Mountain Hardwear Lightpath 3 Tent 3-Person 3-Season

Pros: Light, easy to set up (in bad weather too), good vestibule size w/two entries, can cook in rain and stay dry (due to large vestibule), excellent waterproofing, plenty of space for 3 avg people (say 5'10", 160lb) Cons: not a free standing tent, but that's a different market... PLUS it's snazzy looking... that's right, you CAN pick up trail friends (read:chicks) with this baby...

I've used my tent four times this year and each time I set it up I think to myself "What a great investment". It is a breeze to set up (it is not freestanding but I knew that when I bought it). It has plenty of room for two humans and a yelow lab! It may be a little tight with three people but it will work. Last time I used it we had some serious fog roll in and I did have some condensation between the rain fly and tent however, it was simple to turn inside out and dry out when I got home. I did purchase a Granite Gear XS stuff sack to carry it with and the footprint and tent fit perfect in it. You can definately pack it down smaller with that than with the sack it came with. I have to carry the poles in their pouch on the side pocket of my pack since they don't break down smaller than 22". For the money that I paid, I am extremely happy and would recommend this tent.

I was quite impressed with tent when I first set it up. It is quite roomy and very well made. It has all taped seams, nice Atlas poles and some lightweight hardwear, features found on more expensive tents. It is big enough for 3 if you want. You always read reviews saying a little snug or not enough room for gear, but what Lightweight tent isn't. Mountain Hardwear lists the minimum weight as 5lb 4oz, minus stuff sacks, stakes and anything else you can jettison. Compare it to other 3 person tents on this site and anything lighter costs twice as much. What makes it lighter is the classic double A frame design( not free standing). My previous tent of 34 years is the same design and it worked well for me, but it was time for a bigger tent. As others have stated, it weathers storms and wind really well. When you set it up, you will immediately notice how taut it is. Also it is very easy to set up. Just stake out the 4 corners(thats all the stakes you really need) and pop in the poles, Done. The fly on the other hand you may want to practice setting up before using it for the first time.

I have always used and loved free standing tents for their strength and ease of set up, but I was very impressed with the Lightpath 3. The packed size and weight is minimal for a tent of its size. I thought it had plenty of room to accommodate 3 people, minus gear. The vestibule has a good amount of room for gear stowing and opens very wide to get a good breeze in. The tent is ideal for two people and plenty of gear. At 5lb 12oz it is very nice to carry and the packable size can be dramatically reduced with a little more muscle when rolling it up. It couldn't have been easier to setup. No sleeves, no pins, just place the correct pole(only two) in each corner and place the grommet on the corners of the tent on the end of each pole. The weight is further reduced by the absence of clips used to keep the rain fly on the tent body. Grommets placed on each corner of the rain fly slip over the end of the tent poles. Over all the tent was great. Didn't get a chance to experience a great amount of moisture, but the moisture we did have didn't phase the Lightpath 3. Best of all, my wife liked the colors.

I really like this tent, although it is a little confusing to set up the first time or so. I suggest that you test it out in your backyard before taking it out to the mountains or wherever you are camping. Somewhere with light so you can figure it out, before it gets too dark and you loose an important piece and get really confused on how to put it together. It is a nice tent to hang in. The shape is a little strange, but it feels really comfy. I was impressed with it. Its seams are taped, and the fly gives it the appearance that it is bigger. Without the fly it vents nicely. I have not yet been able to try it out while it is raining, but I hope to see how the fly works in the rain. It seems like it should be good in repelling water, but I am curious if it were able to repel water three years from now. Overall, I am impressed with this tent. It is a good one.

I've had this tent for a little over a year now and I've used it several times. It's easy to set up, looks sharp, and is relatively light. Blah, blah, blah. The thing that has made me love this tent is that it has kept me dry through some of the worst weather I've experienced in the backcountry. Torrential downpours, hurricane-force wind gusts, and freezing rain... this tent has battled and beat them all.

This is one awesome tent. It's sharp looking, it's lightweight, and it does the job. It's nice having such visibility; you can is and watch the stars on a nice night. And it goes up pretty quick and simple, even if it isn't free-standing, and the rainfly's a breeze too. I woke up to rain one night and managed to get it on in less than a minute even without light. Haven't storm tested, but the rainfly's so large that I can't imagine any water ever seeing the inside of this tent. Very high quality and cozy. I'd recommend some more steaks for the rainfly, though.

Have used the tent only once for a hiking trip on the Front Range in CO. The ground was frozen so the included tent stakes didn't work out too well but the tent itself was of excellent quality. Plenty of room for two people and gear. Definatley not enough room for gear and three people but most tents are like this. Pretty easy set up besides the stakes but the tent is not free standing...the stakes need to be in place for the tent to work.

