Ken's Techno Tidbits

A while back I blogged about Home town news from Nevada City, and all the fun connections I’ve found.

One that I somehow forgot was the Tarptent story. It starts back in 2003, when Matt Strain did an email intro to another friend named Bob who was talking to this company called “Tarptent”. They make lightweight backpacking tents, and he knew I was into lightweight hiking, so he thought Bob & I should talk.

Then in 2005 a friend (Dave White) bought a tent from Tarptent:

And he had a successful outing with it on the 2006 Sabrina/Evolution Romp (photos start here).

So this past summer I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy a lightweight alternative to my bivvy sack, which isn’t so great in bad weather or bugs. I wound up getting the Rainbow, since I liked the free-standing design.

It worked great on our Sierra High Route trip from Convict Lake to Cox Col/Dade Lake, where we met up with the Krugle climbing trip participants. Some photos here, a bunch more from Stefan are here.

But the funny thing was when I poked around the Tarptent web site, looking for a fast delivery option. I was leaving on a test hike in a few days (of course), so I needed it soon. Just for grins I clicked on the “Local pickup” option – imagine my surprise when I saw that the Tarptent corporate offices are located in Nevada City, about 4 miles from my house.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 3:07 pm and is filed under random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.