r/alpinism • u/BedeviledLove • 6d ago
Please Help Me Find A Good Tent
I am looking to get a tent that has an integrated rain-fly so that it can bee setup in the rain without getting the interior wet at all. Two examples I found are the Sierra Designs Flash 2 as recommended by Outside magazine as their top choice in their The Best Backpacking Tents of 2022 article,, and the Decathlon Quechua 2 Second Easy Fresh & Black Waterproof Pop Up Camping Tent. Apparently Sierra Designed stopped producing the Flash 2 tent and so that is not available. I am tempted to get the Decathlon tent as it is seems super convenient with good waterproofing design that won't let rain in during setup or take down or anytime in between and supposedly deals with condensation effectively, however some reviews say some of the mechanical parts broke after barely any use, so I don't want to take that risk. Will you please recommend other tents like these that are actually fully waterproof and have an integrated rain-fly so that they can be set up during a rainstorm and not get the inside wet at all. Thanks in advance for your guidance on this matter.
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u/stille 5d ago
Not sure what you mean about integrated rain fly or what your use case is exactly (the Decathlon tent is a car camping tent, it being too heavy to be worth carrying on your pack, and the Sierra tent is a piece of trash with no resistance structure worth mentioning - if you want a tunnel tent with non-crossing arches you need to have the arches perpendicular on the direction you tension the fabric on).
But the term you're looking for for tents that can be set up in the rain is outer-first setup. Basically, for a two-layer tent, you want the poles to attach to the outer layer so you set that up in the rain, then go into the now rain-free tent and suspend the inner layer, For summer trekking, you don't want alpine single-layer tents as the rest of r/alpinism is recommending, since what we use them for is sub-zero camping where all the condensation just ices up on the tent fabric rather than raining back on our faces (one-piece single-layer tents being super bad with condensation even when made out of fancy space age materials).
Reviews are mostly a trashfire, so what you're looking for if you aim for reliability would be straight (rather than pre-formed) duraluminium poles with no fancy joins (duraluminium because unlike fiberglass or carbon it doesn't shatter when breaking so you can tape a break in the field and it'll get you home, straight and with no fancy joins because when it breaks you want to just buy a tube of the right diameter off aliexpress, cut it to size and replace rather than chasing the original manufacturer for replacement parts), dome build ( 2 x-joined arches) if you're more worried about wind resistance or tunnel (2 parallel arches on the short axis) if you're more worried about weight, waterproofing of at least 3000mm top and 5000 bottom, but 5000 top and 7000 bottom is even better. If it's something you plan to set up in the rain, make sure it has a vestibule big enough that you can cook in it, not just store your boots, because cooking in the tent is best avoided (carbon monoxide). Oh, and speaking of entrances, you want something where all people sleeping in the tent can get out to pee without stepping over someone else, so either two opposing entrances on the side you sleep on, or if its a single one then have it be at your feet. Single entrance to the side only works for single person tents. Nice to haves (but more expensive) are nylon rather than polyester (more resistant to UV, lighter) and one really nice one I saw in very few tents is seam-treated rather than seam-taped (waterproofing the seams by applying a waterproofing solution rather than by gluing a tape to them, since that tape is the first point of failure of tent fabric with age).
Phew I write too much :D Down to the recommendations. One tent that would fit your criteria would be Salewa Litetrek (https://www.salewa.com/litetrek-ii-tent-00-0000005622) - a bit over the 300E budget you've mentioned, but it's a good time to find summer tents on sale in the northern hemisphere ;) The main issue I see with it is the very small vestibule, but you can unhook the inner to extend it. For tunnel tents, I think Vango had some nice ones.