If you're going bikepacking – which is off-road bicycle camping – you'll want to keep your load as light and compact as possible. That's where the super-svelte bikepacking-specific Apex1 tent comes in, as it actually uses your bike to hold it fully upright.
Currently the subject of a Kickstarter campaign, the Apex1 single-person tent was invented by Swiss industrial designer and bikepacker Fabian Furrer. It's being manufactured by his outdoor gear company, Aper, and is currently the subject of a Kickstarter campaign.
The Apex1 setup consists of a ripstop nylon double-walled silicone-coated fly; a groundsheet made of the same material (except 40 Denier as opposed to 20); a nylon mesh interior tent; a single 5-segment collapsible carbon fiber support pole; and several tensioning cords and aluminum pegs.
Everything except the pole and pegs stuff down into an included 1-liter compression pack when not in use. The whole shebang is claimed to tip the scales at 740 grams (1.6 lb). That said, depending on how spartan you feel like going, you can use just the fly (sleeping on the bare ground), or just the fly and the groundsheet without the mesh.
And yes, your bike gets in on the act.
Parked upright beside the tent, it's connected to a tensioning cord that runs from the fly to its handlebars, then from its bars down to a peg in the ground. This arrangement reportedly gives the Apex1 30% more interior space than it would have otherwise, for a total of 2 cubic meters.
Setting the tent up is claimed to take less than five minutes. And should you be wondering, a strap cinched around one of the bike's brake levers acts as a parking brake. Hopefully, would-be bicycle thieves will be put off by the thought of extricating the bike with its owner sleeping right beside it.
There were two previous unrelated bike-supported tents – the Bikamper and the Moruta – which actually incorporated the bicycle right into the structure of the tent itself, making theft pretty unlikely. Both tents are no longer available, however.
Assuming the Apex1 reaches production, a pledge of 420 Swiss francs (about US$526) will get you one. The planned retail price is 560 francs ($701).
Sources: Kickstarter, Aper
