zipped nonetheless.
Kudos to Sportz, which advertised a tent/sleeping bag/stool combo that can be transported easily by ATV. The product was good and came exactly as advertised.
The suggested price is $230 with $18 for shipping.