tents lie!!!
When the box advertizes 2-person tent… they mean 2 anorexic people who are very close and spoon each other. My Wenzel Starlite is puishedas a 2-person tent but I @ 170# am cramped in that thing.
So a 2-person tent is minimum!
I can easily pack my Sierra Designs Zeta-2 in my kayak buyt shoving the tent and fly into a flat drybag, pressingthe air out untilthe thing is really flat and shoving it against my fore bulkhead ahead of my feet. The stakes & Hammer go in my dry-bag and my poles are inside my thermarest pad.
How do you like your Zeta 2?
Must study specs if you can’t inspect
The labels 1P, 2P, etc. can be misused and misleading.
If you can’t try the tent first, you have to pay close attention to the square footage of the floor, the maximum height, and the shape of the sides and top – all of which affect the volumetric cubic footage.
Picking up on some other comments, a bigger tent can take a cot when car camping and a chair for sitting and reading.
The more mesh, the more difficult they will be to warm up in cold weather but the less likely to form condensation. Also bigger will be harder to heat up. The vices in cold weather become virtues in hot weather.
Most campers of all kinds (car, paddling, backpacking) usually end up with more than one tent.
one two three four five six
yes.
Trango 3.1 Limelight3 Hubba Hubba Clip Flashlight Tandem 23 CD Meteorlight.
Mark them. Mine are all orange or blue bagged. I have made mistakes in the past and brought the undersized one of a particular color.
Vices and virtues
One of the best cheap 2P’s is the REI Camp Dome 2, which has been at $99 for years. The doors are about half mesh and half fabric, making it a good cold-weather tent, but it can be fairly warm in the summer.
I’d love to own just one tent that does everything, but the fewest number of tents I’ve been able to get it down to is three: one each for (1) backpacking and bike camping, (2) kayak camping, and (3)car camping. Of course you COULD use your backpacking tent for all of those activities, but that would entail unnecessary hardship.
As other have mentioned, one of my top priorities is always height, especially for ease of entry and exit. Many 2P’s are 36-38" high, which I find too short. 46" is good. 48"-50"is great.
On days when you’re stuck in your tent in the rain being able to sit in a chair in your tent is a blessing, as is a fly that can be partially opened for ventilation and psychological/visual space without letting rain in.
All you really need is a good tarp.
Cooke Custom Sewing makes excellent tarps that stand the test of time.
No mosquitoes in Vermont???
They’re not just annoying anymore, they’re lethal.
If its real buggy
you can make up a tarp with some netting attached. Works well. CCC makes some. Or you can make your own. The nice thing is you can pitch it BIG so you stay dry and bug free in camp making dinner etc.
I think that’s called a "tent"
Tarp + netting = tent
Are you serious that you don’t use a tent in Vermont and Maine?
On no, I use a tent -
My point is you don’t need a tent. Many people do without. You can be very comfortable and travel light with just a tarp. Its not like you are going to melt or be swept away or something. We have all become addicted to tents. People traveled wild country without modern tents for most of human history and did just fine.
tarp!
I would recommend tarp and bug bivy. light weight and compacts very small.I used it for backpacking.
For cold weather u want mesh, since it keeps the moisture out. The more moisture you have in your tent, the colder you will be. as long as your sleeping bag is rated pretty low, you should be fine.
not so really
I have a winter mountaineering tent and the mesh area is very small but very strategically placed. Mesh tends to tear.
Tarp tenting is something to consider. I don’t know where the previous poster hiked but in the Arctic where we are going this summer it would be suicide. We do wear full bug nets like a shroud on the tundra. Tarp tenting is glorious in the fall in New England after bugs are done! We do do that sometimes. Most tents nowadays have fly systems that marry into the tent specific ground cloth, and you can leave the tent out of that nights equation.
I can’t see using a tarp
I my mind the main thing you need protection from is bugs that bite. Mosquitoes, scorpions, brown recluse, black widows, ticks, are all so abundant and each can send you to the hospital.
Here in North Carolina almost nothing bites but I still want a tent, because my first camping was dine in south Florida.
The rain can only make you wet. Bug will send you to the hospital.
Before there were tents folks used a mosquito bar and usually skipped the tarp so they could see the sky. Still bugs came under the sides and caused problems.
Actually, the CCC Tundra Tarp
– Last Updated: May-13-12 6:34 AM EST –
works very well up in the barren lands but I agree, I definitely take a tent - a high end 4 season 3 man tent - up north. Mostly because of the possibility of a storm with high wind and cold, not the bugs so much. And the remoteness factor. Hard to get any help up there if things go south. I swear the worst bugs I have ever experienced were in northern Maine - Round Pond on the Allagash in late June - heavy black flies that would not die off at night plus very bad midges all night long. Decided to skip dinner they were so bad.
Where are you headed?
Us’ns?
Cross Canada to Whitehorse Yukon car camping and then by canoe down the Teslin and Yukon Rivers to Dawson City.
Using a Mountain Hardwear Trango 3.1 4 season tent with space when it rains.
We will take our 10x14 CCS Tundra Tarp but there will be places (gravel bars) where trees to rig it will be lacking. We could carry poles for it but won’t.
Sounds wonderful.
– Last Updated: May-12-12 11:45 PM EST –
When do you put in? I envy you. I've never been to Whitehorse. Will you need any flights?
I use a Trango 3.1 as well. Love that tent. Mine has been through hell and back served me very well.
Have you been up in that country before?
What’s comfortable about EEE &West Nile?
I’m amazed at what you’re saying. In the “old days” people depended on massive all-night fires for mosquito protection. Read for example Thoreau’s account of his Maine canoe trip, when huge amounts of wood were burned; in fact they thought there were so many trees that it wasn’t necessary to extinguish camp fires.
That is no longer environmentally possible.
Are you sure people “did just fine” without tents? More like suffered and got sick and died. The list of things that can happen to you without a tent, in every climate, is pretty long.
Nope
People did fine without tents. Still do. At least in the north. Can’t speak for the south. Your in more danger commuting to work and back.
Here is a nice overview of various tent/tarp options.
You have to remember, human beings did not use toothpaste until about 100 years ago. Canoe trippers traveled in the north regions without all this fancy gear we have now for generations. Think of the Inuit - ions of life in the arctic. Perfectly fine. Its about skills and experience, not stuff.
Mind you - I use a tent - so don’t get me wrong. But I recognize that it isn’t necessary.