Size and Weight
The weight of a tent depends on its size and the materials it’s made from. Tents come in a wide range of sizes—from tiny bivy tents barely big enough for one person to monsters that will accommodate half a dozen Himalayan mountaineers and all their gear. At a minimum, you need enough space to lie down and stretch out without pushing against the walls or either end. This is all the space the smallest tents have. There’s no room to sit out a storm in comfort (for which you need enough headroom to sit up), nor space to lay out gear inside, nor a vestibule big enough for safe cooking. They are light, though. Most of these tiny tents are designed for one occupant. The amount of space two people need depends on how cramped they’re prepared to be and how friendly they are. Many tents described in catalogs as sleeping two assume very close friendships!
Most tent makers give the floor areas of their tents, as do some retailers, and they all give length and width so you can compare sizes. As a rough guide, I’d look for at least 30 square feet of floor area in a three-season tent for two (excluding the vestibule), and 35 square feet or more in a winter tent. For solo use, 18 to 20 square feet is enough. The width for two should be at least 54 inches at the widest point; for one, 36 inches will suffice. Length should be at least 7 to 8 feet. Backpackers over 6 feet tall need to consider the length of a tent carefully; in many tents, they’ll find their feet pushing against the end.
In mostly dry areas where storms are unlikely and you just want a bedroom to keep out bugs or the occasional shower, the smallest, lightest tents may be fine. In wet areas or in winter, you need more room because you’re likely to spend more time in your tent and in winter you’ll have bulkier sleeping bags and clothing.
Being able to sit up in a tent makes a huge difference to how spacious it feels. I don’t like tents, however lightweight, that don’t let me sit up, because they make me feel uncomfortably confined. The key factor here is the distance between the floor and the top of your head when you’re sitting cross-legged. If you measure that, you can determine from catalogs which tents will be roomy and which will give you a crick in the neck. I always look for a tent with at least 35 inches maximum inner height.
The size of vestibule you need depends on whether you intend to cook and store gear in it. For cooking, a vestibule must be high enough and wide enough to prevent the fabric from catching fire or melting. Tents for two sometimes have double vestibules, and although they’re heavier, they make tent living much easier. For areas where you usually live outside and use the tent only for sleeping, vestibules don’t need to be large. Indeed, it doesn’t matter if there isn’t one at all.
I like vestibules with large zippered door flaps that can be rolled out of the way. It’s not quite the same as bivouacking, but having a wide-ranging view is far better than being encased in a nylon cocoon. I close the doors only if forced by the weather or bugs.
Many tents weigh more than they need to, as designers add excess features and “improvements.” It’s easy to be impressed by fancy designs. I know; I’ve done it. I started out using solo tents in the 4- to 4.5-pound range (weights include stakes and stuff sacks—the actual weight when carried), but a decade later my tents weighed 5 to 6 pounds. Wanting to cut that weight, I decided on 4.5 pounds as the maximum I would carry in the future. With the latest materials, that has come down to 4 pounds. Except when I’m testing heavier tents for review, I’ve stuck to that rule. Keeping the weight down when you share a tent is easier. I’ve used a 5.5-pound tent for snow camping with two and not felt cramped, and there are plenty in the 5- to 8-pound range that provide ample room.
Tent makers usually list two weights for tents. The minimum weight covers just the tent, fly sheet, and poles. The packed weight includes stakes, stuff sacks, spare parts, and instructions. The weight you’ll carry is likely to be closer to the packed weight than the minimum.
Stability
The stability of your tent becomes a matter of great concern once you’ve struggled alone in the dark, cramming gear into a pack under a thrashing sheet of nylon after the wind has snapped one of your tent poles—which happened to me many years ago. It was pouring rain and I had to make a long night descent to the trailhead. Had it been a more remote location in winter, I could have been in serious trouble.
In the distant past, three tents collapsed on me—two because of wind and one because of a heavy, wet snowfall. On two other occasions I’ve camped with others whose tents have been blown down. I’ve also slept peacefully in a well-designed, properly pitched tent during a gale that blew down less stable tents nearby and shook others so hard that the occupants got little sleep. If you spend the night expecting your thrashing tent to collapse any minute, you’ll be too exhausted to enjoy the next day.
The importance of tent stability depends on where and when you use your tent. For three-season, below-timberline forest camping, it’s not a major concern. For high-level, exposed sites and winter mountain camping, it’s very important.
