Camping in the Hot Tent

Before I get started on my rather short trip report, let me say a few words about this new shelter. The really short version is that it’s a rain fly with walls for your hammock.

I bought it mostly because it was the only 4 season tent I could find that weighed under 10 pounds (just barely). It’s a pretty thin material with a reflective inner layer (think of a space blanket). It has no floor, which is one reason it is not as heavy. It has 2 screened windows and one side of it can be rolled up and secured so it is very open. It has doors on either end with zippers (the zippers seem to be decent quality; they work well). There are also 2 additional sliders in the zipper that allow you to feed your hammock strap through and adjust the height of the opening.

That’s another reason I purchased this particular 4 season tent; it’s really made for a hammock. Oh, did I mention that it doesn’t use any poles? You have to set it up between two trees, even if you aren’t planning to use a hammock. Another feature it has is a stove jack. I’m not sure if I’ll ever hump a wood stove into the woods, but if I were camping in really cold weather, that could be a nice addition.

The shelter is lacking in some nice-to-have features, like some pockets to stow important items where they are easy to find. It doesn’t have any place to hang a light inside, but you can run a cord from one door to the other and hang a light on that. The thing comes with 12 tie-out cords and 16 stakes, but not one of the included cords is long enough to use for hanging the light. I could have tied 2 of the tie-out cords together, but I happened to have a spare cord in my bag that was long enough.

Regarding the tie-outs and stakes. There are 6 tie-out points on the shelter (in addition to the top end corners where the doors are; those use straps not unlike hammock straps and provide support for the ridge line). The instructions show 2 tie-out cords on each of the 6 tie-out points, which is probably overkill for all but the worst conditions. I found that staking it out with 4 stakes/cords was sufficient (in addition to the ridge line support). The 16 stakes could still be useful, since I found you really need to stake the walls to the ground or they blow around, making them pretty useless. You probably won’t run out of stakes. I also guyed out a couple of tie-out points to nearby trees.

I’ve set up the shelter in 4 different locations and I’ve slept in it once. I probably won’t get a lot of use out of it before warmer weather renders it superfluous. It probably wouldn’t be the best shelter during mosquito season, either.

What I really like about it is that it is very roomy and has plenty of height to stand up. If I were sharing a campground, it would provide more privacy than you usually have when hammocking. I threw down a ground cloth and spread my gear out on it. For one person, it’s ridiculously roomy. You can’t have 2 hammocks in it, so it seems like a one person shelter, unless the other people slept on cots or on the ground.

In case you are interested in this strange combination of a rain fly and a tent with no floor, it’s called OneTigris COZSHACK Hot Tent on Amazon. I found a nice 4 season tent on REI, but it was much more expensive and weighed almost 60 lbs. It was also not designed for a hammock and I really love sleeping in my Haven hammock. One other warning: Don’t let Amazon convince you to purchase poles with this shelter. The poles they offer don’t work at all with this, and you don’t need poles unless you want to set it up where there are no suitable trees.

Now that the gear is out of the way, I spent Thursday night and most of Friday (Feb 6-7) in the forest. I selected my site in daylight on Thursday afternoon, but by the time I got my gear hauled out there and my shelter set up, it was dark. The site was a 20 minute hike from where I parked and I had to make 2 trips because I brought *everything* … I planned to work on my laptop at least part of the time and I wanted to have my camera, a couple lenses and a tripod.

Fred came out to check out my setup, but he didn’t stay the night. It was so beautiful on Friday that I just had to hang out until the sun was setting. I thought about staying another night, but I didn’t plan the trip very well; I didn’t have anything to eat for supper. I still kind of wish I would have stayed another night. I could have found something to quell my hunger and Saturday was another nice day, although not as nice as Friday.

As far as the camping trip went, the worst part was the nearly constant drone of helicopters circling the forest. Fred and I decided they got too many noise complaints, flying over Camp Lejeune, which is now girded by housing, so they moved their training to the national forest. It’s frustrating when you’re out there, listening to the forest sounds and they get drowned out by a helicopter flying right over your head. They didn’t stop strafing me until just after midnight. Sigh. They returned Friday afternoon around 16:00. That was a factor in my deciding not to spend another night.