Arkansas Canoe Club Forums

After spending a few nights in my "beginner" tent, I'm ready for something better. I am looking for something lightweight, easy to put up, for 2-3 people. I prefer to be able to stand up in the tent. I don't need more than one room, but a rainfly would be great. I need a tent that one person can put up easily. Any and all info is appreciated. I need to know what brand/model is good.

Thanks.
Jan

Hi Jan,

Well, lightweight doesn't generally go with also being able to stand up in the tent, but if you want to stand up, a great quality, super easy to put up tent is the Jupiter Cabin by Big Agnes. I can put this tent up alone (even with my injured shoulder) so easy. Also has full coverage rain fly that many of the larger/stand up tents don't offer. I'm really pleased with it. It's not what I take on the river in the canoe, but when car camping when I want to set up a cot inside and stand up for changing clothes, etc. it's fantastic. It's a 4 person tent which in real living condition terms means great for 2 or 3!

Happy tent shopping!

REI recently had some tents on sale. We have a base camp 6, huge and heavy duty, great if you aren't moving daily. It stayed up in a windstorm in a campground where other tents went down. It has a sleeve/pole design, which is a little harder to get together by yourself than an all clip model because of so much fabric to push the poles through, the overall size of the footprint and the poles which are also quite long.

While I love the luxury of all that space in base camp 6, there is also a base camp 4, which would be much easier for one person to put up and be luxuiously huge if soloing. That would probably be my next tent.

These tents have lots of screen mesh in the body, super when it's hot... so maybe not as warm as other models so keep the amount of mesh in mind if you are going to winter camp.

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I purchased this model but in outfitter grade from the Alps Mountaineering home page. Paid a lot more for it but I wanted the outfitter version.

This tent works great for me and my rollacot or it can handle two people in rollacots (might be a bit tight but with two doors entry and exit is easy) my guess is three sleeping on pads would work but be a little close. .

go to the overstock dot come website and they also have a meramac 6 version which would be the one I would get if I wanted room for three.

I have used my outfitter version on two different trips about 5 nights each trip and rain on both trips. One was big time overnight rain. zero leaks each time. This tent is easy to put up and take down by one person and is a snap with two people.

I got introduced to the Alps Mountaineering gear by Richard McFadden and Bob Stout and am amazed at the quality for the price. Now, I see overstock dot com selling a lot of Alps stuff at a good price and sometimes free shipping thrown in.

I wanted a tent I could take on raft and truck trips that I could put my cot in and this model works just fine. I cannot fully stand up in the 5 version but I am 6 ft tall and can just bend a bit and get around really well.

for what it is worth.

I have an ALPS I bought for car camping. It stays dry through some tough rains. The only thing I do not like about the model I purchased is that the rain fly does not make a vestibule, so muddy shoes have to come inside.

sierra designs, plain and simple.

Looks like a nice piece of equipment there, Richard. And for a pretty good price.

I have had a couple of Eureka Timberlines in my day. They were small, A-Frame, but had a lot of the things I want in a tent. And they never, ever leaked. Eureka, in my opinion, makes a good, reliable product and for a good price.

I don’t use the “Taj Mahal” style tents (though I am always jealous of them when I see them pitched. I only sleep in my tent. I don’t spend any other time whiling away the hours in it. I have a Guide Wing to hang out under in foul weather.), and I don’t know a lot about what kind of configurations they come in.

But here are a few general suggestions I use for tent buying that you might like to consider, Jan. Just take ‘em or leave ’em as they relate to your own personal needs in a tent, or if you already know about these.

Tub floor. The floor is hopefully one piece and extends up the sides of the tent several inches (8” or more generally) to form the “tub”. Look for a tent that has a heavier duty tub floor than the general nylon that the rest of the tent is constructed of. If the floor has seams, heat taping is a must. For that matter, you will be happier and dryer if all seams on the tent are heat taped, especially the fly. These days, most of the good names do this anyway.

Fly. Full fly is a must on any tent I purchase. Ground to ground, all the way.

I like two entries. So everyone can get in and out during the night without crawling all over your tent mate. Vestibules for gear/muddy boot storage.

I guess a stand-up-in-it tent won’t retain a lot of warmth in the winter, but it could hold a lot of heat in the summer. I like a lot of mesh panels for summer and air circulation. And I like them to zip solid for winter camping. If I have this feature, more times than not, I will forego setting my rainfly. Certainly if I don’t think it will rain, and because I am lazy! But even when I set my fly, I will keep my interior panels open, or partially open unless it is just in-the-dirt cold. Keeps interior condensation to a minimum and I like the fresh air exchange.

If the tent manufacturer offers a footprint, I always go for it. Greatly reduces the wear and tear on the floor. Especially when you do a lot of gravel camping. But keep in mind if you are worried about your floor leaking, use a tarp on the inside. And if you are going to use cots, definitely use a tarp on the inside. Cots put a lot of pressure and wear on your floor in very defined places and they can trash a floor in those places in very little time. I would even suggest you get some of those car-top carrier pads or something to set your cot legs/stands on to spread the weight distrubution to save your floor. And you should never really spread a tarp under your tent that extends beyond your tent walls. If you do and it rains, this will only serve to collect water under your tent floor on the tarp where it will stay.

Self standing. Self explanatory. I’m not really aware of any decent tents that are not. In fact, there are exactly zero decent tents that don’t stand on their own. You never want to rely on stakes to make your tent stand.

And any tent that cannot be pitched by one person is totally out of the question and basically useless. Good call on that one. But pretty much any self stander can be. Any reliable outfitter will let you stand their tents in house before you walk out the door with it. Take advantage of that, and if they don’t, take your bidness somewhere else.

I can put up with a lot all day, every day outdoors. But I want to sleep dry, warm, and comfy so I can!

I have a Kelty Teton that held up awesome in the remnants of a hurricane (70mph winds and rain). I had a fly pole break on a Eureka Tetragon from normal use.

Big Agnes without a doubt. My current tent (the Seedhouse 2) took 5-6 years of constant use in extreme elements before it showed any wear, and then when it did show wear I sent it to Big Agnes and they fixed it, cleaned it, and sent it back for free (in two weeks).

Three summers ago I spent six-weeks boating in Colorado and I literally set this tent up the first week I got there and left it up while I travelled around, sometimes coming home to it, sometimes sleeping in my car. It went through hell; Chinooks, afternoon thunderstorms, extreme heat, hail, it all.

This summer while I was working in Idaho I tore the window in the rain-fly somehow and shattered a pole at two ends because I tried to fix it but made the stress worse (this is the wear I was talking about). Luckily I had a bivy, but I sent the stuff to Big Agnes with a letter saying thanks for a great product and please bill me for the costs. They sent me a fixed and cleaned tent and new poles, no questions asked, in two weeks.

-Matt

I had / have a big agnes seedhouse 1 ultra lite syl nylon tent and used it a few times for kayak self support etc. Small but did the job well.

kept the tent in my home office inside closet for maybe a year and the coating turned sticky. sent it back to big agnes and they did replace it but said they would not replace it if it happened again. which made me a bit doubtful of how their coatings hold up here in Arkie / Okie summers. maybe they have improved them.

I just saw a post on Springbar canvas tents made in Utah and am very interested. have more tents right now than I need, but if I was going to spend weeks at a time out west or maybe anywhere in the sun a lot, canvas would be the way to go.

made of canvas and expensive but might be the perfect tent for auto and maybe raft trips where a person wants a stand up tent that is going to be around for a long time. I am thinking for a winter tent a person could do some early morning coffee making inside one of these tents and be a bit safer than the nylon based units.

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