[EXOSHELL 270]

Spent a couple of rainy days for my first outing with the Exoshell. We also bought the walls — because it rains a lot in BC!

Setting up the Exoshell is as easy as they say. It took me 5 minutes to open it up, secure it with the two straps and the poles and anchor them in the ground with the guylines and legs. This was my second time opening it up but the first time wasn’t much longer.

The Exoshell provides shade but alone it doesn’t protect you from the rain very well. So we bought the walls. Installing them took longer — an instructional video from iKamper would be helpful! We figured out what went where — decided to put the walls around the outside of the poles and guessed how to anchor it to the Exoshell beyond the heavy duty Velcro. Lots of pegs and guylines to keep it he walls — and a couple of open window flaps — in place. All told, I think we had everything up and pegged down in a little more than half an hour.

We decided not to install the door inside wall that we bought. It looks like it’ll just get in the way and there are only two of us. We probably won’t ever use that one.

There is a lot of room inside once it’s all set up. In fact, not trusting the waterproofness of our tent, we put it up — a 7’ x 7’ two-person dome — in the space between the back of my truck and the wall.

Taking everything down took longer. There’s the usual camping gear problem of trying to get things back into the (suddenly seemingly smaller) bags they came in and it was raining so I had as moving more slowly trying to tactically shrink my rain cover. And getting the awning back into the box is a challenge. Watch the instructional video closely. It is import ant to do exactly what they say. Eventually it all came down and fit into the bags.

A word of advice: while iKamper and independent reviewer videos show the Exoshell being used without the supporting poles, I wouldn’t. The “batwings” seem to be made of slightly less strong stuff than originally — they hang down a touch and I would worry they will twist in a breeze and be unable to fit back into the box. So use the poles.

IKamper gives you many more tent pegs than you need, which I’m sure will come in handy. However, I would have liked the guylines to have hardware at both ends. Fortunately, I remembered how to tie a bowline but it would be simple enough to have grommets or hooks at the ends to attach to the top of the poles or the loops on the awning.

IKamper stuff, in my opinion is the best product for tent and awning products. Very creative and well thought out products. May be a bit more expensive than others but well worth the money.