Lightweight Camping for Motorcycle Travel

With several years of trial-and-error experience behind me, I think I am in a position to save you considerable time and expense as you look for your tent. I have come to the conclusion that, when shopping for a tent, you should consider five important features in addition to price. These five features are: length, area, weight (which is directly related to packed size), weather resistibility, and interior height. Assuming that you may occasionally share your tent with a companion, you should look for tents that are large enough to accommodate two people plus their clothes and personal items. Hopefully, these observations will help you find the tent that best suits your needs. Length. First of all, you need a tent that is long enough to stretch out in without touching the walls. Ideally your tent should be at least seven feet long—and longer if you are over six feet tall. I am six feet, two inches tall and prefer tents that are eight feet long. The reason you need a longer tent is that most tents, especially dome tents, have walls that slope toward the top center of the tent. As a result of the slope, you lose several inches of floor space around the edge where the floor and the wall meet. Consequently, when your tent is only a few inches longer than your height, your head and feet will touch the walls. The longest tents for tall guys are Cabela’s XPG Ridgelight 3 and the Eureka Timberline 4. Other long tents include the Kelty Gunnison 4.1, the Mountain Hardwear Lightwedge 3, and the ALPS Mountaineering Extreme 3. Some manufacturers have devised ways to reduce the slope of their walls and, thus, to allow tall guys to stretch out with shorter floors. These tents usually advertise that they have near vertical walls. Examples of such tents include the MSR Mutha Hubba and several “frog” design tents such as The North Face Tadpole. Area. Buy a tent that is big enough for two adults, their clothes, and their personal gear. Ideally, the floor of your tent should be about five feet wide to accommodate two twenty-five inch wide sleeping pads. A quick guide to a tent’s floor space is its square footage. A tent that is eight feet long by five feet wide would have forty square feet of floor space. This size tent seems ideal for two motorcycle campers. Tents with forty- or more- square feet of floor space are usually called three- or four-person tents, but they are only suitable for two normal-sized adults with some clothing and gear to store. You might be able to get by with a smaller tent (i.e., a two-person tent) if you and your companion are relatively small and the tent has two doors and two vestibules. In fact, you may need a smaller tent if you ride a cruiser or sport bike with limited packing space. If you choose a smaller tent, you could put some of your gear (particularly your boots and helmets) inside a large waterproof bag and leave them in a vestibule. A tent with two doors allows each person to enter and exit the tent without having to crawl over his or her companion. This convenience is especially important if either of you have to get up in the middle of the night. When you begin to look for tents, you’ll find that manufacturers frequently give floor dimensions in inches. These figures do not include the vestibule, which is counted separately. To determine whether the tent is large enough for your needs, convert each dimension into feet. For example, a length of 90 inches divided by 12 is 7.5 feet; a width of 63 inches rounds to 5.3 feet. Then, multiply length by width to determine the square footage. The floor for the tent described above would be 7.5 x 5.3 = 39.75 square feet. After you calculate the square footage, check to see if your value matches the manufacturer’s reported square footage. Most of the time, it should match, but occasionally your value may be different from the area reported by the manufacturer. The discrepancy usually indicates an irregular floor shape. The Mountain Hardwear Light Wedge 3, for example, is six feet, two inches wide at the door but only 4 feet, ten inches wide at the rear. Weight. Backpackers are acutely aware of a tent’s weight. They consider it to be one of the most important, if not the most important, considerations when purchasing a tent. For them, every ounce of weight carried on their back is important in determining their long-range endurance. Because of this fact, the minimum weight of a tent will usually be included in the tent’s description or specifications. This weight usually includes the tent, rain fly, and poles, but does not include the ground cloth, stakes, and doormat. Sometimes, manufacturers give other weights for their tents. Look carefully. The fast weight or trail weight may be a partial weight that is lower than the actual weight you would carry on your bike; the packed weight may include the packing box and instruction manual and, thus, be a few ounces more than the tent’s actual weight. Motorcycle campers should also be concerned about a tent’s minimum weight because it is directly related to packed size. Selecting the smallest tent possible gives you more space to pack other items, such as sleeping bags and sleeping pads. Selecting a small tent is also important because tents are typically packed high on luggage racks where they, along with a backseat companion, can make your bike more top-heavy and difficult to control, especially in low speed sharp turns. Furthermore, many manufacturers specify a weight limit for their luggage racks of approximately ten to fifteen pounds. Backpackers frequently weigh each item of gear to determine the total weight they are packing. This practice also may be helpful for motorcycle campers. So, I weighed all of my tents, with their ground cloths and doormats. I found that my older Kelty Gunnison 4, with its poles, ground cloth, and doormat weighed nine pounds, eleven ounces, which was one pound heavier than the manufacturer’s specifications (eight pounds, eleven ounces). My older Sierra Designs Sirius 3 with its poles and footprint weighed five pounds, fifteen ounces, which was eleven ounces more than the manufacturer’s specifications (five pounds, four ounces). In general, the actual weight of a tent, with its ground cloth and doormat, is about a pound more than the manufacturer’s listed packed weight. If you ride solo or two-up on a touring bike with a luggage rack, you could easily pack a tent that weighs up to nine pounds. If you ride two-up on a cruiser or sport bike with limited packing space, you probably should drop this weight limit to seven pounds. In general, two-person tents typically weigh about four to five pounds. One of the lightest two person tents is the MontBell Thunder Dome. Most three- or four-person backpacking tents weigh between five and nine pounds. Two very light three-person tents are the Sierra Designs Sirius 3 and the REI Quarter Dome UL. Two or three pounds difference may not sound like much, but for both backpackers and motorcycle campers, each additional pound will seem enormous. Weather resistibility. Buy a tent that is able to withstand moderately high wind and rain. Although you may not plan to camp in a storm, it will happen. We have experienced rain on more than half of our camping trips. When we go to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (one of our favorite destinations), we expect a rain shower or two with strong winds every day. Therefore, it is important to select a tent that is able to withstand moderate wind and rain without leaking or collapsing. Yes, some tents will collapse. If you find this hard to believe, walk around a campground after a storm. You will likely see one or more tents that have collapsed due to the wind and weight of the water. Typically, they are some of the more economically priced tents.