Big Agnes Copper Spur UL2 Gear Review
Gear reviewing, everyone seems to want gear reviews. We usually like for the product to speak for itself, the best endorsement is always word of mouth between fellow hikers if they can get a word in between granola filled mouthfuls. If a hiker truly loves their piece of gear, you will not stop hearing them talk about it. It lasted this many miles, it upheld against this type of terrain, I have had it since my first hike. The hikers passion about their gear comes from the fact that it is used day after day, hike after hike and has always upheld to their standard of reliability. Even though we are not chewing granola right now and getting calorie packed for the next climb, let us get into one of our favorite pieces of gear over the years, that while ultimately it had to be replaced, we were very happy to use.
The Big Agnes Copper Spur UL2 Tent. A free-standing tent that unless using the rain fly with it, can be completely pitched without tent stakes. This has always been a huge necessity for us, because as we find ourselves in more remote and more THICC with two C's bushwhacks along new trail systems, we truly never know where an available campsite will be. A campsite might be a little patch of ground, nestled between...well nestles. Or the campsite might be after an exposed ridge walk that took all day, longer than expected, so we were not able to drop off the exposed face and have to find camp on rock faces. Have you ever tried to pitch tent stakes into literal rock? Quite impossible, and frankly downright frustrating. So, the main factor of this tent for us, was the versatility of being able to set up anywhere, and know we were okay to push that day an extra few miles, even if we ended up at a root-filled and sloped campsite. We were always able to pitch our tent.
Nice flat tent pad! Luxury! Not to mention the view....
The next big factor for us, which was tied in closely to the versatility, was the durability of the tent. We have had (2) separate Big Agnes Copper Spurs over the years and each lasted 7,800~ miles and 1,800 miles ~ respectively. I know that is a huge discrepancy in the durability! We were quite confused by this as well. The first Copper Spur we owned lasted through many long distance trails. The last 2,000~ miles of its life, it began to have zipper issues, holes, rain fly issues, and general issues with gear that is starting to deteriorate. Yet, it is understandable and actually downright impressive that it lasted that long. We were absolutely thrilled it lasted this long. So, when choosing another tent, there was no question. Well there might have been a question of weight, but we will get into that later. Now on to the second one we owned. This one only lasted about 1,800~ miles. There are many factors that could have contributed to it lasting drastically shorter than the first. We asked more from it in more extreme terrain, it outlasted extreme weather conditions as well, we could have been not as careful with it, or what we believed to be the main factor was that the tensile strength on some of the fabric and stitching was too high. We do not want to say it was faulty, but with such a huge discrepancy we could not help but feel a little mislead and confused. Once again, there are so many factors that go into the life of a piece of gear that it could have been user error as well as manufacturing error, but overall we were very satisfied with the durability of this tent. Will we get another? Most likely.