Winter drains the color from the world, turns the horizon to a monochrome ranging from pure black to a dusty blue-white. Even the evergreens seem more darkness and shadow than color. When I lived in Massachusetts I always found January the hardest month to get through. Here in Northern Wisconsin I'd pick February. January nights are still too long to offer any glimpse of hope, and hope is what makes life difficult, because hope is the feeling that things will be better than they are right now. Without hope you remain resigned to now. Hope reminds you that now is not good. I don't mind the cold, or even the snow really, but all of it, combined with the darkness, is not my idea of a good time. I understand some people love it, which is great for them. They are welcome to it. I prefer to spend winter on the beaches of Florida, hiking the deserts of Arizona, or perhaps surfing the Pacific coast of Mexico. One of my favorite movies growing up was called Endless Summer. If there's a movie called Endless Winter, I've never seen it. I'm also not one to force what I love on other people, so here we are. Monochrome winter. Stark white ice racing across the horizon to meet the edge of the great gray-white dome of sky. Stark, dark, sugar coated with snow. At least there is snow. Last year there was hardly any. The year before there was something like 16 feet. This year we had to wait a long time for any snow, but then there were a few storms that dumped enough for the kids to get out and go sledding and build snowmen and do other wintery things. If it sounds like I don't like winter, that's not quite right. I like snow. I like cold even. I like getting out in it. Unfortunately, aside from a couple nights I spent on the lake shore, I wasn't able to get out much this winter. We don't have the clothing or the gear. Nor did we have what I think is the quintessential winter thing to have up here -- a fireplace or wood burning stove. That leaves a kind of monotony of days. Being driven indoors by the cold is hard for people who've lived their lives primarily outside for the last 8 years. Still, I think on the whole we had fun. I would call it a successful experiment. We learned. Would I do it again? Not without more preparation and better winter gear. Even then, I'd probably head for the beaches or the desert long before winter was over.

TL;DR version: If you want a reasonably lightweight, bomb-proof solo shelter that will last years, the Hilleberg Akto is the tent to get. Also worth considering is the Hilleberg Enan, which is discussed in the review below. Most of the best days I can remember, I woke up in a sleeping bag. It's not that there's anything great about sleeping bags. I don't enjoy being swaddled in solidified petroleum, but waking up in a sleeping bag means you're out in it somewhere. A certain level of comfort is gone and you're probably doing something interesting, something closer to the marrow of life. This is doubly true when you wake up in a sleeping bag inside a tent, especially if it's a little 1-man tent, a personal fortress of solitude if you will. Perhaps because of this I've always had an obsession with 1-man tents. Sometime in the late 1990s I bought what I considered the ultimate solo tent. I no longer remember the name, which is odd considering the time I spent researching it before finally deciding that this was the RIGHT THING for me. Whatever the case, it did indeed serve me well. This little tent weighed next to nothing, I think under 4 pounds, which was remarkable at the time. It was also sturdy and water tight as I discovered one night near Shenandoah National Park when an ill-chosen campsite became something of a river (picking your campsite in the dark is difficult). I stayed dry though. It also weathered several snow storms in the Sierras, high winds near Zion, and some serious mosquitoes at Echo Park (when I slept in the tent, which I half pitched in the back of my truck), I was still using that tent in 2010. Here's a shot from several days I spent in the high country of Grand Teton National Park. Near Holly Lake. Unfortunately not long after that trip whatever waterproof coating was on this tent started to dry up and crack, peeling off the nylon. Then my kids were born and I didn't have much need for a solo tent so I retired it and did not buy another one. Fast-forward 10 years. I was researching long distance bikepacking, something I was planning to do last summer, until I got Lyme disease. That trip hasn't happened yet, but while figuring out what I might need, I ran across this video of a man in a tent, in a wind storm. The whole 4-part video series is worth watching, Martijn Doolaard is an excellent storyteller, but that scene in the storm got me. I have been in a similar storm and my tent did not fare nearly so well. A bit of internet sleuthing turned up a tent with the curious name of Akto1 by a company I'd vaguely heard of, but never paid much attention to, Hilleberg. Hilleberg is a small, family-owned Swedish/American company that's been churning out some of the sturdiest, toughest, most wind- and weather- resistant, best-made backcountry shelters you can buy for decades. I was familiar with the Saivo, which I'd always thought of as the much nicer version of a North Face tent I used to want, but the Akto I'd missed. The Akto