Somewhere along the line, the notion of warmth, comfort and standing room got lost in the name of technology. Today's typical pop-up tents provide, well, survival, and that's about it. A Kifaru Tipi retains the classic beauty, style and function of the nomadic tipi, coupled with today's innovations for weight savings, durability and weather proofness. Instead of an hour, a Kifaru Tipi can be erected in about 10 minutes, weigh a mere 16 pounds (for the largest), and can be backpacked, horsepacked and loaded easily onto a float plane.
My youth was idyllic. I grew up in a semi-rural setting in North Texas. I read about the Mountain Men and took naturally to the the nearby woods, streams and fields as my second "home", a home that could sustain me if I learned how to provide for myself on it. I learned to collect and cook small game. In those days nobody thought twice about seeing a boy with a knapsack on his back and a .22 rifle or .410 shotgun on his shoulder. Landowners didn't give a fig where I hunted and camped, and I roamed nearly where I pleased.
I became a woodsman. Rabbits were best shot in cold weather (due to worminess in the hot months), and I learned fire and shelter craft right alongside how to shoot straight. I learned to place a small fire right under the eave of my army surplus "shelter half" - practically in my lap, as I sat, sheltered from the cold rains and sleet and cooked rabbit (or squirrel) --dreaming of someday wandering Alaska and other wild places. I, and often a trusted friend, soaked up the fire's warmth and always went to bed dry and warm - and woke up next morning ready to function full-bore all over again. I learned woodcraft/firecraft early and well, and it has never failed me, having saved my life on a number of occasions.
Over a lifetime of extended sojourning/teaching in cold country one thing has really come to stand out in my mind: if you want to continue to function well, day after day, you need regular exposure to a source of sustained external heat. You simply can't stay at full power solely from the food you eat, counting on it to warm you from the inside with the aid of clothing and sleeping bag. We've all experienced "cold camping"; being confined to our sleeping bags from dusk till dawn is debilitating. The longer we do it the more we wear down.
When we moved to Colorado I started seriously exploring the West with a backpack on my back. I had graduated to a featherweight tarp shelter, and still had my cooking/warming fire right under the eave. Eventually, I just had to have one of those space-age lightweight mountaineering tents. Not because it had a floor and was as hermetically sealed as a baggie. I'd been sleeping on the ground for a decade and a half and knew the "bugs" weren't going to carry me away bit by tender bit. (These hermetically sealed tents are a very, very recent phenomenon in the ancient order of tentdom, and quite frankly represent how thoroughly separated many modern "campers" have become from the natural world. Perhaps they should just stay in the city and play with their computers.) I've slept, lived, in floorless shelters for over 40 years - from Arizona to Alaska - and I've yet to be hurt by whatever it is that's supposed to hurt me if I'm not totally enclosed in plastic whilst living out there.
No, I bought the tent because it was incredibly light (for a tent) and because I'm a techno-junkie of sorts and, mostly because I could pitch it anywhere, and if the wind changed it wouldn't matter. One of the draw- backs of tarp shelters, in fact about the only drawback (besides not being able to stand up - which is also a problem with mountaineering tents), is that if the wind reverses you are sunk. Suddenly, you have sheets of rain or snow and billows of campfire smoke and sparks in your lap!
Well, the little Stephenson 2R solved that problem alright. But, now, instead of three cookpots and myself getting warm to our very marrow over my cookfire, I huddled in my sleeping bag and tried to cook in a single pot with mittens on. This was supposed to be an improvement!?
Meanwhile, I had erected a genuine Cheyenne Tipi on a friend's mining claim up at about 11,000 feet in the Front Range. Had two of them over a period of about 15 years. They were great, absolutely wonderful as a destination hang out, and I steeped myself in Tipi lore. But they were not mobile. For my rambles I went back to a series of self-designed sculpted "tarps" with a fire out front as a better choice than moldering away in my clammy sleeping bag in cold camps. I found that if I could get thoroughly warm and dry a couple of times a day from this external heat source I stayed strong, no matter how long I was "out there." An evening spent cooking and relaxing in a warm environment, i.e.;, while not in a sleeping bag, plus a nice warm breakfast, again out of your bag, will keep you strong no matter how cold and rigorous the days, or frosty the nights.
