Topic: The Best Backpacking Tents for 2023 (Read 40 times)
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At just over a pound per person, the Cloudburst 3 is one of the best weight-to-size tents I’ve tried.
Despite its unusual profile, this tent is faster to set up than many double-wall freestanding tents. Once the two poles have been slung into their sleeves and attached to the grommets on either side of the door opening, all that’s left to do is thread the four stakes through the three loops that pull the door, roof, and bathtub floor taut, and stake them out to create tension across the tent. It took a few tries to get this right the first few times I set this tent up, but before long I could get it up with another person in under a minute (useful during a surprise rainstorm in the southern Oregon Cascades).
Unlike double-wall tents, the interior of the Cloudburst 3 stays dry during setup, and its substantial bathtub floor keeps you dry even when your tent site collects water underneath. My go-to is to skip the groundsheet with this tent, but for rockier climes or treks off the beaten path, I’d reco*mend a groundsheet to increase its longevity.
It would be hard to find a tent with more usable interior space than the Cloudburst 3, which can be a gamechanger when you need to take a break from the elements for an hour (or a day), and its dual-entry design make it easy to duck out for bathroom break in the middle of the night without waking your backpacking partners.
The MSR Access was our pick for the best 4-season tents. It sets up easily with little fiddling to achieve a taut structure and had almost no condensation problems during testing. The lack of condensation is especially impressive given that nighttime temps dropped into the low twenties and the used had a hot water bottle stashed in the bottom of her sleeping bag. The temperature differential between the inside and the outside of this tent was substantial, yet moisture did not accumulate.
Unusually, the MSR Access achieves this exceptional ventilation with only one tiny window. The body of the tent itself—20D ripstop nylon—is breathable, helping the moisture generated inside your tent move to the exterior of the fabric. The rainfly’s design maximizes airflow by pushing moisture-laden air from inside the tent to the outside.
MSR’s Access was impressively easy to assemble. On the testing trip, my friend set up her Access before I finished with the NEMO Kunai. And, as winter tents go, this one is fairly easy to get into bombproof shape. S take out the vestibule and give the cinch cords at the ends of the rain fly a few tugs, and you’re good to go. I also liked that the MSR Access has guyline cords pre-attached to the tent. Even if they aren’t strictly necessary to use on your average winter backpacking trip, it’s not something you want to fiddle with too much if conditions turn dicey.
One small detail that made a big difference is the design of the MSR Access’s stuff sack. While most tent stuff sacks are longish cylinders with top openings, the MSR Access is a longish cylinder with a large wide side opening. This made packing away a wet tent a breeze, and saved both my and my tester’s fingers from getting unnecessarily cold during the quick cleanup to leave camp.
This tent performs at the outer edges of the three seasons while still being a solid option for summer adventures. The Kunai is the best tent for backpackers facing uncertain weather.
This might not be a true four-season tent, but if your concern is being hit by a shoulder season snowstorm or high winds above treeline, the Nemo Kunai offers the most security of any pick on our list. And, unlike a true four-season tent, the mesh windows on the interior provide enough ventilation for use in average summer conditions.
Unlike other three-season tents, this tent was tough to set up during an early spring test trip to the Tenmile Range of Colorado. But in this case, that’s a feature, not a bug. While the basic setup is similar to other standard backpacking tents, tension in the Kunai’s poles that make them a chore to secure in the grommets is exactly what makes this tent so taut and stiff when fully erected—ready to handle high winds or a sudden snowstorm.
Part of how this tent stayed lightweight while upping its performance is by using a thinner nylon, which can beco*e an issue for the floor over time. I reco*mend purchasing the footprint if you plan to take this tent out on anything more substantial than fresh powder.
If you’re new to backpacking, it would be hard to go wrong with the Kelty Discovery Trail, OL’s pick for the best budget backpacking tent. It’s very affordable and is fairly lightweight given its spacious interior (two average-sized men would fit co*fortably in this tent). It’s also a breeze to set up. With most backpacking tents, you insert a pole into a metal grommet at one corner and then bend the pole until you can insert the other end into the grommet kitty corner from it. Inevitably you end up doing this a couple of times as the pole slips out of one or the other grommets. Instead of grommets, the Kelty Discovery Trail has nylon-webbing pouches at each corner, preventing the poles from slipping out as you set up your tent. I also appreciated that the corners of the body of the tent were color-coded with the fly, making it significantly easier to line up than it would have otherwise been.