was first released in 1995 and has seen only one design change in all those years. Back then, almost no one was making four-season one-person tents, no one was using silicone nylon -- now the standard fabric for lightweight tents -- and no one was making hoop tents. The hoop tent design is still somewhat rare (there is Tarptent's Scarpa 1), but the rest of the Akto's innovations have been copied by the industry. The Akto remains more or less the same tent as when it launched. Hilleberg did add the little vent hood over the fly door at some point, and I'm glad they did, it might be my favorite feature, but that's the only change in the last 30 years. When something works, don't mess with it. This is why Hilleberg has something of a cult following, they make good things and, unlike most of the industry, they don't redesign them just because a new calendar year rolls around. With a retail price of $740 (though you can find it for less on sale), the Akto is not cheap, but I think it's absolutely worth the money. The Akto is a very particular tent built from a particular view of the world to serve people who have a similar view of the world. I happen to be one of the people this tent was made for and for me it is the best tent I've ever used by a very wide margin. The point of this review isn't how great the Akto is, but rather how it is, which might help you to decide if it's the right tent for you. There are no affiliate links on this page. I make no money if you buy it, lose no money if you don't. This is just my experience with the Akto. The Hilleberg Akto The Akto's single hoop design is different than most tents you've probably used. For starters it's not freestanding. The design consists of a single curved pole in the middle of the tent, like the hoop of a covered wagon. The ends are then pulled out from that center and staked down, with two stakes at each end, and two guylines leading out from that. What you end up with is a very strong structure, with six points pulling off a single central pole. People get hung up on the fact that it isn't freestanding, but there's really only one big advantage to a freestanding tent -- it's easier to move after it's set up. To move the Akto you'll have to unstake it. In the 12 nights I've spent in it so far I have needed to move it zero times. The Akto pitches a little differently than most tents. It's a single unit, tent and rainfly are attached (you can separate them though if you want). The rainfly is the main structural element of the tent. The pole passes through the rainfly and the guylines all attach to it as well. The inner tent hangs from the rainfly by clips, and gets all it's structure and support from the rainfly. There are two ways to pitch the Akto, either all at once, with the inner tent already clipped to the rainfly, or, if it's raining, you can pitch just the fly, climb under that and then clip in the inner tent so it stays dry in the process. I've yet to pitched the Akto in the rain, but I did test the process without rain and found that, while it's a bit cramped to get under the fly and clip in the inner tent, it's pretty simple, and the inner tent should stay dry in the process. To pitch the Akto, you thread the single pole through the rainfly sleeve (which is continuous and heavily reinforced). There's no fitting on the other end; it dead-ends into a sleeve with a cap at the end, so you don't need to walk around the tent to the other side and clip in the pole. It sounds trivial, but now that I've used this method I never want to walk around a tent again to pitch it. Once the pole is in, you stake out the ends to pull the tent taut. There are two stakes at each end and two guylines that come out from each end. Technically you can stake it out with only the four guylines, skipping the stakes that keep the bottom ends of the tent in place. I don't recommend this, but I did do it one night when the ground was frozen solid and the snow top powdery to hold a stake. My only pitching option was to guy out to various trees and roots. Each guyline comes with very easy-to-use, locking tensioners for tightening up the fabric. Two more guylines come off the middle of the tent, out to the sides, which you can stake out in windy conditions. Most of the time I didn't bother with these, but it's nice to have them. Hilleberg's included stakes are surprisingly good. Unlike many tents I've tested, I didn't immediately swap them out. After testing them I did go back to my own set of ultralight stakes, a mix of Vargo shepherd's hooks, Ruta Locura carbon stakes and a few MSR Groundhog stakes, which has proved a good assortment for a variety of ground conditions (except really powdery snow, which I still don't have a good solution for). Once the tent is up, you have a very low profile, minimal shelter with a generous vestibule. The Akto has a peak height of 36 inches. I am 5'11", and sitting on a Nemo Tensor Trail air mattress (about 3 inches thick), I am just able to sit up in the Akto without pressing my head into the roof. I have enough room to sit comfortably, write in my journal, and pack up for the day's hike without feeling cramped. Honestly though, I don't tend to sit around in my tent much, I'm more likely to be lying down, reading, sleeping, etc. If you do like to sit in your tent, definitely check whether