Chris Near and Tim Higginbottom are part of a new breed of outdoors enthusiast. To this elite sect cutting the care labels out of clothing and excess webbing from rucsac straps is just part of the routine. For them kit has to be as light as possible, but more importantly it has to work when required. Chris and Tim compete in Mountain Marathons.
Mountain Marathons are team events run over long distance in remote locations, usually involving navigating to waypoints set up by the event organisers. They are run over at least two days and the competitors provide their own shelter. There are strict safety rules concerning the type of kit that can be carried, as getting lost can involve wild camping in some pretty unforgiving scenery.
Tim and Chris first ran as a team in the 2006 OMM, finishing second in the elite category. From there they struck up a partnership that saw them win the elite races at the 2007 Highlander MM as well as the Swiss KIMM (now the Radys MM). For 2008 they have set themselves a punishing scedule of elite endurance races:
Retain the Highlander Mountain Marathonwon the elite course by over 2 hoursWin the LAMMwon the elite course by a record 44 minutesRetain the Radys MManother comfortable victory!New Challenge! - The Mourne Mountain Marathonwon by 2 hours- Win the OMM
To help them acheive their goals Terra Nova have supplied the team with the new Laser Photon - now officially the Guiness World Record holding lightest tent in the world at only 790g packed weight.
Team Reports from Tim - Highlander Mountain Marathon
"We won by 2hrs and 20minutes - a good victory which sets us up well for our target this year. It's the second time the race has been run and we've won both times. The trophy is a 6' broadsword! The tent was quite a revelation to us. It certainly had a fair test over the race night as it was some of the worst weather I've been in! For some photos have a look at the web site - http://www.highlandermountainmarathon.org.uk/
The weather overnight was very gusty winds, I guess about 30-45mph, significant snow fall and temp about 3'C. Luckily we'd had a practice pitching the tent the week before as it was pretty foul sleet when we put it up in the race, but being inner/outer connected really helped. We supplemented the titanium pegs with some large rocks as the gusts were pretty strong.
We were both impressed at how roomy it is. I'm 6'5" and Chris is 6' and we both comfortably fitted in. In fact there was significantly more room in the Laser Photon than in the Kimmlite Subkilo or the Saunders Jetpacker that we have previously used. The Supairs are possibly more roomy inside, but fundamentally unsound and very high maintenance. Also, and this is where the Laser Photon really wins, we can both sit up inside it at the same time. This is really good as it allows much better quality recovery if we can avoid eating when lying on our fronts and try to keep cramp away with a little stretching.
Out of interest we found we had a bit more room with the taller person (me) in the closed side of the tent with the shorter (Chris) against the door. Seems a bit counter-intuitive but worked!
Another really good point that is very important to elite teams is the packed down size of the tent, especially the poles. Most of the top teams carry 20litre sacks or less, and the best sacks are quite short. the only poles that fit the best sacks for us (Inov-8 Racepro 20) are the Jetpacker's, but at 1.4kg we don't use that any more. Certainly it's a major problem for the Kimmlite and Supair. The Laser Photon easily fits into a 20l sack with enough room for spare clothes as well, leaving the other bag free for the rest of the kit.
Another hard weekend of racing over with, and I hope your support justified! We won the LAMM by 44 minutes - the largest winning margin ever. The event was based at Glenfinnan, just west of Fort William - under the famous railway viaduct from the Harry Potter films.
Saturday was a very hard day battling against extremely rough terrain, a long hard course with tricky route choices and amazingly good weather - great for a walk in the hills but a serious issue when you're facing 7 1/2 hours of running! We certainly enjoyed it, but mostly in retrospect! We had a 20 minute lead at the camp which was comfortable but not un-loseable, so we pushed on during day 2 in completely different conditions (low cloud, cold winds and about 20m visibility on the tops). We both had our low moments - I had more than Chris, but he is younger than me - but held it together to more than double our lead by the end of the day. Overall we finished the course in just under 13 hours. Third place was another hour behind 2nd showing how tough the courses were.
