Gear Review: Woods Pinnacle 4 Season Tent
A few years ago Darrell and I decided to start a new tradition of a fall camping trip at The Massasauga Provincial Park. While it’s an amazing time of the year to go camping, we quickly realized that we we didn’t have the right gear. Our sleeping bags weren’t warm enough and at zero degrees celsius, the tent wasn’t warm enough. We slept with many layers of clothes, including our winter jackets and toques.
The next year, we bought warmer sleeping bags, which made a huge difference, but our Woods Cascade tent, which is awesome in the summer, couldn’t keep the draft out with temps hovering around freezing and winds gusting to 50 km/h. We started looking for a 4-season tent.
A 3-season tent is mainly meant to keep you dry, protect you from bugs, and be lightweight. With a 4-season tent you’re looking for protection from extreme weather, like cold temps and snow. 4-Season tents usually have solid walls, or if they have mesh areas they can also also be zipped over to make the area solid.
Some of the things we were looking at include:
- COST – A 4-season tent isn’t going to be cheap, but we also didn’t have the budget to drop $800 or more.
- AVAILABILITY – Can we easily purchase it? Will we have to order it online or can we go into a store.
- SPACE – It needs to fit two people and three dogs, plus store our gear out of the weather, so a gear tunnel is helpful.
- ADAPTABILITY – Will it be fine if the weather is colder than expected? Warmer?
We read a lot of reviews and came very close to buying one tent, but the cost was a little more than we were looking for. Eventually we looked at Canadian Tire because we love our Woods Cascade tent, and there we found the Woods Pinnacle tent. The reviews were good and the price (less than $400 at that time) was right. It checked off all the boxes for us.
We set-up our new tent at home for the first time. I highly recommend doing this so you’re not struggling when you’re at your campsite and the conditions suck.
The tent poles come colour-coded to the straps on the tent and it makes it super easy to figure out which pole connects where. Once you have the poles organized and have clipped the tent to them, you can put the fly on and starting tying down. The hardest part of setup is the front pole that forms the arch for the gear tunnel. That one takes a little patience to push through the pocket and I always have to be careful for fear of ripping it.
Overall, setting up the tent only takes a few minutes and after a couple of trips we really had a good routine worked out. You can see a time lapse of us setting up the tent in the first few minutes of this video.
The front gear tunnel is spacious and provides a nice spot to store your bags, but also your boots. With the door opening up a little to the side I find things stay nice and dry even when it’s raining. We’ve packed an awful lot of stuff in this area.
The main area of the tent has tons of room, with more than enough space for us and the dogs. We have our sleeping bags in the middle and a sleeping bag on either side for the dogs. On one night we forgot to open the vent and found we were getting a lot of condensation. Opened the vent and we had no problem!
The sides and doors can also be opened, fully or part-way, which helps with air movement.
We have seen a lot of rain with this tent, and some snow, and it’s performed well. The biggest thing we’ve noticed is that we need to be extra careful about keeping the fly off the inner tent by tying it down properly. When they have space, we have no problems with moisture. If the fly is directly on the inner tent and it’s raining a lot, we get some moisture. We’re talking about days of rain though.
The question is, does this keep us warmer than the 3-season? ABSOLUTELY! The difference is remarkable. With warm sleeping bags and this tent, freezing temps are not such an issue anymore. Yes, when it drops to -10C or so you better be wearing a toque and the dogs wear their coats, but this tent keeps you draft-free and as warm as possible.
We mainly use this tent in the shoulder seasons – as we’re approaching winter and as we’re waiting for summer. Would I use it in the middle of winter? Sure, as long as you remember to layer up appropriately and realize it won’t be warm outside of your sleeping bag. I’d rather take our insulated ice hut, with or without a heater (which is what we do for winter camping). I can’t vouch for what this tent would be like colder than -10C, but it seems like it would do the trick paired with a good sleeping bag.
Do I recommend this tent? Yes. If you’re in the market for a 4-season tent, especially to get you through the shoulder seasons, the Woods Pinnacle 4-season tent is a great addition to your gear. It’s worth the price and does everything we’ve needed. It’s made a big difference for us and I’m glad to have it. It makes me look forward to our fall camping trips even more!
argosgirl
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