you can sit up in the Akto or not. The floor plan is a slightly five-sided rectangle. That is the back wall points out a few inches in the middle where the pole is, which gives you a little bit of extra space along that side to stash a water bottle or the like. Lengthwise, I had plenty of room, and neither my pillow nor the foot of my sleeping bag touched the tent walls. When you lie down the tent is quite close to your face, which some may not like. I didn't think I would like it, but it didn't end up bothering me. Hilleberg also makes a tent called the Enan, which is very nearly a clone of the Akto, but uses lighter fabrics and has a mesh door, which drops the overall weight by a pound compared to the Akto. The other difference is that the foot area is a triangle, with a single guyline coming off the top. This isn't as strong as the Akto's dual system, but it does mean you end up with a few extra inches of vertical clearance at either end. If the Akto is too close to your head when you lie down, maybe try the Enan. Both the Akto and the Enan have a large (8.6-square foot) vestibule area. It's plenty large enough to stash a pack, wet boots, and other gear, while still having enough room to cook. I rarely cook in the vestibule at night, the smells attract rodents, but in the winter when most animals are asleep I'll do it. The rest of the time, I might at most make coffee in the morning, but whatever the case, there is room to cook. The vestibule door can be opened from the bottom for access, or from the top for venting (moisture control). A flap of fabric with a stiff but bendable wire in it covers the top junction of the zipper and serves as a rain cover to keep drips out when the fly is open, and as a cover for the vent when unzipping from the top for ventilation. Hilleberg calls the Akto a four-season tent. And that's four-season by the standards of a Swedish company. The Akto would do fine at the North Pole, Mount Everest, or, as I tested it, on the northern shores of Lake Superior in the dead of winter. As noted above the Hilleberg Enan is a three-season clone of the Atko that might be a better choice for those not dealing with extreme cold climates. I should also qualify that the Akto is capable of handling weather extremes, but it is a single-pole tent. Pitching it on an exposed slope in 60-mph winds is not going to go well, although I did subject it to 40-mph winds one night and it came through unscathed, with no bent poles or other damage. Some people say that it can have trouble shedding snow, which makes sense to me, though it has not snowed on me thus far in my use. Part of what makes the Akto four-season is that the outer tent walls (the rainfly) extend all the way to the ground. This keeps out wind, rain, snow, and, well, the world generally. It also makes the vestibule area considerably warmer than the outside air in most cases, giving you some extra living space. The top half of the inner tent door has mesh, and there are mesh panels to vent the Akto at the front and rear, but these can all be closed up with fabric if needed. While all that nylon keeps the weather at bay, it can also contribute to the one thing some users complain about with the Akto -- condensation. On average, you exhale around 130 grams of water vapor per night. This is what you sometimes see on the walls of your tent in the morning. Because of how well sealed a four-season tent is, especially one as robust as the Akto, some of that moisture can remain in the tent with you. You can minimize condensation by camping under trees, away from water, and by venting your tent properly. But if you're camping on a barren lake shore and it's –10 F out? You can throw all those recommendations out the window. You're going to have to deal with condensation. The way to cut down on condensation is to make sure there is some airflow through the tent. To vent the Akto you open the foot box area vents and then the vent at the top of the vestibule. The combination of high and low vents mean that the air pressure difference between inside and out creates a decent airflow. This can be augmented by opening the mesh on the door, which comes about halfway down. This all has to be balanced against outside temperature and the dew point though. It is something of an art, but it did not take me long to figure it out with the Akto. I have yet to have a problem with condensation in the Akto. I spent several nights in less-than-ideal sites (on a small bluff, 10 feet above a lake, in fresh snow) and had only a tiny bit of condensation directly above my head inside the tent. There was a fair bit of condensation on the inside of the rainfly, but that's not a big deal. That's not to say that Akto would be my top pick for the Florida Trail in June, but I do think condensation worries with this tent are overblown. Any four-season tent is going to have more condensation than a three-season tent, the Akto at least has a good venting system for dealing with it. I should note that I did not open either of the foot vents those nights because it was too cold, though I did open the rainfly vent slightly, which I consider the Akto's most genius feature, as it lets warm, humid air escape without letting the elements in. This vent is also handy should you need to cook with the vestibule door closed. Another possible