Just a follow up on my pre-winter posts.
The cheap tipi I have already posted about.
The PaddyMade japara tent was strong enough but the roof angle was [as expected] too shallow to shed snow readily, and the waxing was really a big mistake. Even tho I waxed this tent over a decade ago it still has too much in the fabric and breathes poorly. I would advise anyone with one of these old classic tents not to make this mistake.
Until my self inflating mat gave way any of the combinations of mat and pad were warm enough but I also packed one of those cheap minkie blankets from K-Mart and I found that exceptionally warm and comfortable over the top of my pads.
What was a big mistake was the cheap Op-Shop sleeping bag, zipper kept getting stuck even though it tested well at home and with the foot area not being boxed I found it uncomfortable in the long term. It was however warm enough when used with either of my cheap liner bags.
The cheap surplus US stuff was superb, warm and weather resistant but the downside was the extra weight over dedicated mountain gear, the one niggle I had with the jacket was the insulation in the hood, it wasn't stitched down and when the hood was tabbed back the lining kept slipping forward over my eyes, two or three stitches with a needle fixes that.
What was a surprise tho was how often I wore the cheap snowboard pants; the combination of a lightweight insulation [ 40-50 GSM?] and a windproof/water resistant outer made them very nice to wear most days with just the silk weight underwear ( I often wore the US stuff over the top first off) and seldom put on my goretex over pants.
The big hobo stove worked very well in combination with the MSR on the occasions when I needed to melt a larger quantity of snow and was worth putting in the stash for this reason