so in this tiny bag is a pyramid shelter with an inner mesh that can be used in four seasons and
some of the worst weather imaginable and it weighs less than 750 grams so in the preparation planning
phase of my gear for my through hike at the gr11 i was scouring the internet trying to find the
perfect tarp shelter kind of set up for me i did consider looking at z-packs and some other
similar really lightweight tents but ultimately i went with this lightweight pira arm it comes
from a company in ukraine and these guys are out using the equipment in all kinds of weather if you
go and check out their instagram account you'll see these tents being used in some pretty harsh
weather in the carpathian mountains and that was immediately to me a good sign i reached
out to the company and asked if they would send me one so i could use it on the hike post some
pictures on instagram promote it in general i wasn't planning on doing a big in-depth review
but it was highly requested from a lot of you guys who watch the channel so in this video i'm
reviewing two products really the lightweight equipment pyro on tarp and the lightweight
inner half mesh so that's enough faffing about i'm going to put the tent up and get into the review
that is the mesh
and here is the shelter usually i'll have these two things connected and it goes up in a second
but first i'm going to talk about the shelter so we're going to put that up first
and we can do the mesh later so i've just loosely staked out all four corners i'll put one
here and the final one will be the main entrance here so i'd say six is really the
minimum number of stakes to use with this shelter let me grab my trekking pole here
so one of the big reasons why this setup is so light is because it doesn't have any poles
you will use a trekking pole failing that you can support it with a tree branch up above
but i found there was very few times where i was able to do that
okay that's more or less it i haven't adjusted any of the corners yet
one of the things that you will find oh no i got it pretty much right sometimes it changes when you
close the uh the zip there but obviously i need to adjust this a little to make it a little more neat
i could probably take some tension off here i'm gonna try and get it nice and
square so it looks good and also so it's you know evenly distributed through the stakes
okay that looks pretty good so during the setup and over the time of you adjusting and opening
and closing the doors you'll have to be doing a lot of this adjusting this very simple very smart
system here with the paracord and this little piece of plastic that creates a bite in the robe
that enables the paracord to grab back on itself and create tension in the system so
pretty easy to set up i'm going to show you one of the things i love most about
this tent and it's got two doors i'm going to open them up and give you a full 360.
so that's going to give you a good idea of what is in the structure of the shelter without the
mesh there's not much to it once you fold those doors away which is partly why it's so light i
didn't use it very often in this setup because i always had the ear and mesh but i can imagine you
know hanging out spending some nice enjoyable days in the alpine summer kicking back under this thing
for sure so what i'll do now is i'll grab the in and mesh and we'll put that up on the inside with
the doors open so you can see what it looks like now the inner mesh only has one door
so you'll have to lay that out whichever way you like to align it with where you want the door
so the way you connect the inner mesh is via this little clip that's attached to a bungee cord
and the inner mesh and you just clip it on the end of the shelter there do that on all four sides
do a little adjusting so we get the mesh in the right spot and now we could connect the top of the
inner mesh up here underneath the trekking pole so we've got another bungee cord there with a clip
and that connects up here at the top where this hdpe grid stop is to protect the top of the tent
so here we run into the first and pretty much the only issue that i have with this tent and that is
the obvious and that is that there's a trekking pole that runs right through the middle of a tent
and so far for me there's no real good way to get around this however the company has just released
an adaption that you can add to the top of the tent that looks like you can actually have the
pole out to the side here i haven't got one of those yet it's on the shopping list to get as
well as the full mesh i did try to put it up with two poles on either side it was just a little bit
awkward maybe it was the length of the pole that i was using which was my uh leki trail running
pole and that one was quite short so the length of trekking pole you're using is something you
will have to take into account the the pole that i use like i said this one is 129 centimeters and
that wasn't quite enough for me to get the most of the height out of the tent so i often would
just use like a rock that i found lying around to boost it up another five or eight centimeters
and that gave me enough distance you'll see there's one air vent on either side here i
always kept it open it was never a problem to keep it open in the rain but for whatever reason if you
wanted to you can just close it there's a velcro tab there you'll notice there's a bunch of extra
tabs with those line locks around the outside of the tent here i very rarely use them they
are just there to add a couple of extra adjustment points if you need to pull out the walls you know
if you're on uneven ground and you need to pull this section out a little bit further look at that
it doesn't give a [ __ ] about the win
[ __ ] one of these like everyone carries on about how good they are but
i don't know i think we'll see in the morning but this is [ __ ] [ __ ] but welcome inside not a lot
of room in here as you can see but again this is designed to be an ultra light through hiking tent
or shelter rather and there's a couple of things you want to keep in mind when it comes to shelters
firstly condensation is going to be more of an issue with this type of tent than with a double
wall tent personally for me it was never a problem it may be a problem if you've got two people in
here and you're brushing up against the walls so keep that in mind and i have spent a night in
here with one other person and that was very very cozy but that's going to be much more comfortable
when i get the full mesh in the inside of the tent itself not really much to talk about there
is one little mesh pocket at the top here where i kept little knick-knacks and a dry bag full of
you know important stuff in the inner mesh here you can see this bathtub floor design where the
mesh meets the bottom of the tent here and you can see you've got about eight to ten centimeters
worth of distance and that just really helps keep everything organized and it helps keep you and all
of your stuff dry when you're inside of the tent so in my experience single wall tents like this