way to mitigate condensation is to use a ground cloth. After reading my review in Wired, Hilleberg sent me a ground cloth, but I've yet to try it. I do like that it can be left in place and pitched with the tent all at once, which is easier to deal with than a piece of Tyvek or the like. Buy It for Life Life is long (hopefully), so I'll be a tad conservative and say the Akto will likely last a very long time. The internet is filled with Hilleberg tent owners who've had their tents for 15, 20, even 25 years, and they're still going strong. Naturally you have to take care of it, but properly cleaned and cared for, these tents last. Part of what makes the Akto so durable is the Kerlon 1200 fabric, which is Hilleberg's name for the 30D-tenacity ripstop nylon that makes up the outer tent (the rainfly portion). It's silicone-coated on both sides, with a total of 3 layers of waterproofing, and it's also treated for UV resistance. The inner tent is lighter and more breathable, made of 30D ripstop nylon with a SWR coating. The floor is the heaviest floor I've ever seen in a tent. The pole is a 9-mm DAC Featherlite NSL, which is pretty standard for a strong, light tent. In the end, you get a strong tent that's going to stand up to life on the trail. Hilleberg tents are made in Estonia (your tent comes with the name tag of the person who made it), which allows for a level of quality and quality control you aren't getting from cheaper, made-in-China tents. Throw in a lifetime warranty against defects in material and craftsmanship, along with a repair program should anything happen, and you have a tent that's going to last the 20+ years many users attest to. Hilleberg tents are not cheap, but given the track record, and my experience with the Akto, I think it's completely worth the investment. The Akto is the best tent I've ever used. It pitches fast, it's bomb-proof, it's roomy, it's relatively light, and by all accounts it'll last darn near forever. Why I Love the Akto That's the overview of the tent and how it functions, but that doesn't really tell you why I like it. I think the Akto is the ideal tent for situations where you might encounter any sort of weather, for example, long term trips. I said I discovered Akto while researching a long distance bikepacking trip. The plan was (and is) to circumnavigate Lake Superior (about 3-4 weeks). I would very likely do this in September, which would mean I could encounter anything from 80 degree heat to freezing temps and snow. This is scenario in which there is no other tent I would bring. On the other hand, if I were doing a weekend outing in the Sierras in August and was pretty confident in the weather, the Akto would be overkill. I'd still bring it because I just love it, but a more practical person might go with something ultralight, like the Six Moon Designs Lunar Solo (which also features a top vent in the rainfly). There is a mesh inner tent ($270) available for the Akto that would extend its livability into warmer, humid climates. I have not tried it, and honestly at that price I'd probably buy the Lunar Solo instead. Although this is mostly academic to me because I'd just bring the Akto. What I'm trying to say is more rational people might find another tent better in certain circumstances. The only other tent I'd consider for solo trips is the Hilleberg Enan, which is the Akto revamped for three-season use. Which again, three-season use by a Swedish company's standards. I've tested four-season tents that are less robust than the Enan. The Enan's outer fabric is lighter, and it lacks the overhanging fabric at either end of the tent. There's also only one guy line, but otherwise the dimension and shape are very close to the Akto and the Enan is a pound lighter. I don't know what it is—the Akto has some difficult-to-define quality that just makes me want to use it. Part of it is notion that this is the tent I would have built if I had ever sat down to build a tent. It is everything I wanted in a solo tent and nothing more. There is something about the Akto that makes me feel at home in the wilderness whenever I set it up. I don't worry about weather, I don't worry about anything with this tent. I wake up in my sleeping bag, knowing that on the other side of those thin nylon walls lies the world, waiting to be explored. That's the whole point of any kind of gear -- to get out there and use it. "Akto" means "alone" in the language of the Sami, the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia. ↩ I usually put my pack inside my tent rather than in the vestibule thanks to some negative rodent experiences. ↩

