User Review: The North Face VE 25

My VE is over ten years old. Although it's been used in the Rockies, it has most often been used simply as a camping tent.

I love the functionalist aspects of the thing: it goes up fast, is easy to work with and is especially drum-tight and unflappable inside. I find the interior to be both comfortable and aesthetically pleasing, a beautiful space to occupy.

The tent has impressively withstood the most violent western Canadian thunderstorms with reassuring invulnerability. Frequently, I reflect on the fact that this tent is an EVOLVED design which has endured for many years and that that sort of continuity is not necessarily common in outdoor equipment. It really is the archetypal source for an entire generation.

Moreover, the VE is so damn fine looking that it has become the iconic tent used in virtually all stereotypical advertising imagery promoting any aspect of the great outdoors.

I initially had problems with leakage through the fly: TNF replaced it with a radically enhanced one. A lot of the negative reviews seem based in dissing the company rather than this, one of its most integrated designs.