Kelty Green River 4 Four Person Tent
A great choice for car camping or use for a basecamp, the Kelty Green River provides a roomy interior for four campers as well as a front screenroom with room enough to store gear or set up chairs for watching the sunset. This tent sleeps up to four campers, offers three-season usage, and a freestanding design that enables you to move it around your campsite to find the optimum position. It also includes large mesh windows for good ventilation, UV resistant polyester fly, and color-coded poles for quick-and-easy setup. Weighing 20 pounds, 15 ounces, the four-person Green River has a 81 square foot floor area, and a 43.6 square foot vestibule area.
The shockcorded fiberglass poles have color coded clips that make setup a breeze. The tent also offers post and grommet type assembly with locking pole tips for convenience and security. Kelty’s ArcEdge construction lifts floor seams up off the ground, preventing water seepage around the floor and wall seams. Other features include a single flashlight loop, mesh interior pockets for gear storage, external guy points for added stability in windy conditions, and noiseless zipper pulls.
Specifications
- Dimensions: 108 x 108 x 71 inches
- Interior height: 5 feet, 11 inches
- Floor area: 81 square feet
- Vestibule area: 43.6 square feet
- Weight: 20 pounds, 15 ounces
- Seasons: 3
- Doors: 1
- Windows: 2
- Wall material: 68D 190T polyester ripstop
- Floor material: 1800mm PU nylon-taffeta
- Fly material: 75D 190T, 1800mm PU polyester ripstop
- Number of poles: 4
About Kelty
Kelty is based in Boulder, Colorado, and uses the natural backdrop of the Rocky Mountains to test, create, and continually innovate within their diverse outdoor product families of Apex, Backcountry, Trail, Basecamp and KIDS gear. Kelty combines the best in new technology with a healthy dose of common sense to create exceptionally made, affordably priced outdoor products.
Amazon.com Tent Guide
Selecting a Tent
Fortunately, there are all kinds of tents for weekend car campers, Everest expeditions, and everything in-between. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
Expect the Worst
In general, it’s wise to choose a tent that’s designed to withstand the worst possible conditions you think you’ll face. For instance, if you’re a summer car camper in a region where weather is predictable, an inexpensive family or all purpose tent will likely do the trick–especially if a vehicle is nearby and you can make a mad dash for safety when bad weather swoops in! If you’re a backpacker, alpine climber or bike explorer, or if you like to car camp in all seasons, you’ll want to take something designed to handle more adversity.
Three- and Four-Season Tents
For summer, early fall and late spring outings, choose a three-season tent. At minimum, a quality three season tent will have lightweight aluminum poles, a reinforced floor, durable stitching, and a quality rain-fly. Some three-season tents offer more open-air netting and are more specifically designed for summer backpacking and other activities. Many premium tents will feature pre-sealed, taped seams and a silicone-impregnated rain-fly for enhanced waterproofness.
For winter camping or alpine travel, go with a four season model. Because they typically feature more durable fabric coatings, as well as more poles, four-season tents are designed to handle heavy snowfall and high winds without collapsing. Of course, four-season tents exact a weight penalty of about 10 to 20 percent in trade for their strength and durability. They also tend to be more expensive.
Domes and Tunnels
Tents are broadly categorized into two types, freestanding, which can stand up on their own, and those that must be staked down in order to stand upright. Freestanding tents often incorporate a dome-shaped design, and most four-season tents are constructed this way because a dome leaves no flat spots on the outer surface where snow can collect. Domes are also inherently stronger than any other design. Meanwhile, many three-season models employ a modified dome configuration called a tunnel. These are still freestanding, but they require fewer poles than a dome, use less fabric, and typically have a rectangular floor-plan that offers less storage space than a dome configuration. Many one and two-person tents are not freestanding, but they make up for it by being more lightweight. Because they use fewer poles, they can also be quicker to set up than a dome.
Size Matters
Ask yourself how many people you’d like to fit in your fabric hotel now and in the future. For soloists and minimalists, check out one-person tents. If you’re a mega-minimalist, or if you have your eye on doing some big wall climbs, a waterproof-breathable bivy sack is the ticket. Some bivy sacks feature poles and stake points to give you a little more breathing room. Also, if you don’t need bug protection and you want to save weight, check out open-air shelters.
Families who plan on car camping in good weather can choose from a wide range of jumbo-sized tents that will accommodate all your little ones with room to spare. A wide range of capacities is also available for three- and four-season backpacking and expedition tents. Remember, though, the bigger the tent you buy, the heavier it will be, although it’s easy to break up the tent components among several people in your group. It’s also helpful to compare the volume and floor-space measurements of models you’re considering.
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Great weekend camping tent
We are currently a family of 3. There was ample room in the tent. After spending two summer weekends in the tent we still love it. My husband has put it up and down by himself. He has not had difficulty getting it back into the bag. A few bugs find their way under the flaps into the vestibule, but it is still great for a place to leave shoes and put coolers overnight. We put a ground tarp down large enough to provide a floor for the vestibule. We had light rain both weekends and were quite pleased with the tent. The only two reasons I did not rate the tent a 5 are 1- the vestibule door is at such an angle that it is very tough to bend over to zip it all the way down (and in the middle of the night to zip in and out of two doors to go potty can be loud!). 2 - the rain fly goes all the way to the ground and we ended up undoing the back of it and rolling it up on 90 degree days to allow more air into the tent so we did not over heat everything. The tent would not have cooled down to sleeping temperatures during the day. I would not take this tent to a festival where we camped in open fields during mid-summer. Overall, we love the tent, the spaciousness (we will easily have a family of 4 in here), and the vestibule (a great place to strip down a toddler before entering the tent. (They are out of the mosquitos, but you can pick off the ticks before they go into the main tent.) This tent is a good fit for most weekend family campers. It is too heavy for backpacking, but we didn’t mind carrying it in to our primitive site two football fields away from the car.
4 Stars 4.5!
This tent is great. I had backpackers gear already, and got sick of mellow car trips where my dog and I had to squeeze into a tiny tent on a skinny thermarest. Now I generally camp more leisurely and this is awesome. Spacious, bug-free and absolutely a GREAT vestibule. I do struggle to put it up on my own, but it’s worth the trouble. I haven’t zipped the carrybag up since opening it the first time but then I haven’t tried very hard. Now I sleep on a cot with the dog on a real dog bed and we are both much happier campers. It has loops for a gearloft/lantern (LED) and pockets on the sides. We have our containers of bathroom and kitchen gear stashed at the sides and room left for a nice blanket to cover the floor. Pleasant!
4 Stars Great Family Tent
We got this tent before Thanksgiving and put it up in the back yard over the weekend to see how it would weather the upcoming rainy weather. It did fine. I did not water proof it through the first night of storms and it did leak a bit in the back where the rainfly does not come all the way to the bottom of the tent. After waterproofing seams and all, it was fine. I do love the vestibule. It’s very roomy. We used a 9×12 inch tarp under the tent, and it worked well. There was no water penetration from the floor. I recommend that you replace the tent pegs. They are cheap and don’t hold up in heavy winds. You can replace them with the steel ones from Walmart. They don’t cost much, and it’s worth it.
5 Stars great tent, great price
great tent, great price. integrated front porch worked great. we got hit by a 3 hour thunderstorm the first night in ocoee, tn, and we had no leaks. it is kind of heavy but, it’s a base camp kind of thing anyway.
5 Stars great tent for the money!
we very much like this tent. It is well made and we just returned from a camp in all night rain and strong wind. Not a drop of water. It is not perfect, but very much worth the money we spent on it.