Choosing a Tent
Which tent design is best for you? It depends on when and where you want to camp, how much weight you're willing to carry and how much you're willing to spend. Three-season tents, designed for spring, summer and fall, typically try to save weight by using tunnel, hybrid or hub designs that require only two or three poles. On the down side, these lightweight tents start to whimper and whine when the wind cranks up and knuckle under quickly when menaced by a bully of a snowstorm. Weights for good-quality three-season tents range from just over three to over seven pounds. Floor areas in the two-person models run from under 30 square feet, which is adequate but snug, up to a spacious 45 square feet. Larger tents, naturally, are more comfortable in camp, but the extra weight means longer and harder hours on the trail. Which size tent is right for you depends in part on your backpacking style. Do you like to hike in a short distance, set up a base camp for a several-night stay and day-hike from that camp each day? Or do you prefer to move camp every day and cover lots of miles between camps?

Many three-season tents have canopies made largely of mosquito netting. When the weather is fair, you can remove the fly and enjoy every cooling breeze while gloating over the frustration of the mosquitoes pressing their hungry little noses up against the netting. In winter, however, these tents are cold, and spindrift kicked up by the wind and blown up under the fly tends to sift down on the occupants – two more reasons that netting-canopy tents are only intended for three-season use. A vestibule – an extension of the rain fly over the ground in front of the door, like an awning on a porch – is particularly valuable in rainy weather, providing a relatively dry place to cook and store some gear.

Four-season tents, which are really designed primarily for one season – winter – are mostly domes that use four or even five interlocking poles that provide a great deal of strength and rigidity at the cost of greater weight, which varies from seven to ten pounds. Floor areas for two-person models range from 45 to 55 square feet (including the vestibule) to provide extra room for bulky winter gear and to help prevent tent fever. Long, cold, winter nights force winter campers to spend far more hours inside their tents than do summer campers. In winter, the subtleties of tent design become more important. For example, you should be able to pitch a good winter tent without removing your gloves. Avoid tents with a flat spot at the apex of the roof, which will collect snow. Doors set into a sloping wall also tend to collect snow, which must be knocked off before the door is opened, or else snow will fall into the tent. Doors set into vertical walls, particularly if the door opens from the top down, create fewer problems. Don't assume that any backpacking tent you buy, whether rated four-season or not, will stand up to everything. Tents that will take the worst possible winds are more aptly described as buildings. The tent that famed British explorer Eric Shipton used while sledging across the Patagonian ice cap weighed 50 pounds. The Whillans Box that some expeditions laboriously hauled to their high camp on Everest weighed 30 pounds. If a tent is light enough to be readily carried on your back, there is a gale out there, somewhere, that can destroy it.

Whether you're looking at a four-season or a three-season tent, the majority of high-quality tent poles today are made of aluminum. Fiberglass poles are generally weaker, heavier and less expensive, but a few exceptions exist. Other signs of quality include tight, even stitching, with no fabric puckers that can concentrate stresses and create starting points for tears. The rain fly should generously overlap the coated portion of the canopy walls. Good tents also have a tub floor, in which the seams that join the floor to the side walls are raised off the ground by the design of the tent. Seams are always potential leak points, and the fewer seams in contact with wet ground, the better. If at all possible, pitch the tent you're considering at the store before buying it. A good tent should set up easily and be as tight as your belly after Thanksgiving dinner. Slack fabric will flap in the wind and drive you nuts. Climb inside with a friend and try to imagine living in the tent during a prolonged storm. If you start contemplating murder-by-tent-peg after five minutes, buy a bigger tent.

Next Page: Caring for Your Tent

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