AMC Outdoors, November 1999

By Michael Lanza

Imagine the sad plight of the winter-tent designer. He has to conjure a portable shelter that performs two contradictory functions: protecting its occupants from cold, wind, and precipitation while ventilating well enough that its cramped living quarters don’t start to feel like the inside of one of those rain-forest terrariums you made in elementary school. Throw in caveats that a tent for two shouldn’t weigh more than a toaster oven and must be competitively priced, and our poor designer tosses through the night with nylon nightmares.

Winter’s severe cold and propensity for melting and freezing cycles compound that challenge. Winter tents – often labeled mountaineering tents by manufacturers – must keep out the elements and stand up to strong winds and heavy snow. However, in dry, cold air, the average person exhales a liter of moisture in his or her breath overnight. If that moisture can’t escape the tent, you may wake up to a shimmering skin of frost covering your walls and ceiling – which can melt during the day, making your tent and anything in it wet and heavy.

What to Look For
Like a house, a tent’s sturdiness depends on its frame. Serious cold-weather tents have a minimum of three poles and as many as five. More poles mean a sturdier shelter, but also a heavier shelter. These tents almost universally have poles made of regular aluminum, high-strength aluminum, or carbon fiber rather than fiberglass, which shatters easily.

Also important to stability is a tent’s profile. Tall, vertical tent walls become sails in strong winds. Look for a model with an aerodynamic shape. The fly should extend nearly to the ground and have plenty of exterior nylon loops for staking and guying out. The fly should also attach to the poles on its underside via clips or hook-and-loop closures (a.k.a. Velcro) when you need maximum rigidity. You can enhance stability further through internal guying, or tying tight guy lines between nylon loops hanging from the ceiling of the tent.

Regular tent stakes pop right out of snow; use snow stakes, which you’ll probably have to purchase separately, though they’re inexpensive. In lieu of snow stakes you can substitute skis, poles, snowshoes, or any object (a rock, stick, piece of gear, or stuff sack filled with snow) that can be tied off to a guy line and buried in the snow where it will freeze into place.

You’ll want a tent with at least one vestibule for storing boots, packs, and wet outerwear, and for cooking inside during inclement weather. Two doors and two vestibules translate to greater storage space, easier entry and exit, and better ventilation.

Winter, or mountaineering, tents often have zippered vents in the rainfly with hoods so you can leave them open in any weather. Two-way zippers on both the tent and rainfly doors let you leave them open a crack at the top to release moisture, rather than at the bottom where a cold draft will hit sleeping campers. Two doors (more common in three-person tents than two-person) allow better cross-ventilation.

But These Ain’t Cheap
The features that make for a solid winter or mountaineering tent also make it as much as twice as expensive than its three-season counterparts. Two-person models range from around $250 to several hundred dollars. Given the extra gear and clothing needed in winter, two people often need a roomy two-person or even a three-person tent.

A less expensive option is a so-called convertible tent. This is essentially a three-season tent that can be modified to make it warmer and sturdier for winter use, typically by adding another pole and incorporating nylon panels that zip over mesh walls to allow more flexibility in ventilating. I own one and have used it in all seasons. But these tents have drawbacks: they are not as hardy as true mountaineering tents and do not ventilate as well -- meaning in warm weather they’re stuffier than a three-season tent that has lots of mesh.

Staying Warm in Your Tent
Keep a dry set of clothing to wear in the evening. Wear socks, long underwear, and especially a hat while sleeping, and as many extra layers as necessary. A second sleeping pad thickens your insulation against the cold ground, as does laying out a space blanket inside your tent. Come morning, dress inside your bag and do a few abdominal crunches to warm up before exiting your cocoon.

Keep your sleeping bag dry. Line its stuff sack with a plastic garbage bag. Brush snow or frost off before it melts and soaks in. When possible, especially with a down-filled bag, lay the bag out in a dry spot in the sun to rid its insulation of the moisture your body releases overnight.

Remember the old trick of stuffing a tightly sealed bottle of hot tea in the foot of your bag at bedtime; it will keep your toes warm and provide needed hydration when you wake up during the night. Eat hearty day and night, and keep a fat chocolate bar handy for a midnight snack to fire your internal furnace if you wake up cold. Don’t resist the urge to pee because you dread getting out of your bag – your body burns precious energy warming that fluid.

With nighttime temps in the teens or higher, you need to ventilate the tent so the moisture you exhale overnight isn’t trapped inside, where it may dampen your bag and clothes if the tent warms up from your body heat or morning sunshine. Open vents or the tops of the door and window a crack. In severe cold, when condensation isn’t going to melt, trapping heat becomes the priority and you may need to close the tent up tight.

Frost forms inside the best-ventilated tents. Avoid brushing your bag or clothing against frosted walls. When taking down the tent, shake off as much frost as possible. If sunshine or being inside your pack renders a frozen tent damp by the time you reach your next campsite, pitch the tent and let it either dry out or freeze up again before putting stuff inside.

Choose your winter shelter wisely and you can avoid your own nylon nightmares of winter.

—Michael Lanza is author of The Ultimate Guide to Backcountry Travel, from AMC Books.