The Freestanding Tent Debate Isn’t Really About Weight
What a windy night on a mountain taught us about tents.
We were camped on an exposed ridge near the highest point of the Colorado Trail, 13,271 feet above sea level. A wind storm was quickly approaching as the sun was setting.
We were with our friend, “Dirty Money”, thruhiking the Continental Divide Trail. Instead of pushing on into the dark looking for a sheltered place to camp, the three of us made the decision to pitch our tents on the exposed ridge. We had recently picked up our first non-freestanding tent (a Zpacks Duplex). Dirty Money had a more traditional Big Agnes Tiger Wall. We knew our tent would collapse during the night while Dirty Money would sleep like a baby. That’s not how the night went down…
If you aren’t familiar with the difference between a freestanding and non-freestanding tent, picture a typical tent you’d take camping: it’s probably a freestanding tent. Freestanding tents have dedicated tent-poles to support the fabric of the tent. They will still stand upright without stakes, hence the term: freestanding.
A non-freestanding tent is a tent that can’t stand on its own. It needs tension from stakes to stay up. Very often, including for our Duplex, non-freestanding tents use hiking poles as the tent poles. The rationale is that you don’t need your tent to be set up while you’re hiking with your poles, and you won’t need your poles for hiking while your tent is set up. You can save weight if they serve double-duty.
Non-freestanding tents have the reputation of being fickle and unstable: Don’t stake one in well enough and it will collapse on you as you sleep. If this happens in a downpour you’ll end up soaking wet and have a miserable night.
Back to Colorado. Furious wind showed up not long after we retired to our tent and Dirty Money to hers. It whipped around us all night and shook our tent like crazy. We didn’t have a quiet night (any tent is noisy against blasts of wind), but the tent stayed solid and upright. We’d have to wait until morning to ask Dirty Money how the night had gone for her.
We were impressed by our fancy new tent. When we decided to get it, we had thought that we were sacrificing the comfort and simplicity of a freestanding tent to save weight. Our calculation had been that difficult times in rough conditions would be offset by the weight savings we’d enjoy 100% of the time, most of it in good conditions.
As it turned out, hiking poles are really beefy! Ours didn’t even flex in the face of blasting wind. They made outstanding tent poles. Plus, by the time the storm hit we had enough practice with the tent to be really skilled at setting it up including getting the stakes solidly set in the ground so they wouldn’t be ripped out. We had already been impressed by how much simpler and quicker the hiking pole tent was to set up than we thought it would be, so this was like icing on the cake!
Morning in Colorado came and we, along with Dirty Money, emerged from our tents. The night had not gone as smoothly for her. Traditional tent poles flex by design, so the wind had flattened and folded Dirty Money’s tent all night long. Her tent spent lots of the night as flat as a pancake, and it completely blew over at least once. Ultimately to get it standing at least semi-upright, she needed to build an additional support: a hiking pole bracing her tent poles! Needless to say, Dirty Money’s freestanding tent had served her much worse than our non-freestanding tent had served us.
As we hiked on for the remaining more than 1,500 miles of this trip we pondered: our non-freestanding tent had proven to be lighter, quicker to set up, and more stable in a storm; it was better for us in every way. We had to ask the question, is there any benefit of a freestanding tent?
We’ve been reflecting on this for years. We’re confident now that yes, there is, it’s just not what traditional wisdom suggests. What we eventually realized is that our tent hadn't outperformed Dirty Money's because it was inherently better. It had outperformed hers because we'd already spent enough nights learning how to use it to its full potential.
The great tent debate, freestanding vs. non-freestanding, is usually posed along the lines of: are the weight savings worth the inconvenience? In our experience, for the right kind of backpacker there is no inconvenience. A better question would be: what kind of backpacker are you?
Many more people have some sort of experience with a traditional freestanding tent than with a non-freestanding tent. Plus, traditional tents are usually cheaper. If you backpack one or a few times a year, don’t want to spend an arm and a leg, and enjoy the simplicity of what you already know: stick with a freestanding tent.
If you’re committed to backpacking frequently and would enjoy becoming an expert at setting it up: get a non-freestanding tent. Once you’re familiar with it, you might find that there are virtually zero drawbacks.
That said, Dirty Money has more camping experience than us and she still prefers freestanding tents. So like most things in life, “the best tent for you” is ultimately a matter of preference.
We should also note that everything here applies in mild (3-season) weather only. For backpacking in winter or other extreme conditions, there are entirely other factors to consider that we don’t address in this post.
Here’s a video comparing the set-up process of a freestanding and non-freestanding tent:
If you use trekking poles regardless, so they're "free weight", trekking pole tents win hands down. I used trekking poles full time on the first 500 miles of my thru, but once my legs strengthened up then they spent most of the time strapped to my pack. That makes it a closer contest, where the subtle advantages of free standing tents start to shine. The ease of setup and increased interior space due to the more vertical walls make a big difference in livability, and if you count the weight of the trekking poles, the lightest free standing are pretty competitive. Despite hiking thousands of miles with a duplex style tent, the Big Agnes freestanding tents are a very appealing alternative for me.