Then it came to me: I would bring the fire into the tent!!! Just like a tipi. But then the problem solving really began. Canvas is way too heavy to man-carry, but space-age nylon would get holes in it from the fire's sparks. So a lightweight wood burning stove was in order.
I borrowed an ice fishing hut stove and tried it in a Megamid I'd added extensions onto so I could stand up in it. I never shall forget the first time I fired-up that stove in that modified Megamid! It was late November and blowing snow. In five minutes flat the temperature in that tent was 80°F! I was hooked - no looking back now! But there were still problems: The tent was light enough to backpack, but its square shape wasn't wind proof enough (it blew down on a subsequent trip). Moreover, the stove was too heavy and didn't collapse for compact carry. Also, while the sparks went up and out of the tent, in calm winds they also fell right back down on the tent and burned little holes in it - not good at all come the rains.
But I saw the potential clearly: no more smoke and rain/snow in my face when the wind changed, as the tent was closed all around, and better warmth than I'd ever experienced with an open fire - warmth that is all around me! I didn't have to "rotate" myself in front of the fire!
I'd just have to build my own tent. And my own stove - one that somehow filtered out the sparks, as well as collapsed and was a lot lighter.
I chose the tipi shape for the tent, but shorter in relation to its diameter than a classic Indian style, which necessitated vertical rather than horizontal panels. And I decided on two doors, the better to deal with wind changes as well as to better accommodate the comings and goings of the large number of inhabitants such a large tent would entail. (I was a backcountry guide at the time and used my tents for clients' trips.) I had grown up experiencing the freedom and essential cleanliness of floorless shelters so the prototype tent had none. And it would have a single center pole to save weight.
I also made this new tent oval instead of round to provide inside wood storage at the doors - out of the wet but not impinging on interior space either. I quickly discovered this new shape was absolutely incredible in the wind. I set the first one up in a wind saddle outside Golden and began experimenting with different centerpole diameters to find the lightest pole that still wouldn't break regardless of either the wind load or the snow load. I broke a lot of poles doing this.
Meanwhile, I couldn't find any metal shop willing to build my stove plans out of ultralight stainless steel (which I had decided on). "It'll just warp and twist if you go that light", they all said. So I made the first stove using a pair of garden shears and bending it over my office desk! And it worked! Oh Lord, it really worked great! I used a special stainless mesh to filter out the sparks from the fire - so I could use mountaineering tent fabric for the tipi.
All this development was going on in the late 1980's. In '89 I founded Sheltersmith, Inc. and started selling 2, 4 & 8 man size tipis through Mountainsmith outlets. We sold about 250 of them. The stoves were made for us in Oregon; we made the tents in Golden. In about '91, we ran into production difficulties making enough backpacks and discontinued the tent program. I guess every one of the original Tipis/Stoves have continued to function just fine - the demand for them has never abated. When I sold Mountainsmith in '95 I took with me the rights to build the tents and stoves.
So…, they're back!!
In the years since I stopped making them for sale, I've continued to improve them. The tipis are sturdier than ever and the stoves are completely redesigned to burn longer between re-fills of wood. The stove pipes now telescope. Stoves are built over in Denver by a little shop that cares - they are a bunch of outdoorsfolk too. The new stoves are even lighter than the originals.
Sales are brisk. There simply isn't anything even close to these tents. My original goals: completely human carryable, 4 season, absolutely bulletproof tents you can stand up and walk around in, provided with a cooking/heating natural fuel burning stove system that lasts virtually forever. True long term living quarters for the people who want real freedom of the hills. Daniel Boone would give his eye teeth for one, I'm sure.
Combine this tipi with one of my packs and a good lightweight rifle and disappear into the sunset. That's independence! I'm a happy man!
Patrick Smith.
From South Park Colorado
11/11/99
1-800-222-6139 or 303-278-9155 for a live person, call Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., MST
