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Met a guy at Crater Lake who changed how I pack my tent.
This older guy, Frank, saw me wrestling with my 4-person dome. He just said 'You're fighting the poles, not the fabric.' Showed me a simple fold technique, takes 90 seconds now. Anyone else have a random tip that saved them major setup time?
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miller.avery1mo ago
Always thought the tent bag was just for storage. Learning to roll it around the poles instead of stuffing it changed the whole game for me. That one tip from a ranger saved so much frustration.
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elliotr391mo ago
Four-person dome in 90 seconds? I'm calling total nonsense on that. My old Coleman takes a solid ten minutes even with the rain fly off. What kind of magic fold makes a tent that small that fast?
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the_eva13d ago
I timed my buddy's Gazelle T4 hub tent last summer and it was 87 seconds from bag to fully up including stakes. Not kidding. @elliotr39, the secret is those pre-bent poles that lock into place like an umbrella, not the old fiberglass rods you have to thread through sleeves. The trade-off is pack size, it's bulky and heavy compared to a traditional dome. People also forget that these fast-pitch tents sacrifice a lot in storm resistance. I'd rather spend ten minutes setting up something that won't pancake in a thunderstorm than save eight minutes and risk waking up under a collapsed pile of fabric.
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black.amy13d ago
elliotr39, you're spot on about that old Coleman struggle, I've been there. But nobody's mentioning that the real time sink isn't poles or stuffing, it's reading the damn instructions in the dark while your flashlight dies. Those hub tents basically ditch the manual altogether because the design is so obvious, you just pop and go. I timed myself once and the hardest part was unzipping the bag, not the actual setup. Has the speed been worth the extra weight for anyone who's actually carried one more than a mile?
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