When you’re backpacking, the lightweight tent you’ve got strapped to your pack will always be among the heaviest items you have to carry. It makes perfect sense, considering it’s your primary shelter from the elements, so a little extra weight is something you won’t mind putting up with. Because it adds so much heft to your stash, opting for an ultralight tent is one of the quickest ways to immediately lighten your load.
Whether you’re a thru-hiker who hauls your kit for thousands of miles or just a minimalist who prefers backpacking with the lightest stash you can put together, an ultralight tent is inarguably the best shelter option for your particular needs. With their lighter fabrics, simpler structures, and streamlined pitching styles, they help you shave a substantial amount of weight, all while providing the same protection and comfort as their more traditional counterparts.
These are our favorite ultralight tents.
Gossamer Gear The One
This tent weighs just 1.1 pounds, all while offering an impressive amount of space for its lone occupant. Seriously, there’s enough room there to fit all your gear and even enough headroom to let you sit up straight. It has doors on each side for convenient entry and maximum ventilation, along with generous vestibule space that you can use for cooking and other camp tasks. Pitching is impressively quick and intuitive, with excellent adjustability, although you will need a reasonably level site to set up properly. Construction is only single-wall, so it’s thinner than every other tent in this list, which will likely require you to retension your guy lines whenever the tent goes through bouts of heavy rain. Because of the size, it doesn’t quite hold up to high winds as good as other tents in the list, although that’s something you can remedy with some additional guy lines and more secure stakes (put a rock on them if you expect heavy winds).
It requires trekking poles set to 125 cm and a a minimum of six stakes, so make sure you have those along. Features include a custom 10D nylon ripstop fabric, factory-taped seams, a large mesh interior pocket, interior clothesline, and even a loop for holding a light. If you want the same setup for two people, you can try The Two, which is the same but bigger and around twice as heavy.
Big Agnes Fly Creek HV UL1 Solution Dye
This single-person freestanding tent weighs just 1.7 pounds, all while pitching nearly anywhere you end up needing to spend the night in. The frame is held up by tent poles rather than trekking poles, which makes it particularly stable in the face of stronger winds, while Velcro tabs connecting the fly to the poles, pre-cut guylines, and tensioners attached to the fly make set up relatively easy. The rainfly is optional, by the way, so you can take it off if you want to sleep with a clear view of the stars.
While it doesn’t offer the most sitting headroom, it will capably protect you from the elements with its true three-season function. It’s also not as delicate as other ultralight tents we’ve seen, so you don’t have to feel like you’re walking on glass every time you set it up and pack it down. Features include dual-zipper dry entryway, DAC Featherlite NFL pole system, and 11 six-inch Dirt Dagger UL Stakes. It also has a two-person version that weighs just a slightly heavier 1.9 pounds.
Nemo Hornet Elite OSMO
Nemo calls it “the ultimate tent for extreme minimalists.” While we don’t know about that, it does make a good case for itself, with a sparse 1.4-pound weight, a surprisingly intuitive pitching style, and some clever touches that do a good job of maximizing the room inside (e.g. the flybar pole clip, guy-outs at corners). It uses a side door to let you get in and out in a pinch, with the two-person variant getting a door on each side to allow each occupant to easily make it in or out. We prefer the single-person model as it offers just enough wiggle room for a single occupant with gear in tow, while the two-person variant just feels it will too cramped sooner than later. It uses the outfit’s new OSMO fabric, which delivers four times greater water repellency and three times less stretch when wet than the previous material. Features include a nightlight pocket sized to hold your headlamp behind a diffuser, a peak height of 39 inches, and 21.8 square feet of floor space.
ZPacks Duplex
This tent weighs an incredible 1.2 pounds, all while leaving enough room inside for two people to sit up straight in a comfortable manner. It’s designed to set up with two trekking poles and eight stakes, with a set-up that’s, admittedly, not one of the easiest we’ve seen. Suffice to say, you’ll want to learn this tent before you take it backpacking. For your troubles, you get a really stable tent that can handle high wind loads with ease, provided you secure your stakes properly.
The tent comes with two vestibules that you can use as a shade during particularly hot or particularly rainy days at the backcountry, with a double-wall construction, full bath tub floor, and bug net keeping you safe from the elements. It’s made from Dyneema, that ultra-strong, waterproof material that can resist extreme abuse, while four storm doors that can be opened and closed independently allow you to add ventilation any time it’s needed. If you don’t want to mess with trekking poles, by the way, the outfit also offers a separate Flex Kit that turns it into a proper freestanding tent.
Hyperlite Mountain Gear Ultamid 2
If you want an ultralight tent that can offer as much room as possible, you may want to consider this 1.2-pound model from Hyperlite. Designed to pitch as a four-sided pyramid, the tent offers a whole lot of room inside for two people and all their gear (it’s seriously spacious), complete with all the headroom you need to sit up comfortably. Surprisingly, it holds up really well to high winds despite the height, while the Dyneema construction with fully-taped seams delivers complete waterproofing and high levels of durability. It’s a four-season tent, too, making it viable for use all year round, while dual vents with mesh at the peak allow air to easily circulate inside. Simply put, if you want an ultralight that won’t require you to sacrifice room and comfort, this is the way to go, provided, of course, you’re not going to shriek at the, admittedly, expensive price. Oh yeah, you’ll need a really long trekking pole to use as the central pole for this, so that’s an extra thing you need to carry.