Tent design and materials both contribute to stability. The most stable designs don’t have large areas of unsupported material that can catch the wind. Many makers describe their tents as three-or four-season models. However many three-season tents are as stable as four-season ones. What they lack is often snow-shedding ability, extra space, and large vestibules. High winds can occur above timberline and in exposed areas at any time of year anyway.
Stability is relative. Hurricanes that strip roofs off buildings and blow down trees can certainly shred even the strongest four-season mountain tent. In strong winds, your experience and ability to select a sheltered site are as important as the tent you have. If pitching the tent in a storm seems impossible, it’s better to go on, even after dark, in search of a more sheltered spot. You’ll rarely have to camp in storm-force winds, but if you do, seek out whatever windbreaks you can—piles of stones or banks of vegetation—and consider sleeping out in a bivy bag, if you are carrying one, or even wrapped up in your tent. It may be uncomfortable, but it beats having your tent destroyed in the middle of the night.
Careful pitching is important, too. A taut tent with no loose folds of material will resist wind much better than a saggy mass of nylon. The best mountain tents will still thrash around in a storm if badly pitched. When pitched properly, a stable tent should feel fairly rigid when you push against the poles.
Inner or Outer Pitching
Traditionally the fly sheet was an extra layer thrown over the tent to protect it from rain. Originally both layers were needed to keep rain out, since neither was fully waterproof. When nonbreathable coated nylon was introduced for fly sheets, it made sense for inner tents to be breathable rather than water resistant. This can present a problem when you pitch the tent in the rain. Unless you pitch it very fast, which depends on both your skill and the design, it can get very wet. To counter this, some tent makers—mostly in wet Northern European countries—began building tents that pitched fly sheet first. Since the poles are often on the outside, these are sometimes known as exoskeleton tents. Many of them also pitch as a unit; that is, the fly sheet and inner tent go up together. If the fly sheet is damp inside with condensation, you can then detach the inner tent when packing up so it doesn’t get wet from being packed with the fly. With many inner-first-pitching tents you can now pitch the fly sheet separately if you want, often with a separate groundsheet. You can’t usually then add the inner tent, though.
For very wet areas where having to pitch in the rain is likely, I prefer exoskeleton tents. For drier areas either design will do, while for very dry areas inner-first pitching is probably best, since you may not need the fly at all much of the time. But in those areas, why do you need a tent at all?
Color
Dark tents can be gloomy inside in dull weather. Pale tents let in much more light. Warm colors—red, orange, yellow—give a warm light, which can be psychologically appealing in cold weather. Gray, blue, and green feel cooler; maybe too cool in dull weather but pleasant when it
’s hot. In most environments bright, hot colors stand out and can be an eyesore. At high latitudes where it barely gets dark during the summer, dark tents can be soothing and more conducive to sleep. Overall I prefer inconspicuous greens, browns, and grays for fly sheets (and tarps) but a warm color such as yellow for inner tents. That’s except for snow camping, when I like bright yellow or orange tents. Any colors other than shades of white and pale gray look black at a distance against snow anyway, so the problem of visual pollution doesn’t apply in the same way.
Tent Designs
Since the advent of curved poles in the early 1970s, designers have created a bewildering array of tent shapes, some of them bizarre. Overall, though, these developments have led to a superb range of tents that are lighter, roomier, tougher, and more durable than ever before. Some tents are hard to classify, but most fit into the categories of ridge, pyramid, dome, tunnel, and single-hoop.
