Mark Richardson, inside the tent atop a Chevrolet Silverado, is ready for his camping adventure in Brighton, Ont.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
I swore off camping three years ago. Leaky tents, filthy luggage and windswept campsites finally killed my canvas wanderlust and I’ve slept in real beds ever since. So I’m not sure why I jumped at the chance to stay a night in a Roof Nest Falcon Pro tent.
It must have been the video. A good-looking hipster couple ripping around the mountains of Alberta’s Kananaskis region for a few days in their Chevrolet Silverado truck, sleeping each night in the roof-mounted tent, a campfire every evening and hot, fresh coffee every morning, ending with hoverboards on the Spray Lakes Reservoir, racing a seaplane. Fantastic. I was sold.
A Porsche 911 Dakar with its rooftop tent popped up in the desert of Morocco.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
It’s called “overlanding,” and it’s a version of camping that includes your vehicle as part of the setup. Travellers off the beaten path originally put tents on the roofs of their Land Rovers as protection from wild animals, but now it’s a growing trend to make the most of the vehicle’s features. Even the new Porsche 911 Dakar offers a roof tent as an option.
General Motors offered to lend me a Chevrolet Silverado that was equipped with camping gear by Overland NTH, an Ontario association that arranges rallies for people who like sleeping on top of their vehicles. I called up the association’s Luke Nixon-Janssen and asked him if such people are unusual.
Not at all, he told me. “There are distinct advantages with having the support of your vehicle and an additional power supply. It’s not just the connection to nature, but the connection to culture and communities that you get to visit along the way, and having the convenience of that support from your vehicle.”
Fair enough. I asked General Motors if I could borrow the truck. This all sounded civilized. In my mind, I had romantic images of touring the gravel roads of Ontario with a campfire every night and hot, fresh coffee every morning. I asked my wife, who’d also sworn off camping since our last expedition into Bon Echo Provincial Park, if she’d like to join me.
The Chevrolet Silverado is easily capable of carrying the 82-kilogram tent, which is folded into a hard clamshell case and fixed to an aluminum rack that’s bolted to the truck bed.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
She pointed out we’d be doing this in December. No way, she said. I’d already committed to borrowing the truck so I rearranged my plans to go alone on an easier route.
It was Nixon-Janssen who equipped the Silverado ZR2 Bison with overland gear. The truck is easily capable of carrying the 82-kilogram tent, which is folded into a hard clamshell case and fixed to an aluminum rack that’s bolted to the truck bed. It all looked very macho when I collected it from the dealership in Toronto. A spare gas container, water container and even a propane cylinder fixed to the rack showed everyone I’m serious about my travel. A pair of traction boards for under the wheels in mud or snow showed nothing could stop me.
The cost of it all was a surprise, I must admit. The tent retails for $5,700 and the rack is an extra $2,170. The gas and water containers were $120 and $80, respectively. With a portable kitchen and solar power bank, the gear came to more than $10,000. It would be so much less expensive to just buy a regular tent and throw it in the back of your Subaru with some gas cans and water bottles, but then nobody would know you’re a rugged overlander.
I headed east from Toronto, watching the fuel gauge nervously before it settled down to an average consumption of 14.7 litres per 100 kilometres. In theory, the price of filling the tank shouldn’t be a concern if I can afford a truck that costs $103,208 before taxes, but since I’m a cheapskate, it does. Fortunately, I’d abandoned the idea of visiting Algonquin Park or the Gatineau Hills and instead turned off the highway at Brighton, two hours east of Toronto, where my friends Neil and Melanie have a house on the picturesque shore of Lake Ontario.
The shore was not so picturesque that afternoon, however. It was grey and flat, with the threat of snow in the air. “We’ve got the spare room ready for you,” said Melanie, “you know, just in case.” I would hear nothing of it. My sleeping bag was good to minus-30 degrees, and there was an extra blanket on the back seat.
I pulled the extendable ladder from the truck bed (included in the cost of the tent), hooked it to the tent base and climbed up to unlatch the clam shell. The lid rose gracefully upward and revealed the tent, shaped like a wedge of cheese. It didn’t take long to lock everything in place and provide a secure bed for the night, resting on a foam mattress that filled the tent floor.
“Maybe you’ll want this,” said Neil, and handed me a small electric fan heater and a long extension cord, conveniently plugged in to the house supply. I took it quietly and tucked it inside, then followed him into the house for dinner.
Over drinks in their living room, and in the warmth of a high-efficiency wood fire, I tried to explain the appeal of rooftop truck camping, as it was explained to me by Nixon-Janssen.
“One of the distinct advantages is the convenience of being able to deploy it quickly,” he’d told me, and indeed, it had taken only a minute to pop up the tent and another minute to sort it all out. Watch the video if you don’t believe me.
“Also, you’re not on the ground, so the comfort of the experience is quite nice,” he’d said. In other words, no roots or rocks digging into your back. “And it’s quite roomy. It frees up space in the cab of your vehicle, or the box of your truck. I don’t think a rooftop tent is what defines overlanding in general, but it’s certainly a trend.”
The sleeping area inside the Roof Nest Falcon Pro tent.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
Of course, the main advantage of my rooftop tent was that I could unzip its flap and look directly out onto the beauty of nature. I tried to describe this to Neil as we sipped beer on the warm side of his picture window, while the sun set over the choppy and chilly waters of Lake Ontario. He nodded in sympathy and asked if I would object to some garlic in the chicken that was cooking for dinner.
Much later that night, I ventured out to the Silverado and to the Roof Nest Falcon Pro. Parachute flares glowed over the lake – exercises from nearby Canadian Forces Base Trenton – but I didn’t watch for long because the thermometer read almost minus-10. I climbed the icy rungs of the ladder, slipped inside the tent and switched on the heater before sliding into my snug sleeping bag. Several hours later, I woke in the darkness and considered the wisdom of drinking so much fluid that evening, when I was now eight icy rungs above the snow that had settled on the ground outside. And when the late dawn arrived, I rolled around in full-bladdered awkwardness while pulling on my jeans, imagining the curses that would come from my wife if she’d been with me in the tent’s confined space.
Parachute flares from nearby Canadian Forces Base Trenton glow over Lake Ontario at 11 p.m.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
These are the trials of any cold-weather camping of course, less the challenge of the ladder and the thousands of dollars for the equipment. I collapsed the tent into its clamshell and it gave me a face-full of snow as I did so, but any other tent might well have done the same. In any case, I was grateful for the hot, fresh coffee served in Neil and Melanie’s kitchen.
I must admit, I still don’t quite understand the appeal. Maybe Lake Ontario in December isn’t the same as the Kananaskis in July, or even the African savannah at any time of the year. I was happy to pack my things so quickly and then make another stop at Tim Hortons on the way home. I wondered if Nixon-Janssen would be appalled to hear of my night under the clam shell.
Maybe not. “It’s not about bush-whacking,” he’d told me. “There’s this infrastructure that exists of roads and trails and access to Crown land, and it’s being able to explore those opportunities. Overlanding lets you choose your own adventure, whatever that might be.”