Once we Velcroed the poles to the fly via the tabs that run under the seams, the poles stabilized. And with some added staked lines, the tent was as sturdy as any we observed. But under windy conditions, you’ll want to reinforce the poles with all available mechanisms and not cut any corners in setup. We talked through the Copper Canyon’s specs with Ryan Flynn, sales manager for Johnson Outdoors, Eureka’s parent company. Flynn told us that the advantage of the lighter aluminum poles found in the company’s Jade Canyon tent is purely about weight.
From smaller two person tents used at remote campsites, to large family-sized tents used at campgrounds. I’ve also purchased and used tents from The North Face and Marmot, which are considered more “high-performance” brands. When W.C. Coleman invented the first gas-powered lantern in 1900, he couldn’t have imagined that he’d sparked over 120 years of outdoor innovations.
Drawbacks here are few and far between, but our biggest gripe with the Skydome is that it doesn’t deliver the level of wind resistance advertised. Coleman claims the Skydome is tested to withstand 35 mph winds, but several owners have reported poles snapping under milder conditions. We’ll also point out that although the Skydome is available in 2, 4, and even 6-person sizes, all models of the tent stick to a single door/single vestibule construction. We’d love to see a back door added (especialy if it comes with a second vestibule in the future), but for now we’re more than happy to live with a single door at this price. The rainfly only covers the roof and top portion of the tent, and has built-in guy lines for staking into the ground.
The tent’s floor area is 244.3 ft² (22.7 m²), and the porch adds 75.3 ft² (7 m²). Because of such a size, I have included it also into my list of extra large family camping tents. I have been using a marmot tent but want a bigger tent for family coleman cabin tent car camping. I understand the quality of these tents are not what they used to be and we don’t want to risk broken poles or worse water leaking in. The “Skydome™” variants of dome tents are designed to provide “20%” more head room.
The reason is that they build them separately for the EU market and for the US market. So the former are huge and they typically can accommodate far more than 6 people. The Mineral King 3 and the Tungsten 4 have similar tent-body profiles and are nearly identical in setup, except that the Tungsten 4 uses two brow poles instead of one to support its fly. Like the Mineral King 3, the Tungsten is a largely mesh dome tent coleman bbq with a tape-seamed polyester bathtub floor, which is highly water resistant. Neither tent experienced any ground leaks during testing, either under rainy conditions or when we soaked the tents and the ground underneath them with a garden hose. Beyond their general size, the tents in our test group were very different from one another, with a wide array of pole configurations and window, door, and roof designs.
So, let’s breakdown the materials, manufacturing, and testing processes, and aggregate the results to rate the quality of . Weighing in at 16 pounds 10 ounces, the Sundome 6 is easy to haul from the car to the campsite and store when not in use. For carrying, the included rectangular bag for the Sundome is simple in nature, but the full-length zipper and well-placed handles get the job done. We would have loved to see internal dividers like those found on the REI Kingdom bags, but those likely would have raised the price of the Coleman.
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. There are also two poles that cross over each doorway and down the sides of the tent to add extra shape and support. The rain fly has an additional tent pole, too, to support the vestibule. Overall, these poles contribute to a particularly sturdy structure, with or without the rain fly.