I used an EE 20degree quilt this year and was overly comfy even on coldest nights in the Alaska Range. Not sure I like it more than my Western Mountaineering Terralite, but like it at least as much. I sleep warm though, so cold night i just leave things on.
While I also like floor less ultra lite shelters, and brought a little SO Silvertip last two years as an emergency/spike out shelter, it failed me this past season. Granted, it was due more to where we had to spend the night—which was on a giant (large house) sized boulder midway along/across a flowing glacier. Weather was decent as we stopped at last light short of midnight and pitched camp, but before we even turned attention to eating some food, the winds picked up and just continued to build. My buds Black Diamond withstood the night well, my SO did not. I tried everything from soccer sized rocks to larger to help hold corners that had some anchoring media to wrapping my pack into the bottom to anchor, to finally rolling myself into it and pulling the pole down. I was basically a burrito inside a rolled up SO tipi with an EE quilt. Very uncomfortable, sandblasted to the face when I would try and open an eye to see anything, but otherwise safe. At least there wasn’t pouring rain that night, and packing my sheep since midday had me tired enough to finally drift off to sleep for a couple hours.
the tarps/tipis are great in the right situations, which can include some relatively extreme weather as long as they have some wind break. But put one in the full strait force of hurricane winds, even a small profiled one will fail. In those unfortunate situations, simply need something more bomb proof like a Black Diamond or Hilleberg.
