Kathamandu tent poles

For some years now I've been working as a leader for a school taking teenage groups of students on bushwalks of 2 to 4 days in length, and part of the job has been purchasing and maintaining equipment which they borrow (tents, stoves and maps). For quite a while, I stuck with Kathmandu brand tents - most recently the "Taku" 3 person hiking tent - it was a reasonable weight (around 4.3kg, from memory), relatively easy to put up and use, reasonably well performed in rain, and at a good price (when on sale - which is about 45 weeks a year), around $240.

http://www.productreview.com.au/p/kathmandu-taku.html

The low price was important, as often enough the students would lose pieces - so I was reluctant to see a $600 tent (though potentially having a longer life-span) become useless just because one part - say the inner - was left on a train. Over the years, as parts did disappear, by scavenging "leftovers" I could cobble together another tent.

Unfortunately, it has got to the point where I can no longer justify their purchase, and it is because of one problem - pole breakages. The last year of so, I have at least one breakage per hike - and that's usually between 3 to 5 tents, and although I have been repairing them from older "retired" tents, I'm quickly running out of spares.

Interestingly, it's almost always the front-most pole, and always directly over the front entrance ie. at that pole's highest point), and I can only assume that it's slightly more flexed than the other two poles, as they are all the same construction except for the length and degree of flexion.

During the last repair session, I had a closer look at the breakages, which gave me a better understanding of what's going on.

First, here's a picture of a typical breakage. It's usually the male end of the pole, where a narrower gauge piece is fitted and slides inside the next section. What was most interesting was to examine closely some other pieces which had not yet failed.

Note on these two pieces the interesting micro-fracture running longitudinally from the insertion point - it's obvious that this is the start of the final failure. When I had a brief look at what's left of my good poles, there were an alarming number of these cracks - which tells me their days are numbered.

When I started buying Khatmandu tents over ten years ago, they used a longer, slightly bigger gauge pole (which I suspect were Easton, or a clone), and I rarely had breakages (it was, in fact, door zippers which were my bigger problem, though that was largely due to my students loving to cram 10 or more into a 3 person tent for the "slumber party" experience.)

I suspect the current poles were sourced, starting maybe 5 or more years ago, as a cheaper option, and although they may be satisfactory for occasional campers, my tents get used about 30 times a year, so I guess their good for, say, 100 set-ups, or so. They have rarely, if ever suffered any sort of wind flexing, and I do my best to have the students take care with them, so it is just fatigue failure, ie. an under-designed part.

Kathamndu have stopped selling this model, so I have decided to try the Marmot Limelight, which comes as both a 2 and 3 person model, uses DAC poles, and is somewhat lighter, though dearer (here in Australia) at around $300 - $350.

Wish me luck!

Skibug

The green and gray tents are Kathmandu tents at Acacia Flat, Grose Valley, Blue Mountains, Australia.