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All I want for Christmas 16 Finding Nemo’s Inflatable Tent

By Dave Roberts   

on December 16, 2011    No ratings yet.

All I want for Christmas 16 Finding Nemo’s Inflatable Tent

The GoGo Nemo EX inflatable tent is an interesting bit of kit. Instead of a pole, you’ve got an inflatable tube that provides structure. They’re an American company and there are some retailers out there who are stocking them such as Web Togs, but not many others. So when I saw one going cheaply on Ebay, I just had to bid, if only for curiosity’s sake.

I’d recently lost some bargain paramo trews when someone sniped me at the last minute and pipped me to the post by a matter of pence. It seemed I’d become rather rusty in the old skills of setting my max bid, I was determined not to lose out this time. Thinking that £100 was a fair maximum for such a novel bit of gear, the bid was placed and won.

The Nemo tent is worth a little bit more than the £100 or so I paid, around £210 with the direct currency conversion but more likely around the £300 mark if you can find a Nemo GoGo EX it in the UK that is. It weighs in at just about a kilo so it’s roughly comprable to the Terra Nova Laser Competition, except of course that you can’t puncture the poles on usual tents. It’s going to take some time to get used to a tent that, like my sleeping mat, is dependent on being inflated and prone to the same weaknessess any inflatable item. They do sell spares for about £25, and you’d probably need one of those on a longer trip, or at least a way of reliably repairing them (duct tape anyone?)

I’m normally pretty paranoid about forgetting my tent pegs on any trip, but having the whole structure of the tent dependent upon the pole inflating is rather alarming. Even so, it’s such a cool bit of kit, that I’ll not worry overly about that. You can also buy spares, and if you’ve got walking poles, a few guy lines and a brain then you’ll be able to rig something up for the night.

Now that was three months ago and the weather has just not been good enough to use it when I’ve had a trip planned. I suppose that I can hope for some settled high pressure over Christmas perhaps? In reality, it looks like it’s going to be the spring before this bit of gear gets tested out and reviewed. So what I want for Christmas isn’t an inflatable tent, but some half decent weather in this coming year in order to bloody well use it!

Now who wouldn’t want to buy a tent from these guys!

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Dave Roberts

Dave Roberts founded Walk Eryri in 2004, with the aim of providing routes that are off the beaten track. Walk Eryri is now part of Mud and Routes which continues to provide more off beat routes and walks in Snowdonia and beyond. Dave has been exploring the hills of Eryri for over thirty years, and is a qualified Mountain Leader. Dave also established Walk up Snowdon, Walk up Scafell Pike and Walk up Ben Nevis just to mention a few.

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