Ultralight Tents: Common Pitfalls and Complaints

While ultralight tents are easier to carry because they weigh less, you usually have to sacrifice something in terms of comfort, ease of use, or weather protection to use one. The weight reduction doesn’t come for free, even if the tent is made with an ultralight material like Dyneema Composite Fabrics. I’m not trying to dissuade you from buying an ultralight tent but to help calibrate your expectations. I’ve heard too many stories from people who’ve bought an ultralight tent and end up hating it because it isn’t as comfortable, warm, or easy to use as they expected.

What is an Ultralight Tent?

There really isn’t a good definition of what an ultralight tent is and isn’t. It has to have a roof, a floor, a door, and usually has some insect netting. Weight is also a factor, but whatever weight threshold you choose, be it 1 pound, 2 pounds, or 3 pounds is pretty arbitrary. The one thing that ultralight tents share is a common set of weight-saving design patterns and tricks to reduce gear weight such as single-wall construction, trekking pole setup, and the use of lightweight fabrics.

However, those weight-saving tricks require certain tradeoffs in terms of comfort, warmth, waterproofing, durability, noise, ease of setup, gear preparation, and cost that can generate user dissatisfaction. If you’re buying an ultralight tent and don’t understand the tradeoffs made by the tent designer, you’ll probably be surprised by its performance, perhaps in a negative way.

Ultralight Tents and their Pitfalls

What are some of the pitfalls that result from the weight-saving construction techniques used by ultralight tent designers?

Tent condensation

Many ultralight tents are single-wall tents that do not have a separate inner tent and rainfly. While this reduces tent weight, it often results in increased tent condensation and the transfer of moisture onto your sleeping bag or quilt where it touches the tent walls. While there are ways to avoid or minimize it, they require behavioral changes in how you ventilate your tent or where you pitch it. Even then, it can be hard to avoid. If you can’t stand the thought of getting your sleeping bag or quilt wet, even if it’s minor, you should probably avoid getting a single wall tent.

Draftiness, splashback

Many ultralight tents have vestibule doors that are half-length that don’t reach the ground. They’re cut short to promote airflow through the tent but can make the tent quite drafty and cold inside, or result in splashback, where rain hitting the ground, bounces back inside your tent. You can mitigate this by pointing the rear of your tent toward the incoming wind and weather. If you don’t want to think about the wind direction when pitching your tent, you should probably get a tent that has doors and walls that reach the ground.

Reduced durability, less waterproof

A common tactic to reduce fabric weight is to use thinner, lighter, and lower denier fabrics (like 7d or 10d), even though they are less durable and less waterproof. If you don’t want to carry a tent footprint to protect the bottom of your tent from abrasion or you can’t reliably find tent sites with good drainage, you should probably avoid getting a tent made with very thin (low denier) fabrics (except if it’s made with Dyneema Composite Fabrics, which are every waterproof).

Expensive, bulky to pack, poor privacy, hot in sunlight

Many ultralight tents are made with Dyneema Composite Fabric (DCF) which is an ultralight material that is much lighter weight per yard than more conventional tent fabrics like nylon or polyester. In addition to making a tent much more expensive (usually by a factor of 2), DCF tents are bulkier to pack than those made with nylon or polyester, they are translucent so people can see through the tent walls, and they can be insufferably hot and unusable in bright sunlight. If cost, packability, privacy, or day-use are priorities, you should probably skip getting a DCF tent.

Slippery floors, tent walls sag when they get wet

Another popular lightweight fabric is siliconized nylon (silnylon). Tents made with silnylon have very slippery floors so your sleeping pad will move around at night inside the tent. Silnylon also has a lot of stretch to it when it gets wet in the rain. This can result in internal condensation dripping from the ceiling and walls onto your gear or loud flapping sounds if it’s windy.

Poor headroom and cramped interior space

Many ultralight tents require trekking poles to set up instead of hubbed, collapsible tent poles. While this saves weight, the tents are highly angular with diagonal ceilings and sidewalls, instead of the curved ceiling and walls that you can create with modern aluminum or carbon fiber tent poles. As a consequence, trekking pole ultralight tents are usually more cramped and best used for sleeping only, instead of hanging out. Even then you may wake up at night with tent fabric an inch or two above your face and feet, which can be pretty claustrophobic.

Harder to set up on hard surfaces or small tent sites

Ultralight trekking pole tents are not freestanding or semi-freestanding, which can make them harder to set up on solid surfaces, like tent platforms, where it’s difficult to secure tent stakes. Freestanding and semi-freestanding tents are also much easier to pitch on bad tent sites, especially smaller tent sites that don’t have space for long guylines.

Wrap up

Ultralight tents are made with certain design tradeoffs that sacrifice comfort, weather protection, ease of use, and durability in order to reduce their weight. It’s important to understand what tradeoffs have been made when you’re shopping for an ultralight tent, so you know what to expect when you use it and whether you need to learn new skills or buy extra gear to compensate for them. You can also put it like this: there’s no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to reducing the weight of your backpacking gear. You always give up something. My aim here hasn’t been to dissuade you from investing in an ultralight backpacking tent, but to alert you to the tradeoffs inherent in ultralight tent design, so you’re not blindsided when you make a purchase.

Here are some links to articles that address many of the issues I raise above and how to adapt to them:

• How to Prevent Tent Condensation
• How to Pitch a Tent on a Wooden Platform
• How to Choose an Ultralight Tent or Shelter
• What is the Difference Between a Single-Wall Tent and a Double-Wall Tent?
• What are the Strengths and Weaknesses of Trekking Pole Tents?
• Do You Need a Tent Footprint for Backpacking?
• What to do if your sleeping bag gets wet on a backpacking trip
• What is a Tarp Tent?