Kelty Yellowstone 6 Person Tent Navy Grey
Nicely affordable and versatile for three-season usage, the Kelty Yellowstone freestanding tent offers a roomy interior for sleeping after a long day of hiking. This dome-style tent has a mesh ceiling and side vents for ample ventilation, water-proof rain fly with side-release buckles for easy attachment, and color-coded poles for quick-and-easy setup. Weighing 17 pounds, 7 ounces, the six-person Yellowstone has a 90 square foot floor 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 large D-shaped door, gear loft loops, mesh interior pockets for gear storage, external guy points for added stability in windy conditions, and noiseless zipper pulls.
Specifications
- Dimensions: 114 x 114 x 76 inches
- Floor area: 90 square feet
- Vestibule area: none
- Weight: 17 pounds, 7 ounces
- Seasons: 3
- Doors: 1
- Windows: 2
- Wall material: 68D 190T polyester taffeta
- Floor material: 1800mm PU nylon taffeta
- Fly material: 75D 190T, 1800 mm PU polyester ripstop rain fly
- Number of poles: 3
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 Good Price & Easy Set-Up
Kelty Yellowstone 6-Person Tent (Navy/Grey)
We bought this tent because of the price and reviews. Turns out to be a good purchase. The tent was very easy to setup. Setting up the tent took 1 person about 15 minutes. The tent stood up to quite a bit of wind with no problem, very sturdy. Did not get a chance to test for water-proof. Nice roomy tent, but I do not think 6 people can fit in it, 4 with all your gears would be ideal.
1 Star Pole snapped on first use
One of the main poles failed the first time I tried setting it up. Anchor spikes are flimsy and wouldn’t hold in any real wind. Amazon was great about taking it back.
4 Stars Nice family tent.
This is a really nice tent. Easy to set up, spacious, good for car camping. The tent that we received has a zipper (on the door) that is quirky… it has trouble rounding the corners and doesn’t always work right, so that sometimes the teeth pull apart and you have to “unzip” it and then slowly zip it again to make sure it works right … and it zips better from the inside than the outside, so we’ve found that it is sometimes better when closing the door from the outside to put your hand on the inside of the tent and pull on that part of the zipper until you get it all the way around the corners. This is a minor frustration that might just be a small defect of our particular tent, and perhaps we could exchange it or have it fixed, but it didn’t seem worth the trouble to me. Another frustration we had was when our toddler got ahold of the tent pole and snapped the cord. Totally our fault… we broke it, there was no default with that. But Kelty had great customer service and even though we explained exactly what happened, they replaced the pole. We just had to pay shipping one-way to send the broken pole to them.
