If you have no intention of packing away your camping gear come the colder months, you might be considering investing in a four-season tent to help you weather the winter outdoors. All of the best brands of tents make three-season tents, which provide shelter during the rainy spring, ventilation throughout the hot summer and offer some mild protection from cold fall winds. Some brands also make 4-season tents, which you’d assume would do all of the above, as well as protect you against bone-chilling cold, drifting snow and high winds.
But if you stop and think about it for a minute, that’s quite a lot to ask from a piece of canvas and a couple of poles, isn’t it? So what does it actually do, and do you need a four-season tent for winter camping? Let’s take a look at these tents, and find out when they’re a good idea for camping, and when your three-season tent will suffice.
What makes a tent four-season?
Confusingly, even though a three-season tent is a fairly accurate description of its purpose, a four-season tent isn’t necessarily optimal for camping in all four seasons. A four-season tent is perhaps more accurately a winter tent, designed to withstand cold, snow and winds. That doesn’t mean it’s insulated, however it features sturdier fabric with fewer mesh panels to keep cold wind out and body heat in. Of course, a good 4-season tent will be waterproof with taped seams, while stronger poles hold up against the weight of snow and force of wind. These tents often have a lower profile to help maintain structural integrity when you're camping in windy conditions. You’ll often find that four-season tents have a roomier design or an added vestibule that is sometimes removable, assuming that in winter you’ll be camping with more gear that needs to come inside with you.
In case it’s not obvious, four-season tents are usually a bit bulkier and weigh more than three-season tents that sleep the same number of people. They can, however, come in both double and single-walled designs and various sizes starting with one-person backpacking models, so don’t assume they’re all mammoth-sized.
How much warmer is a four-season tent?
As we’ve already mentioned, the warmth provided by a four-season tent largely comes from its ability to block wind and trap body heat better, as opposed to it actually being warm. How much warmer a four-season tent is really depends on various factors such as the outside temperature, the availability of sunlight, the tent construction and how many people are in the tent, as the results of a research project by the University of Canterbury discovered.
In extreme conditions, it’s fair to say that a four-season tent will likely provide more protection against the cold than a more breathable three-season tent, but it’s impossible to say exactly how many degrees we’re talking about here. Truly, staying warm in a tent mostly comes from your sleeping pad, sleeping bag and clothes in either tent, so you’ll definitely want to look into a really warm sleeping bag, such as the Mountain Hardware Phantom 0F, if you're going to be camping in extreme cold.
Do you need a 4-season tent for winter camping?
To answer the original question, the answer is, it really depends where you’re winter camping because as you know, winter is not the same everywhere. Let’s say you’re planning on pitching your tent at low (or even medium) elevation somewhere like northern California, Zion National Park, Scotland or the Lake District. While any of these places can experience weather extremes, the chances are you could get away with using a three-season tent and have no problems, or just wait for a half-decent weekend to go camping.
However, if you’re planning on winter camping in alpine zones, above treeline, in places that experience a lot of snow – let’s say the Rockies in Colorado, Wyoming or Montana – then a four-season tent would be a really good idea. That said, a tent that traps body heat better might not be ideal in those same locations come the warmer months, when its lower breathability would have you sweltering away. So if you are planning on camping year-round and at high altitude in winter, a four-season tent would be useful, but you wouldn’t actually use it for the other seasons and would probably want a three-season tent anyway. For a one-off winter expedition, you’d be much better off renting a winter tent than buying one.
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