Ridge Tents
Before flexible poles appeared, most tent designs were variations on the standard ridge tent, a solid structure that has had a bit of a renaissance as hikers have discovered that trekking poles make good upright tent poles. The simplest, but the least stable and most awkward to use, are those with upright poles at each end. A-poles make a far more stable tent, known as an A-frame, and leave entrances clear. It’s not easy to use trekking poles as A-poles, though. Ridge tents don’t have good space-to-weight ratios, and the angled walls mean a lack of headroom compared with curved pole designs. However if you use trekking poles, then ridge tents that can be erected with them are worth considering. These are usually single-skin tents, often with a bug netting inner tent as an option. The only one of these tents I’ve tried, albeit briefly, is the silnylon GoLite Trig 2. This has a sewn-in floor, a large vestibule, and retractable flaps. Mesh panels along the base of the sides and the internal mesh door keep out insects and provide ventilation. It weighs 2 pounds, 15 ounces without stakes, which add another 3 to 6 ounces depending on the type. Its area is 33 square feet plus 13 square feet in the vestibule. There’s a smaller version, the Trig 1, that weighs 2 pounds, 3 ounces, and has an area of 24 square feet plus 5 feet in the vestibule. The Trig is easy to pitch with two trekking poles, is fairly roomy, and quite stable. I like the look of it but I need to try it in really wet weather to see what the condensation is like. The polyester MSR Trekker Tarp (4 pounds) with optional mesh 40-square-foot Trekker Tarp Inner (2 pounds) sleeps two and can be used as a two-door tent or a three-sided tarp. Lighter is the side-opening MSR Missing Link at 3 pounds. This has a sewn-in groundsheet and a total area of 51 square feet. Much lighter again at 1 pound, 3 ounces is the 34.7-square-foot silnylon Black Diamond Beta Light. An optional floor weighs 1 pound, 5 ounces, and a mesh inner tent, the Beta Bug, weighs 1 pound, 14 ounces. Other ridge tents that can be pitched using trekking poles are sold by Dana Design, Oware, and Lynne Whelden Gear. There are also slightly modified tapered ridge tents that have a small hoop at the rear and a single pole at the front, available from Six Moon Designs and Henry Shires’ Tarptents—the latter come with optional Tyvek groundsheets or sewn-in groundsheets. Transverse ridge tents, where the ridge runs across rather than along the tent, are sold by Dancing Light Gear and Dana Design. The 40-square-foot silnylon Dancing Light Tacoma-for-2 Shelter looks interesting. It weighs 2 pounds, 6 ounces and has Velcro closures rather than zippers on the doors, a sewn-in groundsheet, and doors on each side. Dana Design’s Javelina tapers sharply to one end, has an area of 31 square feet, and weighs 3 pounds, 5 ounces.
Basic tent designs.
A single-skin ridge tent pitched using trekking poles. GoLite Trig 2.
Tarp pitched as a tapered ridge to keep off the wind at a cool, breezy timberline camp. GoLite Cave.
There are few tents left with A-poles, though this is a stable, easy-to-pitch design that is less expensive than domes. Eureka’s Timberline tents are the classic A-frames and have been around since the 1970s. These have A-poles at each end and a curved ridgepole. They’re freestanding, and the lightest two-person model weighs 5 pounds, 13 ounces.
Pyramids
Long before the current lightweight revolution, Chouinard made a floorless tent called the Pyramid. Chouinard became Black Diamond, and the Pyramid became the Megamid and, in lighter form, the Mega Lite. These have an area of 81 square feet and can sleep four. The coated nylon Megamid weighs 3 pounds, 13 ounces; the silnylon Mega Lite weighs 2 pounds, 8 ounces. There’s an optional floor weighing 1 pound, 13 ounces. The tents come with adjustable shock-corded aluminum central poles, but the Mega Lite also has a pole converter that enables you to use two trekking poles instead.
The Pyramid/Megamid became popular with ski tourers, since the snow inside could be dug out for more space, something you can’t do with a floored tent, and it’s very light with lots of headroom. Other makers followed, and there are now several pyramid and tepee tents. I’ve used the 75-square-foot six-sided silnylon GoLite Hex 3, which has a canopy weighing 1 pound, 12 ounces, an 11-ounce pole, and 5-ounce stakes and stuff sacks for a total weight of 2 pounds, 12 ounces for a shelter that will sleep three and is very roomy for two. A floored mesh inner tent called the Hex 3 Nest weighs 2 pounds, 6 ounces. The Hex 3 proved a stable design when pitched for two nights in storms at 11,000 feet. The wind ensured that little condensation built up inside, though in calmer conditions there has been quite a bit. I’ve also used the Hex 3 on a two-week spring ski tour where the space was welcome. Cooking inside is no problem, and I really like being able to stand up to get dressed. Other makers of pyramid tents include Mountain Hardwear, Dana Design, Oware, and Kifaru, whose Tipis can incorporate a wood-burning stove (2 pounds, 5 ounces). The Ultralight 4 Man Kifaru Tipi weighs 4 pounds, 11 ounces.
Single-skin pyramid tent. GoLite Hex 2.
Not quite a pyramid but similar enough to mention here are the Wanderlust Nomad silnylon tents. These are designed to be pitched with trekking poles as either A-poles or central uprights and have a groundsheet and huge mesh panels overhung by coated nylon. They look quite innovative, being neither single skin nor double skin. The 28-square-foot Nomad Lite weighs 1 pound, 11 ounces, and the 45-square-foot Nomad 2-4-2 weighs 1 pound, 15 ounces.
