Article By: Jenna Nash
Nolan Osborne is a BC-based sheep guide who takes choosing his gear seriously—because it is a serious decision. After spending the last eleven years traveling in truly remote and rugged Canadian wildernesses, he’s had a lot of time to put his gear to the test, finding out what will—and what won’t—impact the success of a trip. “There’s certain key pieces of gear that are foundational,” he says. “Outside of that, there’s a lot of stuff that’s noise. Some things can be a bit helpful, but, at the end of the day, they don’t ultimately make you a better hunter.” In his experience, you should never compromise on the quality of the core items in your kit: “The things that I’m pretty unwavering on would be boots, pack, rain gear, and a tent,” he says.
These four basic but essential items are crucial to the success of your trip, and none more so than shelter. For serious backcountry travel, your tent must be completely dependable, especially when conditions turn bad. As a guide with Terminus Mountain Outfitters, Nolan spends most of his time in an extremely remote area of Northern British Columbia that spans nearly 4,000 square miles and has no roads or motorized vehicle access. “We get some pretty gnarly weather,” he says. So, when it comes to selecting a tent and understanding just how important that decision is, “It doesn’t take much convincing. Just one really bad storm. It’s just not really acceptable in my eyes to have equipment that’s not going to last.”
With countless nights spent in tents, Nolan has achieved a level of expertise that comes only with time. “I would say I’ve tried most of the major tents on the market because we have a number of them in the outfit. And, yeah, basically, once I got onto the Hillebergs, I realized that they were the way.” He knows all too well what it feels like to be at Mother Nature’s mercy, having spent an uncomfortable amount of time stuck tent-bound, thousands of feet up on a mountainside, with nothing to do but listen to the winds whipping at over forty miles per hour as thunder echoes from the valleys below. In those situations, the last thing you want to be doing is second-guessing whether you made the right choice on your shelter. With a Hilleberg tent, Nolan’s never had doubts. When asked about some of his wildest tent experiences, he responded simply: “All of my crazy bad tent stories don’t involve Hillebergs.”
The first time he used one was about a decade ago, and it made a lasting impression. “It was sort of like an immediate, ‘Okay, this is a different quality of product that I’m using here,’” he says.
That quality matters because it helps you get better rest, which directly affects your performance. You’re able to focus more on your hunt and worry less about everything else. “If you can’t get a good night’s sleep, your cognitive function is not there. Your physical function is not there. You’re not going to be able to have the endurance or the decision-making,” he says. The ability to keep a high level of mental focus is exactly the kind of extra edge Nolan believes will really impact your hunt. If you choose the right gear, it’ll do more for you than just get you outdoors; it’ll actually help you stay there longer and hunt better.
Since his introduction to Hilleberg tents, Nolan has relied on a number of different models in a wide range of environments and weather conditions. He used the one-person Akto for many years in the mountains in heavy snow as well as on warm-weather trips in places like Mexico’s famed Tiburon Island. “To have something that’s that versatile, that strong, and also relatively light—that kind of sold me. Then, from there, I started acquiring more.” Another model he trusts completely is the two-person Nammatj GT. “That’s my main basecamp tent . . . and basically what I live out of for most of my guiding season,” he says. “It’s great because I can keep all kinds of stuff in the vestibule . . . everything I have when I’m out there for three months.” Its extra-large GT vestibule creates an exceptionally roomy, even luxurious shelter that has served Nolan well on all of his outdoor trips, from hunting to camping and ski touring.
For early season trips, he finds the two-person Rogen’s lightweight and airy dome construction a comfortable option for trips in mild weather. And the tent that has quickly become his first choice for more rugged backpacking hunts is the Soulo BL—an incredibly strong one-person dome tent built for the most extreme conditions. “The few times when you do have a really rockin’ storm come through and you’re camped way up high in the alpine, it’s nice to be able to close your eyes and not be wondering, ‘Is my tent gonna blow away? Are my poles gonna break in the night?’”
One of Nolan’s favorite features across all his Hilleberg models is the linked inner and outer tent construction. This system, which founder Bo Hilleberg developed in the early ’70s, allows both parts of the double-wall tent to pitch simultaneously, keeping the inner tent protected and dry in wet weather. “That is, quite honestly, one of those things where you wonder why anyone ever didn’t do that,” Nolan says. “I would never go away from that.”
As someone who spends so much of his life outdoors, another thing that’s important to Nolan is the durability and performance of his gear over time. When it comes to his Hillebergs, he says, “The big thing is that they last a lifetime. . . . My Nammatj is a twenty-year-old tent. I’ve probably spent—I don’t even know—800 to 900 nights in it in the mountains.” While the weather’s been just fine on many of those nights, he always makes sure to plan and prepare for the worst. Because those are the nights when a shelter is truly put to the test—and when you find out whether you made the right choice. For Nolan, it’s always paid off to invest in dependable gear well before having to find out the hard way.
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