While the Kelty Discovery Trail 2 lacks the second door that you would expect with a two-person tent, it did have the rest of the full suite of features I would expect: roomy vestibule, guylines with extra stakes, vents along the rainfly, and pockets for storage in the interior. Consider purchasing the Kelty Discovery Trail footprint to acco*pany this tent, as it did pick up a couple of very small holes during the abrasion test. Finally, the Kelty Discovery Trail 2 weighed just under five pounds during testing.
Backpackers can expect to face a variety of conditions depending on the time of year and the part of the country they are exploring, so knowing the extremes of your climate is essential to choosing a tent. The tents in this selection are primarily three-season tents, although the Nemo Kenai pick is appropriate for mild winter conditions, and we’d stick to the summer months with our budget pick. First-time tent buyers should know that four-season tents are generally built to hold heat in, and are not an appropriate choice if the primary season you plan to backpack in is summer.
The majority of backpacking tents on the market are freestanding, meaning that once you snap poles into their grommets, you’ll have a reasonable approximation of what the final structure will look like. Freestanding tents are a great choice for first-time backpackers, as there tends to be less guesswork during the initial set up. The advantage of non-freestanding tents is that they are typically lighter than their freestanding counterparts (some even do away with separate poles as well by incorporating trekking poles into the design), but they usually take some practice to get used to.
The three-person tent on our list is an example of a classic single-wall design, meaning that the main body of the tent is waterproof, rather than a separate rainproof shell that attaches to the exterior side of the poles. Single-wall tents tend to work best for backpackers in climates with minimal bugs and a tendency for rain—their main advantage is that the interior of your tent will stay dry during setup (they are usually also a bit lighter in weight), but they tend to collect condensation more rapidly on the interior and run hotter at the height of summer. Double-wall tents, which have a mesh body with a waterproof layer thrown over top, tend to breathe better and work best for backpackers exploring climes with substantial mosquitoes or other bugs.
Car camping tents are bulky, with even the lightest models weighing upwards of five pounds per person. Backpacking tents are much lighter, typically weighing less than three pounds per person, with some ultralight (UL) models approaching one pound or less. There is usually a tradeoff with weight savings for durability and price with backpacking tents. Backpackers focused on short trips may prefer a heavier option while those that plan on high-mileage days would do better with a lightweight model.
Over the years, many backpackers have found that a one-person tent is a tight squeeze for anyone over five foot ten—forget about squeezing in your pack and the rest of your gear. It’s not unco*mon to see larger backpackers opt for two-person, or even three-person, tents to get enough leg room. The picks below have all been tested with a 6-foot-3-inch individual, and we’re confident that their length will acco*modate most people.
The cost of a backpacking tent is almost always tied to weight—the lighter a tent is, the more you can expect to shell out for it. Our budget pick is easily the cheapest option available—most single-person backpacking tents run between $150 and $400, while backpacking tents for three or more people can run upwards $1,000. I reco*mend aiming to spend around $300 for a one-person tent, $400 for a two-person tent, or $500 for a three-person tent.
The key differences between backpacking tents and campings tents are weight and volume. Most camping tents are too large to fit inside of a backpacking backpack (although you can sometimes strap them to the outside) and they tend to weigh upwards of 5 pounds per person. That being said, if your camping tent is under 5 pounds per person, and you can securely strap it to your pack, then this can be a reasonable way to find out if you like backpacking enough to invest in lighter gear specifically for the trail.
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Backpacking tents typically weigh between 1 and 3 pounds per person, with some ultralight models (usually designated as such with the initials “UL”) weighing even less. Unless you are an experienced backpacker, I reco*mend staying away from tents with poles made from lightweight materials (such as carbon fiber), as these tend to be quite fragile. Dyneema is a popular lightweight fabric that is increasingly being used by tent manufacturers, but it co*es with a substantial price bump (and tends to look, though not perform, worse for wear over time).
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There are great backpacking tents on the market today for every budget and backpacking style. The introduction of ultralight tents onto the market has led to a revolution in both weight-savings and engineering that today’s backpackers can benefit from, but first-time backpackers should shop cautiously, as many of the lightest tents on the market require special handling and have a shorter lifespan. Choose the best backpacking tent for the adventures that you are planning, rather than what is the latest and greatest.
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