Geodesic dome with fly sheet.
Geodesic dome.
Domes
Domes have two or more flexible poles crossing each other at one or more points. Many are free-standing—they don’t need staking down. This is often pushed as a huge bonus. It does indeed make pitching domes quicker and easier—if there’s no wind. But I’ve heard stories of domes taking off like giant balloons, never to be seen again. I would always stake down a tent. I have to say that although I’ve owned a few over the years and tested many more, I’m not particularly fond of domes. I prefer simpler designs that give more space for the weight and are generally easier to pitch. I seem to be in the minority here, however, since dome tents are by far the most popular design. Backpacker’s 2004 Gear Guide lists twenty-three companies offering over 160 models.
The two most common dome shapes are the geodesic and the crossover pole, though there are many variations. Geodesic domes are complex structures in which four or more long poles cross each other at several points to form very stable tents that are popular with mountaineers because they can withstand high winds and heavy snow loads. Crossover pole domes are simpler: two or three poles cross at the apex to make a spacious tent that is lighter than a similar-sized geodesic, though nowhere near as stable—in strong winds the poles can invert, and the whole tent can wobble like a gelatin mold. Weights run from 4 pounds for solo two-pole domes (sometimes called wedge tents) to 12 pounds for multi-pole tents that will sleep three or four.
A typical example of a simple wedge tent is North Face’s Roadrunner 2, at 5 pounds, 13 ounces. This has a tapered shape with two poles that cross toward one end rather than in the center. Pitch the narrow end into the wind, and the Roadrunner is quite stable for a crossover pole tent. The floor area is 33 square feet, and there are vesti
bules on both sides that add 9 square feet each. The fly sheet is made from ripstop polyester. There are two vents near the apex of the tent and two-way protected fly sheet door zippers, and the top half of the inner tent is made of mesh so ventilation is excellent, though condensation can drip through. The North Face also made one of the original geodesic domes, the VE24. This has become the silnylon VE25, with an added pole to create a larger vestibule at one end. It weighs nearly 11 pounds, but it has a floor area of 48 square feet and will stand up to almost anything.
Geodesics are very stable but not very light. Almost the same wind resistance can be obtained by adding a third pole across the front of a two-pole wedge and tapering the back of the tent to the ground to create a semigeodesic or geo-hybrid shape. On the Continental Divide Trail I used a 6-pound tent of this design (a long-gone model called the Wintergear Voyager) and found it roomy, durable, and stable in storms. For the first month of the hike I shared the tent with a companion. After that I used the tent solo, relishing the space but not the weight. One of the most popular semigeodesics for many years has been North Face’s Tadpole. The latest version weighs 4 pounds, 15 ounces, and has a 27-square-foot floor and 8-square-foot vestibule. The fly sheet is coated nylon, and there are mesh panels in the sides of the inner tent. I’ve used the Tadpole and found it a stable tent for two, though not very roomy because of the low rear and small area.
Hoops and Tunnels
Rather than crossing, in tunnel tents the poles form parallel hoops. Tunnels have a better space-to-weight ratio than any other design. They’re also very easy to pitch, though they’re not freestanding. This category includes the tiniest tents, weighing about 2 pounds. For years I never tried one of these because they are so low and narrow that I felt claustrophobic just looking at them. This is hardly objective, however, so I did eventually brace myself and try a 2-pound, 5-ounce Bibler Tripod, which appeared to have slightly more headroom than most. The Tripod is made from waterproof-breathable Toddtex and has a tiny hoop at the foot and two poles at the head, one forming the main hoop, the other running at right angles to it and holding up the fabric at the end of the tent. This does give slightly more room than in tents with just two small hoops. (It also makes it debatable whether this is a hoop tent—it fits best here in my opinion, despite the third pole. Tent classifications are often fuzzy anyway.) With the doors closed the Tripod is very dark, but it didn’t prove quite as claustrophobic as I feared. Condensation was minimal—just a small amount on the groundsheet. I could prop myself up on my elbow and read inside, but there’s no room for any gear other than some clothes. It’s awkward getting dressed and undressed inside, too. In the conditions where I want a fully enclosed tent, I’d like more space—much more space. If I don’t need an enclosed shelter, I’d prefer a tarp. These minitents are light, but in my opinion they have more disadvantages than advantages.
Chris Townsend Page 30