It’s time for a Gear Review of my Wenger Dome Tent, which is affectionately known to us as the “Swiss Army Tent”. It’s a 3 to 4 person dome tent made by Wenger. My tent is a slightly older model of tent with a few design flaws, that I am happy to report are addressed in newer Wenger Tents. However, the better features of the tent, which are also carried forward to the newer models
This tent is not really a backpacking tent. It is better suited to be packed, by car, to a campground, where it is set up at the base camp for an expedition from the campground to the day trip of your choice. It does pack up into a breadbox-sized space, which makes it easily portable among your other campsite equipment.
Wenger Dome Tent at Newberry
My favorite feature of the tent is the fast set-up time. It takes less than 10 minutes to go from packed to pitched. There are four thin hollow fiberglass poles that link together in metal slots using an elastic string that holds the poles together, eliminating missing links. Next these four long poles slide through color-coded slots and match up with color-coded clips. The rainfly also has two poles that clip to the front and back, with clips to the four corners.
The Wenger Dome tent also has optional windows on the two sides, which gives it a cabin tent feel. One of my tent’s shortcomings is that the poles you pop in to the window slots are so tight, that you risk breaking the poles during normal setup. Over the course of ownership, I’ve broken two poles. I’m happy to report that Wenger has made it right both times and sent me new poles free of charge. Most recently, we dealt with a broken window pole in the field using duct tape. The duct taped section of pole is not as rigid as the others, so that specific window pole goes in more easily than the unblemished one. These two windows, plus the front and back doors of the tent, and lastly, the open roof, allows for very good ventilation, keeping the tent cool.
The open roof, even with the rainfly, while an asset in hotter weather, is a liability in the colder weather. During our trip to Lost Lake in the Hood wilderness, we got rained on, snowed on, and blown on by frigid winds down from Mt. Hood. The Wenger Dome Tent barely kept the wind, rain and snow out, forcing us to rely on our sleeping bags for warmth.
Wenger Dome Tent at Crater Lake
While it takes a lot to do so, the fiberglass poles splinter. These really fine splinters are very difficult to pull out of fingers, resulting in annoying attempts to fine and extract them, which eats up perfectly good day-trip time. The newer tents seem to have better poles that are a little more durable and less prone to splintering. The tent designs are also better, eliminating the unnatural bending to get the windows set up.
Another handy feature of the tent are the “shoe slots” in the front of the tent. These are compartments you can put your shoes through, or passages you can pass items into the tent without opening the main doors to let in mosquitoes.
My Swiss Army Tent has seen action on many trips, from the mountains and forests of New England, to the Oregon Cascades and Coast. Dan and Brian should remember this tent from Mt. Monadnock and Black Rock. More recently, over the past two seasons, the Wenger Dome Tent has seen action with me and Paula at Crater Lake, the Newberry Volcanic Monument, Lake Simtustus, Nehalem Bay, Silver Falls, Lost Lake and Paula’s parents’ back yard!
Wenger Tents like mine can be purchased at these online retailers below:
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LOL Swiss Army Tent!!! If it say Swiss Army is must be good!
My Tent of Choice is the Wenger Outfitter, mostly in the Mount Rainier Wilderness in Washington. I needed a tent that I could pack in on a mountain bike or packhorse but still offered me the comforts of home. I can set the tent up fast with one person, but two are better.
The tent can be set up by one person, though two make it a snap. All the construction is top quality, the poles are 11mm aluminum, and when erected, it is the sturdiest tent I have used, including the Eureka Alpenlite, but it comes at the cost of 14 pounds! If I did not have a mountain bike or a horse, I would not carry this tent. It is very spacious for one person and very tough, but it lets the cold in, so i need to bring my warm sleeping bag.
Real cool Coleman tent for sale. Its a 4 person tent. It is the best tent for the money. It packs up small into it’s bag and popup into a nice dome tent and is a general sweet for camping tent.
Is a Wenger tent better for camping than some of the others like Outwell, Vango or Gelert?
I slept in a Outwell tent once and it was kinda of tight. The Vango tent was a lot of $$$ so I am not sleeping in one of them again, and my friend has a Gelert tent for backpacking. And by better I mean an economical tent.
Overall quality of this tent seems fairly good. There are a few design deficiencies though. First there are none tie-downs to secure versus the weather and wind! Next problem is that the tent doesn’t have a full coverage fly in the back, but theres at least a rainfly vent in the back. This is good for ventilation purposes but if the wind and rain is coming from that direction you may get drenched.
Hey that Wenger Tent is a little outdated. Get this tent instead:
It’s 50 square feet, sleeps 3 comfortably and is 3 season and is 6 pounds, five oz, which is important for lightweight backpacking. It sets up in 10 minutes! No Lie! And it rolls to pack up. The other handy feature that I like is that there is a transparent pocket at the top where you can put your headlamp that illuminates the whole tent, which lets you cut down on carrying extra lighting weight. I love this tent and Ive taken it backpacking in Montana, Idaho and Colorado.
Stephan Amendola
I bought this tent for a four night outing and sprayed additional waterproofing on the sides and on the rain fly. The first night it rained hard and water was coming in through the top of the roof. Everything was soaked. The next day we had to go into town and we bought a tarp to go over the top of the rain fly. It continued to rain and we had less water in our tent from the roof but were experiencing leaking from the tent walls. I wasn’t real happy with the windows either. There is a full screen that makes it look like a full window but they all zip down about half way and the rain fly is covering the areas of the windows so it is tough to see out.
Thanks for the comments–I had to format them a little bit to make them fit, but I like how you tried to get the image into the comment! The Wenger Dome Tent didn’t go with me on the Pacific Crest Trail backpacking trip. In fact, we brought along Brian’s tarp tent and used it one night, but for the rest of the trip, we slept under the stars, cowboy-style. Here’s what Brian’s Tarp Tent looked like:
I’m not sure if Brian’s was a custom job or if he got one out at REI or something. In case you can’t see it in the picture, here’s a similar idea, the MSR Zing Tarp Shelter, not the same as his:
The MSR above has all of the poles as well as the tarp, plus all the fixin’s, but Brian’s was just the tarp, some string, and he used his trekking poles as tent poles. I think he’s got the backpacking shelter thing down.
Make sure you check out the links to the Pacific Crest Trail Backpacking Trip!