Looking for lightweight backpacking tent suggestions

Question

Some context: I am a very small female (< 5 ft., < 100 lbs.) and I am thus very limited by gear weight. A lot of information is written for large/tall guys, so I'm having trouble researching tents for my specific situation.

I am looking for a two person backpacking tent that I could carry myself if needed in the Pacific Northwest region. So ideally I'm looking for something under two lbs. fully packed weight, less than $500 or so, and double walled or with a good system for dealing with condensation. I would prefer a tent rather than a tarp or hammock setup. I have looked into the Tarptent Double Rainbow or Stratosphere, the Zpacks Duplex, and the REI Flash Air 2. I do not use trekking poles but could start or am willing to bring tent poles if they are light.

Any tent suggestions would be much appreciated (especially from other very small backpackers)!

Answer 1

Okay, I've made enough suggestions in the comments I figured I'd better summarize them in an "answer." It's not fully what you asked for; this is more of a summary of all the "almost what you want" options I and others have come up with. Maybe one of these suggestions will give you a new idea that you can improve on, of maybe one will turn out to be good enough.

1. Get two tents. Each tent will be less expensive than one tent that combines all the features you wanted. The cost of gear goes up a lot for a small decrease in weight, so you can save a lot of money by simply not trying to squeeze the two person tent into your solo two pound limit. Use the savings to buy a second, single-person tent.

   • A two-person tent, optimized for quality but heavier than you can carry by yourself. You'll save a lot of money by not requiring the two-person tent to be under two pounds. When hiking with a partner, divide the weight between you, eg one person carries the rainfly and poles, the other person carries the interior tent body and tent stakes. An option from REI is the MSR Zoic 2 Tent ($262, 4 lbs. 6 oz.).
   • A one-person tent, optimized for lightweight. Being for only one person, you can get a lightweight option under 2 pounds for much less while still having decent quality. Options from REI are the Exped Mira I HL Tent ($244, 2 lbs. 3 oz) and NEMO Hornet Elite 1 Tent ($338, 1 lb. 8 oz.)

   Eg, if you got the MSR Zoic 2 person tent and the Exped Mira I HL one-person tent from REI, your total cost would be $506, and your personal carry weight would be about 2 lbs. 3 oz with either option. (Note that those are sale prices; the sale ends on May 31.)

2. Optimize for solo camping and compromise on two-person camping, or vice versa. Decide which scenario (solo camping vs camping with another person) is the one you will do most frequently. (If you do both with about equal frequency, this is probably not the best option.) Examples:

   • Scenario One: you usually camp with a partner and only occasionally solo camp. Buy the best tent you can afford that works for both of you. When you camp solo, carry only the tent poles, the rainfly, and a lightweight ground tarp. Or get a single-person tarp to hang from trees, which will be substantially lighter than your two pound limit.
   • Scenario Two: you usually camp solo, and only occasionally with a partner. Spend most of your budget on a good-quality, lightweight solo tent. For camping with a partner get a cheaper option: buy a tarp (if you prioritize lightweight and inexpensive) or a heavier tent and make your partner carry more than half of the tent.

3. Buy a secondhand tent that meets all your requirements. Assume it may have some leaks, missing pieces or rips. Test it thoroughly before taking it camping and make repairs as necessary. You can get tent seam sealant and inexpensive, lightweight fabric remnants for patching from a DIY outdoor gear supplier like Ripstop by the Roll, DIY Gear Supply, The Rainshed, etc. If you post a few want ads on backpacking-specific forums and social media groups, you'll get access to gear that wouldn't have otherwise have been on the market.

4. Get a rainfly-only tent with a separate ground tarp. If the tarp is the right size and stays well inside the edges of the tent, you do stay dry, because any rain or condensation drips on the ground instead of on your tarp. If you can, shop for a tent with side panel pulls; pulling out the side panels will prevent the panels from sagging in the middle and occasionally dripping from the low point of the sag.

   

   Something like the UltaMid 2 with mesh insert from Hyperlight Mountain Gear might be a good compromise, although I can't tell from the photos if it has side panel pulls. It has bug netting, and if you put your tarp inside the bug netting your tarp should stay centered under the roof even if you move around a lot at night. Note that the ground tarp is sold separately, and costs almost as much as the tent. But you can DIY a much cheaper ground tarp from a plastic sheet (eg a plastic painter's dropcloth or one of those shiny silver-colored emergency survival blankets), with a hole cut a hole in the middle for the tent pole and reinforced with tape.

5. Make your own tent. While this can seem crazy if you've never DIY'd any camping gear, it is possible, and extremely satisfying. You'll cut your costs by half or more, since you're only buying materials rather than a finished product. And you can make gear exactly to your specifications, in exactly the right size, at the exact balance of weight:durability that you want, as well as having all the features you want, but no extra features that would add weight and/or cost. I would suggest an A-frame tent as the easiest to construct. An advantage of the A-frame is that if you have trees, you don't need any tent poles. Something like this tent from Bass Pro Shops, but made of lighter weight materials, with the floor attached to an inner layer of noseeum mesh and the roof as a separate piece, suspended an inch or so above the mesh and staked out separately at the bottom corners.

   

   Sorry for the lack of better examples, but all the best info is on the Backpacking Light forums, which are down for maintenance today. Even if you decide not to fully DIY a tent, you'll find lots of useful discussions there. You may even find a way to solve the problem with one of the tent styles you previously ruled out (eg, managing condensation in different styles of tent, or whatever it was you didn't like about tarps).