Both Base Camp tents have two doors and lots of mesh in the main tent body. But unlike the Mineral King 3 and the Tungsten 4, the mesh on each Base Camp tent starts high on the walls—more than 4 feet from the ground. This design is a big plus for people who regularly camp in crowded campgrounds and don’t like to get naked in front of strangers.
Temperatures ranged from the 50s at night to the 80s during the day. Finding a small, light tent is the logical approach when you’re backpacking. But with car camping—the industry term for what most people consider ozark trail chairs just camping—you’ll likely be parking next to your campsite and unloading. If you won’t be carrying your tent more than a couple hundred feet, more space means more comfort (as well as more room for your stuff).
And you can unzip the front door, remove it, and neatly stash it into one of the tent’s internal pockets—a useful feature if you’re feeling sociable. Like most dome-style tents, the Wireless 6 withstands wind like a champ—it fared noticeably better than the Camp Creek 6 in 15-mph gusts. The continuous curve of the dome shape ozark trail chairs allows for wind to pass over and around it. You can also get a nice cross breeze going by leaving the vestibules open. On sunny days and clear nights, take off the fly and enjoy the sky through the tent’s clear mesh canopy. Some testers, though, thought the tent was stuffy when the fly was fully closed and the sun was out.
In terms of flaws, there aren’t much to speak of with the Wawona 6, apart from the price. The North Face offers a limited lifetime warranty on the tent, and will repair most flaws and damage at its discretion. Like our top pick, the Tungsten 4 comes with a footprint.
If you want a six-person tent made with high-quality materials but a traditional profile, we recommend the similarly priced Big Agnes Spicer Peak 6, or Nemo’s Aurora Highrise 6. MSR’s Habitude 6 is also a good tent, but it costs about $200 more. Unfortunately, you have to buy a separate groundsheet for the Wawona 6 and for most other tents its size as well. Its walls are 75-denier polyester fabric (tougher than the Wireless 6’s 68-denier polyester and the same as the REI Co-op Base Camp’s) that extends about two-thirds up the tent’s sides, and then is topped with mesh. The partial fly does a great job of keeping rain out of the upper, mesh areas, and cleverly placed vents maintain airflow so it never feels too stuffy. The Wireless 6 goes up easily, using the same kind of intuitive pole and clip method as our couples’ pick.
With plenty of interior space, near-vertical walls, and a gigantic vestibule that could accommodate a golf cart, the Wawona feels more like a tiny home than a tent. The separate fly, which covers the upper half of the tent, uses a third, shorter “brow” pole to form protective peaks over the door and the back window. In our tests, an experienced camper took only about six minutes on the first try to set up the tent body alone and stake it out. Getting the fly placed and staked properly took about five more minutes.
I hate to say it but this thing is a piece of JUNK. I could not even get the top frame together with out it either bending the poles or coming apart. The screen tent came with missing and broken parts.
The main bodies of our other picks are structured with two main poles with added support from smaller brow poles. The Base Camp, by contrast, has four full-size aluminum struts woven throughout it, somewhat like a basket, plus an additional brow pole that frames the front entrance and supports the larger of the two vestibules. The Base Camp also offers more privacy compared with our other picks—with or without the rain fly.