Owner Review of the REI Sololite Tent

Name: Chris Ramias

Age: 22

Gender: Male

Height: 6’0”

Weight: 190 lbs.

Location: Tucson, Arizona

Background: 6 years of backpacking and hiking experience. In 2000 I hiked a 1000-mile section of the PCT. Base pack weight is usually in the range of 22-26 pounds, although I am currently slimming down to a much lighter packweight. I day hike usually every week, and take a longer (2-3 day) trip once every six weeks or so. I also take longer trips (5-7 days) as often as possible, usually once or twice a year. I almost exclusively hike solo, and have a particular affinity for exploring the canyon country of Northern Arizona and Southern Utah.

Test Item: REI Sololite, 1998 model

Dimensions: 28 sq.ft. floor space, 7 sq. ft. vestibule, 36 inch peak height

Material: Urethane-coated nylon rainfly and bathtub floor, Uncoated nylon tent body

Items Included: The tent came with rainfly, tent body, 2 shock-corded poles, 12 aluminum tent stakes, stuff sacks for the tent, poles and stakes, and seam sealer (although the seams on the fly and floor were already taped). I also bought the urethane-coated nylon footprint.

Price: $115 (in 1998) for tent, $20 for footprint

Weight: 4 lbs, 2 oz.

Tent Design: The tent is a tunnel design, and is non-freestanding. It has a small half-moon shaped mesh vent near the foot end, a large mesh stargazing panel over the head end. The top half of the door on the tent body is also mesh. The rest of the tent body is nylon taffeta, with a bathtub floor. There are two mesh pockets for storing small gear. The vestibule is attached to the tent body rather than the fly (more on this below). The tent body requires four stakes, one at each corner. In addition, one stake is required for the rainfly at the foot end, to raise the fly off the lower vent. The rainfly attaches to the tent body by means of Velcro and plastic clips. All seams on the rainfly and bathtub floor are taped.

Use: Ive used this tent on at least twenty short backpacking trips in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, as well as for two and a half months on the PCT in the desert and High Sierra. Overall I’ve probably logged about 100 nights in this tent.

Praise: The Sololite does have quite a few things going for it. It is perfectly sized for one person. I can fit into it with room at the foot end and along the side for my gear. I can also sit up quite easily inside the tent, albeit only at the front of the tent. The vestibule is quite large and the space is really usuable. I can fit an empty pack in the vestibule and still have room to cook.

The tent is very easily ventilated and has many different options for setup depending on how breezy/weatherproof you want it. The tent fly can be rolled back completely and attaches to the lower pole sleeve, for nights with clear skies. If the weather requires deploying the rainfly, you can roll up the vestibule door and strap it open for the best ventilation, or zip the door shut and zip open the top 4 inches of the vestibule. This opening is protected by a little hood that keeps out the rain. Because of the good ventilation, this tent has very little condensation problems. I have experienced some condensation on nights when the tent is entirely zipped up and the rainfly has been saturated with rain.

Setup is also very simple and takes less than two minutes once practiced. Put the poles through the pole sleeves, stake out the back corners, then the front. The two front stakeouts are adjustable guylines, so you can get the tent body as taut as you want it. Once the body is set up, throw the rainfly over the tent, attach it to the pole sleeves with Velcro, and clip the fly to the body. Stake out the rear and you are done. Once very nice feature that I like, and is unique compared to other tents that I’ve used, is that the rainfly is attached to the pole sleeves via Velcro. This means that if you must set up the tent in the rain, you can attach the fly to the body with the Velcro, set up the body keeping it covered from the rain, and then clip the fly in.

This tent is fairly wind worthy as well. I used the tent to camp on a ridge above Tehachapi, CA on the PCT. This area has nearly constant strong winds, which the engineers have taken advantage of by locating a large wind farm here. With the low end of the tent pitched into the wind the tent held though the night with only minor shaking.

Problems: There are some caveats to keep in mind before buying a Sololite. The first is that the vestibule is attached to the tent body rather than the tent fly. This design has its advantages and disadvantages. With this design, the door to enter the inner tent is completely vertical, which means that no rain gets in the tent when you enter in rainy weather. It also makes the floor space in the vestibule much more usuable than tents with sloping inner doors. These downside to this is that after a rainy night you cannot separate wet tent from dry tent. Even if you pack your wet rainfly apart from the tent body, the wet vestibule will still be packed with the tent body.

Another problem with the tent, which I managed to solve, was that the fly was “droopy.” When setting up the tent you can get the tent body quite taut due to the adjustable guylines, but no such tightening mechanism exists for the rainfly. Thus the fly is not taut, and on rainy nights the fly can droop so much that the fly touches the inner tent. Because on these rainy nights I tend to have the tent zipped up tight, there will usually be some condensation on the underside of the fly. This means the inner tent gets wet. By experimenting a bit, I found that you can attach very short (5 inch) guylines to the loops on the bottom edge, mid-side of the rainfly. By staking these out, you can get the rainfly somewhat taut, to the extent that it will not touch the inner tent. Ironically, I also found that staking out the sides this way increased ventilation to the degree that I experienced almost no condensation problems.

The only other minor quibble that I have with this tent is that the rainfly only barely overlaps with the bathtub floor, so on very rainy nights you will experience some “splash back” that gets up under the rainfly and hits the inner tent. This is really a minor problem, and its only happened on very rainy occasions like summer monsoons in Arizona.

Recommendations: Something definitely needs to be done about the droopy rainfly; perhaps by having guy-out loops on the side of the rainfly rather than on the bottom edge. Also, the rainfly could be extended downwards maybe an inch or so to better overlap the bathtub floor.