All that’s left to do is attach the rain fly and stake down the tent’s corners and guy lines. While the majority of instant tents can be set up in under a minute by a single person, the sheer size of this tent makes it a bit harder to pitch by yourself. Some campers might find the Wawona 6’s footprint unwieldy in smaller campsites, or they might simply ozark trail instant cabin prefer a tent with a more straightforward design. 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. Unfortunately, you have to buy a separate groundsheet for the Wawona 6 and for most other tents its size as well.
If you’re considering an Ozark Trail yourself, you’re in the right place. With a strong emphasis on function, not only will you get multiple room capabilities and a large entry door, but Ozark also ensures this tent has a lot of ventilation options. Using a low to high venting system, low vents can be guyed out to bring clean air into the tent, while the mesh ceiling and windows help to move it out. The rain fly also provides a small awning over all the windows and front door, helping to direct rain from entering those points on the tent. Ozark provides all the hardware (i.e. stakes), an E-port for powering your living space, and interior pockets and lofts for gear storage.
The Wawona doesn’t come with a footprint—few tents this size do—but it’s otherwise all-inclusive, and it is compact considering how much livable space you get. The price also reflects the high quality of the materials, such as the four reinforced aluminum poles, which weigh little yet result in a remarkably strong tent. Adults as tall as 6-foot-3 can move about this tent standing upright.
Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time). 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. Throughout all our testing, we wanted to know how it felt to be inside the tents for long periods of time.
Because there’s only 1 door in the entire tent, only 1 “room” will have the door, and the other “room” will only have windows. The single door measures about 54 by 39 inches in dimensions, although it’s about 62 inches from the floor to the top of the door. This is almost a full-sized door, but I do need to duck a little when entering. Finally, attach all the pole clips, place the rainfly over the Ozark Trail tent, secure it, and stake out the entire tent. To set up the Ozark Trail 10-Person Tent, first slide the 3 fiberglass poles through the roof pole sleeves. It provides shelter, gives a spot for storage, and extends the floor area.
This cabin style tent includes two doors and a removable room divider to create two separate rooms. The floor plan comfortably fits two queen airbeds or up to eight campers in sleeping bags on the floor and the three-hub design allows for added head room. The geodesic structure of the Base Camp tents is built to withstand wind and rain. It has two main that thread through sleeves, stretching between the four corners of the tent. Generally, we like clip-on designs better, since those are easier to put together, but in the case of the Base Camp models, the sleeves add extra tension and stability throughout the tent fabric.
So you have this extra bonus here, the ambient LED-lighted poles which provide light throughout the tent. You have low, medium, and high settings and the system works on 4 D batteries. The picture below shows the light center on the ceiling and the other shows how it looks with the light on. The front room is with a huge inverted-T shaped door with zippers on the bottom and in the middle. It is fully floored and its side walls are all double-layer with mesh and zippered panels. So it offers full protection just like the back room, but it can be converted to a pleasant screen room as well.
The zipper quality is not the best, it’s a little bit noisy, and it always, always snags from the outside because of this green rain cover. The Ozark Trail 10-Person Tent has just 1 door, which is a D-shaped door, and it’s located somewhere along the length of the tent. The length of the Ozark Trail tent is about 13 feet and 9 inches, while the width is about 9 feet and 11 inches, so slightly smaller than the marketed dimensions of 14 by 10 feet.
We were skeptical about the vestibule’s ability to handle wind, since it’s big and supported by a single pole, but it stood fast in 30 mph oceanside gusts and 15 mph hilltop winds. These can be as strong, or even more so, than aluminum poles (especially cheap ones), but they’re always bulkier, heavier, and not as nice to handle. However, the Wireless 6’s poles were the best fiberglass ozark trail canopy tent ones we tested—they left no splinters, unlike those on the Camp Creek 6 or the Copper Canyon LX 6. But it’s one of the least expensive tents we found that had no significant drawbacks and will truly cover your bases for three-season camping. The tent also comes with its own footprint, a groundsheet that protects the tent from abrasion, which we recommend that you have.