It’s expensive, but you get value for your money. Easy to set up and pack away, the Mineral King 3 is a lightweight, two-door tent with a generous footprint and a sturdy dome shape. It’s the perfect choice for three-season multipurpose camping. The rest of the process was funny too, with wimpy frizzy guylines, and inexplicable bits of plastic that are supposed to tighten them.
So if you ordered more than one item on a single order and receive only a part of your item don’t worry, you will receive your other items shortly after. At Unitedslickmart we celebrate the act of discovery. We work with small vendors from all over the world to share their products.
The Mountain Hardwear Mineral King 3 Tent is the best car-camping tent choice for couples. It has everything you need for three-season camping, with the bonus of being light enough to double as an occasional backpacking tent. Although it’s designed to accommodate three people—hence the “3” in its name—we found that at 42.5 square feet, the tent is more comfortable for two, plus gear and maybe a medium-size dog. A classic polyester dome tent, the Mineral King 3 uses two high-quality pre-bent aluminum poles, which maximize head and shoulder space, making this tent feel less cramped than other dome tents we tested. Two large doors provide easy entry and exit, and a vestibule—that’s camping speak for “mudroom”—outside each door adds significant sheltered storage. The Mineral King 3 has a full rain fly, which you can roll up halfway or completely remove for epic stargazing.
Any attempt to lift a corner and insert a leg pole resulted in pipes flying everywhere. I thought of resorting to duct tape, but since I had none handy, with great finesse I managed to lift each corner one pipe segment at a time. Some middle sections fell out but I had a standing frame of sorts, swaying and wobbling. If anyone has a hub gable or #1 Roof pole, I would be interested in buying those parts. I loved the size of this screen house but after a few uses, the 4-way hub gable cracked and a couple of the curved roof poles bent a little. The set-up is extremely complicated and took two persons over an hour to complete, including all staking of the structure and guy lines as required by the instructions.
We assembled and disassembled the tents on all of our testing sites multiple times. We tried the rain fly for each tent as well, one time rushing to get several ozark trail canopy of them up during an unexpected rainstorm at night. When heavy trade winds buffeted our Oahu-coast testing site, we pitched each tent in full face of the blast.