Backpacking Tent for One, 1.5 lb with Mesh Door, Packs to 15.7 Inches

A one-person tent that weighs a pound and a half and rolls down to the length of a forearm. It goes inside the pack rather than swinging off the back of it, and once it is in there you stop noticing it. That is the whole point of a shelter this size.

No poles strapped to the outside. No two-man tent carried by one man. No standing in a car park at dusk working out whether it is worth it.

The weight is what decides whether it comes with you

You already know what a tent does. The question on a solo trip is whether the one you own is worth the four or five pounds it costs to carry, and for most people the honest answer is no. So it stays in the garage. This one is 24.3 ounces, and packed it is a soft black cylinder 15.7 inches long and under 4 across that sits upright in a day pack with the rest of your kit around it.

The tent stops being the thing the trip gets planned around. You take it because there is no reason not to.

A mesh door, which is what separates this from a bivvy bag

The cheap way to sleep light is a bivvy bag, and anyone who has spent a warm night in one knows how it ends. You zip it up against the midges and by two in the morning the inside of the fabric is running with condensation and so are you. Open it and they find you. That is the trade a bivvy bag makes and it never gets better.

The whole front of the dome here unzips, and behind it there is a second door of fine black mesh that spans the opening on its own. Leave the outer panel folded down and you have a doorway of moving air with nothing able to get through it. You lie there and watch the light go. Close both and it is a sealed shelter again in about four seconds.

What you are actually buying, and what you are not

This is a low shelter. It stands 19.7 inches at the head and tapers away over 86.6 inches to a staked point at your feet, so you lie down in it, prop yourself on an elbow and read. You do not sit up in it, and you do not get dressed in it. That is the deal every ultralight shelter makes, and it is worth being clear about before you order rather than after.

It is a single skin over a heavier coated floor of 210D Oxford, and the floor turns up at the edges so the ground stays outside. Take it for three seasons of ordinary weather — showers, wind, a damp field in October. It is not a mountain tent and it is not built for a storm on a ridge. It needs its guy lines pegged out to stand, which takes a minute and means picking a pitch you can get a peg into.

The two colors are the same tent. Army green disappears into a hedge line and yellow is easy to find in the dark. Pitch it, roll it away in the morning, and it goes back in the pack without you thinking about it again.

Specifications

Dimensions pitched: 86.6 x 35.4 x 19.7 in (220 x 90 x 50 cm)

Packed size: 15.7 x 3.9 in (40 x 10 cm), in its own stuff sack

Weight: 1.5 lb (690 g / 24.3 oz)

Sleeps: One adult, lying down

Construction: Single skin, non-freestanding, pitched with poles and guyed out to stakes

Canopy: Polyester, sheds rain and cuts wind

Floor: 210D Oxford, coated, turned up at the perimeter

Door: Full-width zipped outer panel at the head end, with a separate fine mesh door behind it

Season: Three-season. Not intended for storms or exposed high ground

Colors: Army Green, Yellow

Package Includes

1x Backpacking Tent

1x Stuff Sack

4x Guy Line

8x Stake