Of all the tents I've owned at one or another time I still have three on hand right now, and was upset when I lost one of them last year and thought we'd mistakenly given it away (found it this summer in a stuff sack in the garage). Two are dome tents, four person styles actually big enough for two to live in for a week or more; and the other is a very lightweight and wonderfully designed single arch backpacking tent which can sleep two people who know one another very well or are willing to try. I wouldn't want to spend a week in a rainy base camp in it, but I wouldn't want to lug the others on a week long trail hike. Actually I did that with the newest dome tent, thinking the extra room might be worth the extra weight. That's never true but at home it often seems like a good idea.

My first backpacking tent was a gift from my father which I felt obligated to use for many years. It was a small and miserable single layer pup style tent which always had a half inch deep puddle of water at the low end whether or not it rained. In the Cascades, where I used it hundreds of times, conditions were noticeably drier inside the tent than they were outside, which allowed me to justify using it. When I moved to warmer and drier climes I noticed how much of the wet weather was internal condensation and I stepped up to a modern double wall tent design with better ventilation.

Over the years I've spent hiking, I've always tried out whatever seemed to be better or simpler, and there have been a lot of ideas and products which looked like good alternatives to lugging a tent around. The simplest answer to trail shelter always seems to be a tarp, light and versatile. I've read of people who hiked the entire Cascade Crest Trail with no more than a tarp tent for shelter. If they did, they were totally unconcerned with even the minimum of comfort. On the occasions I've tarped, I've wound up building a tent out of the tarp and whatever cannibalized gear and natural materials I had available. I built a sound shelter, but the tarp was only a part of that. If the weather is good you can get by with a tarp as a top cover to keep off the dew, and not even bother to string it up, but you can't count on good weather.

Tube tents (nylon macaroni designs suspended by a single line) are another good idea that's a sure failure in real life, no matter how tempting they may look in catalog photos. Since the total package weight is about half a pound these light and very temporary shelters can make good sense as emergency kit gear. They might keep the rain off if you hold still all night and orient them perfectly to wind and slope, but if you roll over you risk tearing them down completely; weather tends to enter from both ends; and there are still bugs to consider. Whether it's deer flies or ticks or mosquitoes, there's always something around that wants to suck your blood. It's possible to plug the holes in the tube with clothing, but here again, you are just building a crappy tent. What you really should do is buy a good tent, with mosquito netting.

I used to work for Sears, and we sold a variety of tents that were good for car camping, meaning that they were big and heavy enough that you wouldn't want to carry one very far from the car. I even lived in a tent like that for a few weeks one Fall when my relatives came to visit and I had to escape to a local park. They aren't bad tents, but you'd need a donkey or a llama to take one on a trail. We got a surprisingly high number of them back as returns at Sears because they leaked. Many people do not know that tents do not come weather sealed. If you don't want leaks, you buy Seam Sealer and a can or two of Silicone Waterproofing spray and go over the the rain fly, sidewalls, and every seam you can find, at least twice. On a big tent that's pretty hard to do and unless you work on it beforehand that's how you'll spend your first day at camp. Even so, you may have to live with a few leaks; this is why the cabin was invented--we'd all still live in tents if they were perfect.

If you are new to camping, backpacking or other, tents are not to be taken frivolously. You need to practice with them. Putting one up for the first time ever in the last half hour of daylight after a hard day's travel is not a good plan. Every person who works on the project will have a different opinion of how it needs to be done, and will be partially wrong. Some tents, like a high quality nylon dome tent given to me by someone to whom it was given by someone to whom it was given by a Harley owner who planned to Easy Rider his way across the continent with it until he tried to put it up by himself, are nearly impossible to put together either alone or with help. This particular one is very nice once assembled and I've used it several times, but each time I put it up I think there's no way I'm going to make it work without either breaking a pole or ripping the fabric.

Your tent very likely will be the heaviest item in your kit, especially if you travel with a friend and need the elbow room a larger domicile provides. Any chivalry you may feel toward said friend will drip away with your sweat on the trail as that extra poundage weighs inexorably on your body and mind, should you be the one who has to pack it.

After many years I have one tent that I like,and two that I tolerate. The one I like is a backpacker model by Coleman. It's small and lightweight, and in its stuff sack will actually fit neatly into the top of my backpack. It has one supporting pole, an anodized aluminum arch that almost assembles itself--surprises me every time by being so easy. It will sleep two people if they don't roll over much, but it's a little tight for that. The rain-fly can be folded back so in good weather you go to sleep with a nice view of the stars through the mosquito netting; there's enough room between the rain-fly and the inner tent to store a couple of backpacks and your hiking boots, out of the rain. The rain-fly extends all the way to ground level, which gives protection against wind as well as rain. Patching the gap between the rain-fly and the ground with debris makes this tent a snug survival shelter. There aren't many seams to worry about so rainproofing it was easy; it's the driest and most comfortable tent I've ever owned, quick and easy to put up and take down. The best nights I've ever spent in a tent were all in this one. Rain and storms outside, warm and dry inside; it gets no better than that.

You don't necessarily have to spend a ton of money to get a good tent. If you camp in summer weather you only need something basic--expedition quality tents designed for Everest and costing several hundreds of dollars aren't really necessary for a trip to a state park in July. A good ultralight tent suitable for the Appalachian Trail will only cost around a hundred dollars. I think I bought my Coleman on sale for about sixty, and bargains like that are still around. Extremists even make their own from lightweight nylon tarps. Although you could save a little money and a little weight by doing that, a real tent might not add much more than a pound to your rig, and include lots of little perks you'll appreciate. Mesh gear nets that hang from the roof, a place to put your wallet and pocket knife, mesh windows for nice nights and zip-up shutters for the cold and wet ones--it's the difference between a home away from home, and a miserable place to spend the night.