I have a Silvertip and have slept in it 4 or 5 nights. It has a stove jack but I do not have a stove as of yet. IT was purchased after using my tarptent contrail (single wall 1 person shelter) for an elk hunt and realizing the tarptent was noisy as hell in any wind, even when using every guyline, drafty as hell, and cramped. It was light though (24 oz paced with stakes).
Impressions with the Silvertip:
Good:
-Lightweight for what it is. I more than doubled my floorspace and have much more interior volume. With the stove jack (adds 4-5 oz from what I have read), every stake you could possibly use (I think 12 or 14), and the trekking pole strap I use to lash my trekking poles together it weighs 2.25 lbs in a stuff sack. I am used to very small shelters, so the amount of room in the Silvertip feels huge to me. YMMV depending on prior experience.
-Ease of pitching. The Silvertip, Cimmarron, an Redcliff are all pyramid tipi hybrids. You have a rectangle to work with for your 1st 4 stakes which make it very simple to set up. You only need 6 stakes to call it a day with the Silvertip, although using more will increase floorspace and interior volume.
-Weather resistance. The thing is silent in 30mph winds. I have seen videos and pictures of the Lil Bug Out in 70 mph winds and another after a large snowfall (>1ft) and it was fine. The Silvertip is by all accounts even more weather resistant than the LBO. Even without a stove, the interior will be warmer that outside. I went on a trip on Cross Timbers trail on the Texas side of lake Texoma (highly recommend) and hung a thermometer inside the Silvertip. When I woke up it was 42* inside. Moving the thermometer outside, it dropped to 34*.
-Quality. Like PFG I am a fan of Seek Outside. I love their backpacks after packing out a few animals in mine and using it for training hikes with sandbags and weights in it. Their shelters are the same. The stitching is great, the large YKK zips are smooth and should last forever, and the silnylon seems to have less sag than my tartptent did.
Less good:
-Condensation. If you pitch this in a stupid spot (over a ton of green grass, near a creek bottom or in some other kind of low lying area) and it is tight to the ground, the interior will most likely be covered in condensation in the mornings. I understand sometimes you might not have options and will be stuck. For those times you can use the line loc kit to pitch the tipi off the ground a few inches and let air flow or leave the door slightly open. The vent setup they have doesn't really make much of a difference IMO. I tied cordage at all stakeout loop with a tautline hitch at each end to achieve the same effect as their line loc kit because I had the cord and am a cheap ******* at times. All this being said, pitching and sleeping in this in my backyard over green grass several times and using it backpacking, when I did get condensation I had enough room that I wasn't brushing up against the walls and getting my sleeping bag wet, and by raising it or pitching tight to the ground over bare dirt I had no condensation, even with high humidity. Using a plastic/tyvek ground sheet will also cut down on moisture from the ground and thus condensation.
-Not all the floorspace is usable. The sloping sides that give such great weather shedding ability mean you can't really use all of the interior the same way you can a tent that meet the ground at a near 90* angle. This is mitigated by following Seek Outside's pitching instructions. I still think this thing has a massive amount of room for a backpacking shelter, and you can use this space for getting small items out of the center of the shelter.
Congrats if you read that entire treatise. You might also consider the LBO with vestibule. Same weight as the Silvertip, slightly less intuitive pitching, more floorspace. Take just the main base and have a 3 sided pyramid when it's warm and weather is nice, use the base + vestibule for nasty weather or 2 people (you can more easily split the load of the LBO with 2 people since it zips apart. You can also add a tarp in the center for a big basecamp or more than 2 people. I struggled to choose between the two.
Here is a
pretty detailed review of a lot of 2+ people pyramid style shelters at rokslide.
Edit: Silvertip on Cross Timbers trail.