tend to work better in alpine environments where it's dry and it's cold and you're not getting as
much rain if you are in an area that's bucketing down all the time then i think it's probably
better off that you get a double walled tent just because they tend to handle moisture
and handle rain a lot better i never had any rain problems in this tent i was always
dry very comfortable i'm just pointing out that if you're in somewhere that gets a lot more rain
like scotland ireland you know tasmania maybe the pacific northwest i don't know if there's
a lot of rain around you might want to consider just going with a double walled tent because if
you're out in the rain constantly then this might not be the best structure for your typical weather
hiking backpacking situation so let's talk size for a second if you set this thing up correctly
you've got four square meters of space so 164 centimeters this way 272 centimeters that way
and one meter 30 or 130 centimeters in height so that gives you around four square meters
to work with i am five foot eleven and i'm super comfortable in this variation with the size that
i have and so if you need more space or if you need less space and you want to cut down
the weight a little bit and you've got an option there as well now when i've got the half mesh here
a little bit over half of that is taken up within the inside of the tent itself and then you've got
the rest left over for the vestibule and that worked really well for me because i wanted to
keep my gear and all my kind of dirty stuff my kitchen area outside of the tent here things
that didn't necessarily need to be bone dry one of the things that will be a little bit challenging
is when i use this with another person and when i get the full mesh there won't be any vestibule
space left or basically none so i'm going to have to come up with a solution like a pack cover
or a way to keep the rest of my stuff dry or relatively dry on the outside of the tent and
keep the rest of the important things still dry within the tent i'm very confident in using it in
the snow conditions obviously one thing i will get is a another layer of tent floor something like
tyvek i think would be a good option i on my gr11 trip actually just used an emergency blanket i put
that down underneath which maybe gave me a little bit of a thermal property and an extra protection
for the base of the inner mesh because this stuff is very thin you know it's quite strong but
i don't want to get a situation where i have to repair it so i think it's best to get a tent floor
tyvek would be a good option super light very durable and then you don't have to worry about
getting a hole in the bottom of the mesh so let's talk technical specs so it's essentially pregnant
in polyester with rip stop so that's for added durability that's a 20 denier rip stop nylon rated
to 2 000 millimeters it is silicon double coated using 1.1 ounce polyester and the fabric is coated
with a silicon pu layer on each side meaning that it is waterproof but it's not breathable it's not
like a membrane the two entrances to the tent are ykk zips and they've got aqua guard around
the outside meaning that water can't get through there the shelter comes with 10 guy lines so the
little paracord there with reflective tape around the outside so you don't trip over yourself in the
middle of the night along with those little line lock clips for simple and easy adjustment of the
shelter over time so why did i go with this tent in particular well it's usable in any conditions
you know whether i want to be on coastal alpine snow rain it does the lot like i said it's not
optimal for really really rainy conditions but for where i'm at uh here in northern spain pyrenees
it's absolutely fine i wanted this tent primarily as an ultralight through hiking tent that was
quick to set up and had plenty of space but i also wanted a good option for weekend camping with two
people you know two doors lots of ventilation and plenty of room i got this grey version because i
didn't want to stand out too much i want to be you know reasonably covert about the places that i'm
camping and that grey happens to blend in really well with the alpine environment to the pyrenees
there's also varying sizes of this tent now which is a new thing they've just come out as of march
2021 so if you need more space or if you need less space and you want to cut down the weight
a little bit then you've got an option there as well so one of the things that i don't like about
this tent well the first and most obvious thing is having the trekking pole in the middle of the tent
that's a bit of a hassle the mesh itself is super super fine obviously they've gone for light weight
here being the priority i was terrified a couple of times when i snagged a zipper within the mesh
i was thinking you know that was going to be it for the mesh it was going to tear
there is a couple of tiny holes in it but it's nothing serious thankfully that mesh is
light but also pretty strong but that's something to consider the sil poly does absorb moisture a
little bit i mean for the most part it beads and runs off and it also dries very quickly once you
shake it out and put it in the sun for 10 minutes most of the time it's dry but it does absorb it
a little bit and i think that's something that you wouldn't get if this tent was made from dcf
and i think there is a dcf version as far as i'm aware last time i looked there was a prototype
so that may be for sale sometime in the future but my assumption is that that will be quite a
little bit more expensive also the thing with the seal poly is that it is very fine you know
it's only 20 denier it is going to be abrasion resistant to some extent don't just go throwing
it around and not looking after it it's not as durable as some of those thicker heavier
fabrics so you need to take care of it so if you're looking for a lightweight tarp or tent
that is really good quality and priced really well if you're in europe then i think this is
probably a good option to go for uh for me you know i looked at z-packs and some of these other
options in the states but it was just hideously expensive for me to get them shipped over here to
europe and that might be the case for you if you are in the states so by all means check out the
website and look at the pricing and make the decision yourself so if you've seen the other
reviews you know that i love this tent i'm going to be using this for a while in fact i love it
so much that i got a tattooed on myself check out that that is a little rendition of a photo i took
on the gr11 this thing was my home for 30 days it was a big part of my journey and i had so many
beautiful nights sleep in this tent and i have to have many more as soon as i can get back out there
legally if you enjoyed the video hit the like button and if you have any questions
anything i didn't answer feel free to let me know in the comments section i know there's some
of you out there that are really deep into this stuff and probably know a lot more than i do so
feel free to fill in the gaps for me that's about it for this video i'll see you in the summer