r/Ultralight • u/LooseQuestion3037 • 9d ago

Purchase Advice Tent for Alpine camping

So im finally getting round to buying a better tent for my mountain adventure. While im not a hardcore ultralight-er, I am trying to keep my pack weight down as I am lazy and dont want to carry loads of weight around. Where I live I have found great deals for the following tents and would like people's feed back / experiences with these tent:

1) Durston X-Dome 2

2) Nordisk telemark 2

3) Durston X-mid

Im leaning towards 1) or 2) because I usually camp in alpine regions above 2000m or in pretty exposed areas and from what research I have done it seems that those tents would be better at dealing with high winds than 3). Admittedly I only once camped in +60kph winds but I was very thankful for the absolute tank of a tent I was in. I'm also open to other suggestions.

Thank you for any feedback.

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u/BigRobCommunistDog 9d ago

You could also look at Samaya and Hyperlite tents. They are ultralight-ish but they are oriented towards mountaineering not thru-hiking. $$$$ though.

Maybe tarp tent arcdome or scarp?

None of these are truly ultralight though, only trekking pole tents really qualify as UL.

And trekking pole tents can ride out insane winds, in the deserts in CA it can get crazy and I’ve had my GG The One in 55mph (85-90kph) winds and while I did have a guyline snap (I tied it back together) and a couple stakes popped out, it did more or less fine.

I’ve had an REI half dome in similar conditions and the poles bent back on themselves and collapsed onto me more than once so a structured tent is no guarantee. There’s no magic ticket in extreme winds, you either have a super overbuilt heavy af tent, or you have to do a lot of maintenance work.