On a very windy walk in the Peak District last week I took opportunity to practice pitching my Trailstar. My brother took some video and as you can see it is a little blowy! The forecast was for 50 – 60 mph winds but I have no idea what the actual wind speed was other than it was extremely windy! The temperature was just 3 degrees C and with the wind chill it was bitterly cold. Unfortunately the video stops short of the final moments but you get the picture (there is another little clip that I might post sometime)

The Trailstar was seriously bowed in at the back once pitched and I could not manage to stop the front sides from blowing out. Still, due to the large internal space of the shelter it would have been quite possible to have used it to camp in an emergency if a more sheltered spot could not be found. It was an interesting exercise.

[Update]
In response to Martin Rye’s question in the comments of ‘what height was the Trailstar pitched at?’ it got me thinking. The answer is I don’t honestly know but I seem to remember I was going to pitch it a 100cm high but I have a feeling that I set one section of my trekking pole to the 110cm mark (in my haste in the extreme conditions, it just goes to show mistakes are easily made!) so the pole could have ended up being 105cm. Anyway, I just checked the recommended poles heights on the MLD website and I could have pitched it as low as 36″ which is about 91.5 cm, which may have made a small but significant difference if I had to shelter under the Trailstar for any length of time in these conditions.