"Nothing will work unless you do." –John Wooden Humans are one of the few large mammals that don't practice for life by playing. Watch wolf puppies, lion cubs, young bears, elk, deer, pretty much any mammal and you'll notice that all they do is play. There's really no teaching either. Parents, and the pack or herd, might put some guard rails on the play, but otherwise the kids are left to their own devices. We, on the other hand, isolate our young, cram an esoteric collection of information in their brains, and later wonder why they can't function in the world. The closest thing we have to this kind of play-as-life-practice is sports. Sports teach the way play teaches: you're on your own, with some guard rails, and a little technique. But the doing? That's on you. The doing is where you get to see kids' character develop. They learn what it feels like to win, to lose, to struggle, to work hard. The kids have been training juijitsu and wrestling for a total of four years, but it's always been broken up by our travels, which isn't the best if you want to get good at something. Constancy allows for repetition to become muscle memory in a way that nothing else does. You have to put in the time to get good at anything. Along with that though, they've never competed, which adds a pressure that makes all the training a bit more real. Competition adds stakes that aren't there otherwise. While Elliott has played plenty of baseball games (and this winter some basketball), the girls had never competed in wrestling until this year. Now they've been in two tournaments and know the pressure of competition and what it's like to lose and how to learn from both. I asked my daughter what she'd learned from competing and at first she said "cross face" because this is what every coach near the mat is always yelling. But then after thinking a moment she said, "a wrestling tournament is where your ego goes to die." Die is hyperbolic, but I was glad to hear that she's grappling with it. It's a tough balance to find. You have to believe in yourself enough to show up, and believe you can win, but also swallow some of that same ego if you don't. There is always someone else out there who has been working harder for longer, and there's no shame in losing to them. Elliott's basketball team won nine games and lost three, which gave him a good taste of both winning and losing. It wasn't enough to get them a trophy, but that's fine because if everyone gets a trophy -- who cares? When everyone get a trophy the trophy means nothing, and there's no point in trying. That's the saddest way to live. Better to lose and learn. Probably my favorite thing about sports isn't winning and losing, it's that the feedback loop of learning is very short. For example, you can't eat a box of donuts and go wrestle without very quickly learning that donuts are not what make you strong and fast. The connection between health and performance in life becomes very obvious when you are training hard in any sport. At the same time you also learn that your body can be changed and trained and strengthened in a surprisingly short amount of time, especially when you're young. One day you can't even pull your chin above the bar, but four weeks later you can crank out a few good pull ups without much struggle. Put in the time, reap the reward. Since I started juijitsu a couple years ago I've discovered that this still applies even if you're not a kid anymore. Show up, do the work, see the results. It all happens a little slower when you're older, but I think you're much more attuned to the way in which juijitsu, or whatever you happen to be doing, applies to all your life. Your problems and struggles on the mat are probably the same as your problems and struggles in life. I've also found that you have to work them out in both places before you move on. Which is where the quote at the top of this page comes in, though I would word it slightly differently: nothing will work, until you do.

The last few years in this area have not been good to ice fishermen. At least that's what I hear. Last year the lake barely froze over. By March it had thawed. This year started more optimistically. Parts of the bay were already frozen by New Year's -- the shallower, calmer water over by Ashland. Here it's deep and the current rips through a narrow pass between our cabin and Long Island. This is the mouth of Chequamegon Bay, which means it's the last place to freeze. Every day since temps dropped below freezing, a steady parade of cars drive past our house down to the boat launch ramp to check on the ice. Day after day they come, cars idling while the occupants stare out at the water, waiting for it to ice over. Every morning when Elliott and I walk the dog we stare out of the lake, wondering what the signs are that tell you when it's going to ice over. Some mornings there is a thin slurry of ice on the surface, but it disappears as the wind and waves pick up during the day. Some days there are piles of ice chunks on the shore, but then the next day they are gone. Then one day we came down to the water and there were big pieces of ice piled up around the shore. The next day there was more of it, like great puzzle pieces slowly fitting into shape. As the puzzle pieces seal up, pressure ridges form, where the forces of wind and the water below are enough to push up great masses of ice, smashing and grinding like tectonic plates in miniature. Even as it got firmer here, I still didn't want to go out on the ice where current runs strong beneath it when there were much safer places farther up the bay. The kids and I drove down to Memorial Park and went for a walk on the ice. It was surreal to stand and walk around where, in the summer, we swim and paddleboard. In a few places you could even see through the ice to the sand and rocks below, like a glass bottom boat. Then one day we got a bit more snow to smooth it over and someone, somewhere, decided it was worth the risk -- suddenly the lake around us filled up with ice fishing huts.