If you don’t want rain coming through, tape it up with waterproof strong tape. The small screened triangle found on the awning fabric has a couple of uses. It allows some wind to travel through, so the awning doesn’t move around, and it also helps to drain any build-up of rainfall. You know you’re protected from any bugs, and you can get a lot of airflow at the same time. You also even have the area under the awning, so this tent is truly fit for many purposes. You can take a nap without worrying about others disturbing you, plus there are 2 doors so people can get in and out from different spots.
That doesn’t mean they all leak when it rains or collapse when it’s windy, but they simply aren’t built for bad weather. Light wind and rain should be fine, but you’ll want to take some steps to prepare for both (more on that below). It’s a cool tent all around, but our favorite feature has to be the 360-degree views delivered courtesy of this yurt’s ozark trail instant cabin giant mesh windows. There are three of these large floor-level windows along the walls of the tent, plus the giant mesh doorway that can be left open in good weather. Having room to spread out inside a tent is great, but unless it’s after dark or raining, chances are you won’t be spending any more time inside your shelter than you absolutely have to.
We found that company representatives are reluctant to estimate the lifespan of their tents. When pushed, most of the reps we talked to estimated five to 10 years, though the actual lifespan will vary widely depending on care and frequency of use (for more advice, read REI’s excellent tips). In conducting research for this ozark trail canopy tent guide, we heard multiple tales of careful campers who had been using the same tent for 15 years or more. The Wawona 6’s side-walls are high and straight, but the structure stays very stable in wind thanks to a final pole that wraps around the front and sides—and thanks to the absence of any acute angles in the poles.
The zippers worked fine for the windows, but kept snagging on the door because of this rain cover. My other tents with similar designs did not have this serious of a snagging problem. The stitching especially around the doors and windows don’t seem that well done either, and I found a lot of excess threads as well.
Some testers, though, thought the tent was stuffy when the fly was fully closed and the sun was out. The Mineral King 3’s fly attaches intuitively with plastic buckles and has well-placed guy tabs. You can secure the fly to the poles with Velcro ties underneath the fly, so that the extra lines anchored the whole tent, not just the thin protective fabric, but we only needed to do so in very windy conditions. When the fly is fully deployed, the tent has two vestibules, which provide additional gear storage and also help ventilate the tent in inclement weather. And in a stroke of design brilliance, a small loop sewn into the top of the fly makes it possible to roll up one half of the fly, exposing the full mesh canopy while still providing shade and privacy.
To compare tent fabrics, you also need to know their overall rip strength. For most fabrics, rip strength is expressed as a measurement of the diameter of the fibers in their thread, or a denier—the higher the denier, the stronger the fabric. We found 40 denier up to 150 denier to be typical for car-camping tents; you can read more about these measurements in gear manufacturer MSR’s blog post and in this Outside article. Finding a small, light tent is the logical approach when you’re backpacking.