The Photon was as good as before - the conditions were very tame compared to the Highlander. It really is a very easy tent to pitch, which is I think very important in a race tent. You often finish the day with very little energy to direct towards anything other than eating, and a fussy tent which needed to be carefully erected would not be much help. As it is the single pole of the Photon coupled with easy 'pull the corners out and peg them down' footprint make for a stress free set-up. It started raining overnight and we didn't have a drop on us inside (as you'd hope) but given that as we are both quite large & I seem to have been given the outside berth the inner and outer do contact around my shoulders and head. Still, no water came through and with overnight temperatures a sensible 5-7'C there was no condensation at all in the morning.
I think one can become obsessive about lightweighting equipment, and I'd like to think I haven't gone that far yet, but as everybody agrees (and this was the basis of a discussion with other elite teams and outdoor gear gurus at the camp) the small 50-100g savings quickly accumulate into kilograms, which over 14 hours is a huge saving on your energy expenditure and can only help you perform better.
Again we are very impressed by the 'packability' of the tent - chasing starts are stressful enough as it is and there's never enough time at 6am, but the ability to stuff the tent into a small 20litre sack without having to carefully arrange poles and split the inner & outer is something we'd miss if we didn't have the Photon.
The camp site was as midgy as any I've ever used, but the large mesh door section kept the little buggers out and still allowed a sensible amount of air through. Chris had a cold so couldn't smell much but I appreciated the movement of air!
I've given it a quick once over and apart from the custard marks on the door where Chris dribbled there isn't anything to show for 2 fairly abusive nights out. MM camps are never really places where you are too careful with all your kit as you've other things to deal with, so for such gossamer material we're really impressed with the way it is bearing up.
You might be interested to know (and I'm sure there'll be photos on the web site soon) that the number of Lasers at the camps have really grown - it now seems as if they are the majority. There were lots of proud owners of Laser Comps, and the branding on the pole cover helps them stand out really well - it'd be good to be able to show that for the Photon as well. One of our neighbours in a Comp was certainly giving clear instructions to his partner on how his pride and joy was to be treated! It seems as if you have the design that others want to emulate, but I didn't see any copies as such. Most alternatives were the Supairs, some new smaller version of the Supairs which look quite heavy and small, and the usual assortment of older designs.
The Radys MM
New Challenge - The Mourne Mountaon Marathon
The OMM
well - what can I say! To say we feel gutted is an understatement!
The day 1 results tell the story really. We ran hard and navigated well to finish the albeit shortened day in a super-quick 4 hrs. Our shadows (Jethro Lennox and Tom Owens) did exactly that all day and just outsprinted us on the run in, hence the slim margin over them at the overnight camp, but seeing as Jethro is World long distance champ that's not so bad.
Day 2 promised to be a good race, with 3rd some distance back there would likely only have been 2 teams in it, and we felt confident that our strength over a full length day would grind them down to leave us clear at the end. Unfortunately that's all speculation and we'll never know for sure!
As far as the tent goes it was pitched, we were in it and getting ready to cook. The forecast 100mph gusts were starting to make themselves felt (although they were nothing like that at valley level, but it was still very windy!) and everything was looking good. We pitched it end into wind and it seemed to be coping very well. We had changed the pegs for 10mm aluminium ones from my KIMMlite and everything felt very secure and sound. It's only a shame we didn't get to test it properly!
Many thanks again for your support this year - the Photon was without doubt an integral part of our success and has been a very reliable shelter for us. Any initial doubts about the longevity of the fabric have been long shelved as it had weathered some pretty atrocious conditions, and we will be using it to defend our various titles next year, and hopefully again the year after that!
Yours
Tim Higginbottom & Chris Near
- Titanium Skewer Peg (Pack of 6)
£18.00 - Tent Bag Large
£15.00 - Tent Reproofer
£15.00 - Tent Bag Medium
£12.00 - Quasar Poles / Pole Set
£36.00
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