The Giant Tent at Week of Rivers
So how did the Outwell Tomcat 5SA do at the Carolina Canoe Club‘s Week of Rivers (CCC’s WOR)? In a word, AWESOME. The tent met all our needs and my expectations. Were there some things I’d like to change or we found annoying? Of course, but overall it performed wonderfully.
Above is our campsite at Smoky Mountain Meadows Campground in Bryson City, NC. Smoky Mountain Meadows has hosted the CCC’s Week of Rivers for roughly two decades and in my experience each year has been better than the last! We have a coveted creekside site, which means shade and the babbling of the creek to drown your neighbors snoring. Last year M. and I attended WOR, but stayed in a friends’ cabin. Staying in the cabin was great, but I missed the community of the campground and really wanted M. to experience all of WOR. Onto the tent review…
Set up: Previously, I had only set it up in our backyard and didn’t stake out all the guy lines. I bought a small electric pump (Sevlor 12 V 15 psi SUP and water sport pump) that I could also use on our inflatable kayak. The pump worked great (after I figured out that I left one of the deflate valves open!) and the tent was up quickly and easily. I staked out most of the base of the tent with some help and then tackled the awning. Having not put up the awning before, it took substantially longer than the tent itself. Next time I’m sure it will go more quickly. Next up was the staking of all the remaining guy lines, which took roughly an hour (with breaks). We set up one bedroom instead of two (the divider zips away), because we wanted our heads pointing uphill and M. is young enough that one bedroom is more convenient. The tent is large enough that there are not a lot of options on how to place the tent on our site! We used the side door vestibule as a pantry and for gear storage.
Use: The first half of WOR were hot and dry. When the tent is zipped up, it is stuffy in this kind of weather (as almost any tent would be). In my opinion, it could use more ventilation when the doors are zipped up. I never wanted to leave a door unzipped while we were sleeping or away from the campground, because you never know when a thunderstorm might roll through in the mountains in the heat of the summer.
The second half of WOR had a number of pretty severe thunderstorms and downpours. A couple included strong winds with many trees going down in surrounding valleys. The guy lines completely did their job! The tent did not move in the wind and I felt much better in it than I would have in my traditional, small four person tent. During one of the torrential downpours (and I mean torrential literally, perhaps the strongest rain storm I’ve ever camped in), we had four adults in camp chairs and M. with her chairs and toys all comfortably hanging out in the living space–with every door zipped up tight against the rain. And when M. wanted more space to “shake her wiggles out,” she simply went into the bedroom and rolled around on the air mattresses. During a different strong rainstorm, M. and I spent the whole afternoon waiting out the storm in the tent. We had plenty of space to play together or both do our own thing. This I why I bought the tent–I wanted to have a place for M. to play when the weather wasn’t cooperating (being able to host a small group for beers inside the tent is an absolute bonus).
Little things: All the pockets are awesome.
When I ordered the tent and was paying shipping from the UK, I also ordered a lot of other camping gear at the same time. You can play spot-the-Outwell in my photos!
Above is the bedroom, I couldn’t get far enough away to get the whole thing in a single photo, so I stitched a few together.
A more typical view of our messy beds…love all the pockets
We used the side vestibule for storage, mostly.
M. finding herself a snack.
Break down: The guy lines were easily stashed in their attached velcro holders and the tent quickly deflated. During some of the rain storms, water had gotten between the tent and the ground cloth/footprint. Since we were breaking camp on a beautiful, hot, sunny day, I was able to drag the tent onto a nice sunny, grassy section and dried the tent on both sides. Fortunately, there wasn’t much mud/dirt on the tent. The ground cloth was a different story! I was able to hose off the ground cloth on both sides and let it dry in the sun. (Note to self: add a small hose to the WOR gear list.) I also put the carpet out the sun and dried it on both sides, too. The carpet was damp in the front from rain running off the awning and into the door. Thankfully, I was able to fully clean and dry everything well enough for storage. This was a huge time saver–I was thrilled not to have to get all the tent gear out when we got home. I was also able to to get the everything back in the tent bag and load the bag into the car by myself. I don’t believe I would have been able to do either, if everything had still be wet.
Thoughts: I am extremely happy with the tent, but need to remember a few things for our next grand adventure. First, we thought we were setting up the awning straight out from the tent, but it was skewed to the left (when facing the tent). This was a bigger mistake than it should have been, because this allowed rain to run off of the side of the awning into the large front door. Next time, I will consciously skew it to the right to better cover the door opening. I wish the awning extended further on this side and/or was longer on this side. Second, I had most of the doors partially unzipped when I packed up the tent after setting it up in the backyard. While we used the tent, many of the zippers seemed tight or a little difficult to zip. The next time I set up, I will zip everything up, before staking tent and guy lines and see if that resolves the issue (and maybe before finishing inflation).