This tent was an amazing buy, it holds 2-3 people easily, and it has plenty of room for gear, inside it and in the rain fly. It has proven to be waterproof threw several storms. It's stuff size is not as small as I would like it to be, but over all it was a great buy.

OK, so we had howling gales and days on end of rain, followed by about 3 days of sunshine - perfect testing weather! You'll be glad to hear that the Lightpath kept us perfectly dry throughout, as advertised. We managed to figure a way to erect the tent fly-first (basically do the quick pitch then one of you gets wet re-pegging stuff down while the other sorts out the inner), though actually we ended up packing the inner first more often than the other way around. It took a few days to work out precisely the best way to put up the tent, but it proved robust enough to cope with such amateurishness - it just wasn't as big inside when we got it wrong. Once we had our act together, I was proved wrong about the cooking space - the angle of the door makes it perfectly possible to sit in the dry while cooking outside. We liked having the choice of sides for our storage/the door - it made a big difference when the wind/rain direction changed. The only 'flapping' we encountered was in that situation - we simply unpegged everything and shuffled the tent (and everything in it) around so that the rear faced the wind, and it never so much as fluttered thereafter. Took all of 2 minutes. The mesh is fine enough to keep out the infamous Highland midge, which was a big bonus where we were. We need to replace a small patch of it following an invasion by a rodent or rodents unknown. (Niece left food loose in the tent, sigh.) One other slight mishap wasn't our fault - one of the pole clips came away from the fly - but didn't cause us any real problems. We compensated by pegging out that side slightly differently (no repair kit to hand.) Hopefully I can either fix that or get it fixed easily now I'm home. Pegs - we needed an extra 4 for the guylines, no more no less. It's worth using the guys, particularly in rough weather - it definitely helps the tent keep its shape better, with or without a missing clip. For getting around, we split the tent between two 8-litre dry bags and carried them tied outside our (tiny) packs. That worked well, except when we packed wet... drybags work both ways of course, d'oh. But the inner was never even damp, and the bags gave us extra space to tuck odd items into. Short version? I love this tent. It takes a little getting used to after a dome, but it's way lighter than the last tent I lugged around Scotland, and much drier to boot.

Have only used the tent once so far at a festival. Of course it rained as it always does when i go to a festival but the tent stayed dry as a bone. I did not experience any condensation inside the tent after a fairly steady rain overnight. The tent is very easy to set up however it does not stand alone. Those of you who prefer to pitch the tent before staking it down will not be able to do that. I was able to move the tent in its pitched state after it was all set up however, you just need to stake it down and then adjust. Not a big deal to me but I have some friends that would have nothing to do with such a tent so maybe thats you. As far as size goes in my opinion this could really pass as a one man tent. You could fit two comfortably with minimal gear but if your out on the trails for awhile with 2 packs your gonna be cramped for space. Definitely NOT a 3 man tent, i suppose you could fit but absolutely no gear could be in the tent. If you are looking for a tent for gatherings with friends this tent is not for you. It is extremely light weight even with the footprint, and fits fairly easily into the sack with the footprint included. Only downer is that with the rainfly on you can't see outside the tent. A small window on the vestibule space lets in some light but other than that you are sealed in.

We haven't taken the tent out for a trip yet, but will come back with a full performance report from the Outer Hebrides (read: windy, wet weather long-term hiking trip) in August. First impressions: it's extremely lightweight, and feels very roomy inside for two + gear. The interior height, the flysheet colours and the 'window' all combine to help here, but there is a fair amount of usable floor space anyway - much more than I expected at 'the shallow end'. We didn't look at the instructions from the start - if we had we'd have known that there _are_ enough pegs supplied with the tent, and we'd also have got the flysheet more streamlined at first try. We're still working on finding a good way to put up the flysheet first in a high wind, and it may be that we need extra pegs to achieve that. There isn't quite as much usable space in the vestibule as I'd hoped, although this may be partly down to our disregard for manuals. It definitely wouldn't be safe to cook there, for example. The door design's going to be excellent in wet weather, though, I can see that much without testing it - the angles between the outer and inner door work very nicely indeed. The tent doesn't look as robust as I know it to be. It's definitely a female :) Packing is very straightforward; my teenaged niece (veteran of a single camping trip, ever) volunteered and got all the cloth elements, including the footprint, properly rolled up and into the stuffsack supplied at first try. The footprint takes up negligible space. So far, so good - but I'll put in a fresh report when the trip's over.